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Ramsay's Best Restaurant

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apskip:
Gordon Ramsay has a new show in the U.S. on the BBC America channel called Ramsay's Best Restaurants and it should have the suffix (of Britain) since the restaurants are all located in Britain. The first episode was shown last night and will be repeated Sunday at 10am (your only chance to catch it since there are no videos available yet as for other BBCA shows). It was on Italian cuisine and my VCR tape ran out midway through so you will have to wait until Monday for a  complete review. What I can tell you from my personal research is this:

1. each episode focuses on a specific cuisine and was selected by Ramsay from BBC viewer nominations of 12,000 restaurants all over Britain
2. two restaurants were selected for each episode
3. the first 8 episodes feature these cuisines: Italian, Indian, Chinese, British, Thai, French, North African, Spanish
4. ep. 2 is Tuesday 12/14 9pm, repeated 12a, 2a and Sunday 12/19 9am
5. ep. 3 is Tuesday 12/21 9pm repeated 12a, 2a
6. ep. 4 is Tuesday 12/28 pm and repeated 12a, 2a and maybe Sunday 1/2 9am?

The basic format of each episode is that Ramsay has 3 challenges for each restaurants. The first is to, during an otherwise empty period for that restaurant, handle a busload of 30 diners who arrive and order at the same time. The restaurant has 2 hours to serve them all and Ramsay is there watching like a hawk. The 2nd and 3rd challenges are:

An undercover diner (either Simon Davis or Sarah Durdin-Robertson) is sent to each restaurant, to reviews the food and service. The undercover diner is intentionally difficult, to evaluate how the service staff and the kitchen respond to customers with out-of-the-ordinary demands and problems.
The chefs from each restaurant prepare a dish using a protein of Ramsay's choosing, and serve it to twenty guests, including their front of house staff and VIP guests, at the Restaurant Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea, London. Ramsay then samples the dish from the final challenge, and decides on the episode's winner.

In the semi-finals, Ramsay, Angela Hartnett, and Simon Davis stop by unexpectedly at each restaurant to enjoy a meal (in some cases, with a 90 minute time limit), evaluating each restaurant on service and food quality. He recruited a second party of people to dine at the restaurant at the same time, to see if the service and food provided is the same for all customers. Each restaurant was then given restaurant space in North London, £2000, and a guided tour of Ramsay's favorite markets for fresh ingredients. They are tasked with decorating and operating a temporary "pop-up" restaurant for an evening, where guests pay what they feel the meal was worth. Ramsay eliminates two of the four semi-finalists on the experience and food of the pop-up restaurants.

In the finals, the two remaining restaurants will be cooking in Petrus, Ramsay's central London restaurant, for a variety of guests that include chefs and staff from previously-eliminated restaurants. They created a full three-course meal that demonstrates their passion for cooking while Angela Hartnett, Simon Davis, and Sarah Durdin-Robertson supervise them from the chef's table in the kitchen. Through sampling of the dishes from each course and consultation with his guests and the chef's table, Ramsay selects the winning restaurant.

From the little I have seen of the the first episode, I am very impressed with this series and can recommend it to all foodies. Ramsay is an acquired taste and this time he can do his thing with a positive twist (unlike Kitchen Nightmares).

georgiapeach:
I could enjoy being an undercover diner! :lol: Sounds interesting!

apskip:
Peach,

I would too. Undercover is the way many restaurant reviewers operate, as they want to evaluate the service the average diner gets, not special service because they are known to be a restaurant critic. Ruth Reichl when she was the primary restaurant reviewer for the New York Times used to dine in disguise and under a false name to avoid recognition.

TexasLady:
I'll set my DVR to catch this. I like Ramsay, his shows are always interesting to me.  :tup:

Can I join the two of you to round out the dinner table?

apskip:
TexasLady, you certainly may, as I know I would enjoy dinner with such classy individuals as Georgia Peach and you. However, England is a long way to go for dinner. I suggest we wait until Ramsay does a U.S. version of this, which I think has a probability of about 98%

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