Image via Complex Original
If you're a sucker for entertainment at the expense of others, then we're sure you were counting the days until last night's premieres of MasterChef and Hell's Kitchen. Not in the know? Well, just as star Gordon Ramsay enjoys bringing out the best in flailing restaurants on his beloved Kitchen Nightmares, he also enjoys weeding through contestants to find promising new amateur chefs and restaurateurs on his reality culinary competitions—with the caveat that they must first have the shit verbally assaulted out of them.
Often merciless, always entertaining are how we'd describe Ramsay's fits of rage that've come to set his food shows apart from Top Chef and the like (though it'd be pretty awesome to see the always-poised Padma Lakshmi rip one of the cheftestants a new one over some botched parsnips). Just what causes chef Ramsay to take such genuine offense to minor foodie flukes...we can't really be sure, but in the spirit of good TV, we can only hope he keeps it comin'. (We're positive he will, as he'll be berating under-performing hotel staff this summer on his new show, Hotel Hell.) In celebration of all the food and awkwardness to come, we present to you our list of Gordon Ramsay's 10 Best Rants.
Written by Lauren Otis (@LaurNado)
10. The Pumpkin Risotto Showdown
Appeared on: Hell's Kitchen
Though the culinary folk attempting to make names for themselves on Ramsay's assorted shows tend to bear the brunt of his insults, customers, too, can quickly find themselves in the line of fire if they're bold enough to hassle him while he's doing his thing in the kitchen. One's fate is pretty much as good as sealed when they decide step up to the window (dude's ultimate pet peeve), as one pumpkin-craving customer finds out before long on an episode of Hell's Kitchen.
9. The Breasts-on-the-Hot-Plate Dismissal
Appeared on: Hell's Kitchen
No one can accuse Ramsay of gender favoritism: The man is an equal opportunist when it comes to insults—regardless of how confident one might be in their feminine wiles (or prominently-displayed twos). This couldn't be more clear than when the chef not-so-kindly asks an impatient woman to put her breasts away (and no, we're not talking about chicken), resulting in one of Hell's Kitchen's greatest one-liners to date.
In retrospect, she might not've been set off so much by the guy's dismissive words as the waving hand motion. That just said it all. Hey, sometimes the greatest insults are nonverbal.
8. The Bison-Penis Salmon
Appeared on: Hell's Kitchen
Speaking of undesirable private parts, Ramsay also doesn't take too kindly to a hunk of crappily prepared salmon one Hell's Kitchen chef was unwise enough to leave in his line of vision—one so virtually unrecognizable that he isn't far off when he declares that it looks less like fish, more like another animal's johnson.
7. Hard Truths at Runaway Girl
Appeared on: Kitchen Nightmares
Sheffield eatery Runaway Girl was suffering from a bad case of runaway customers prior to Ramsay's intervention on Kitchen Nightmares' UK edition. In a classic example of the star's unwillingness to beat around the bush, Ramsay drops the bomb (hard) on the establishment's owner, Justin Rowntree, that his live music restaurant needs to lose the very thing that makes it unique—the live music.
6. The War at Secret Garden
Appeared on: Kitchen Nightmares
It comes as no surprise that some of the chefs of Kitchen Nightmares have a harder time relinquishing control of their spots and taking chef Ramsay's ruthless bashings than others. One of the most memorable showdowns in the show's history remains the heated, much-Googled back and forth between the program's star and the owner-chef of The Secret Garden, Michel Bardavid. Fortunately, the confrontation doesn't come to blows, but Ramsay certainly keeps the zingers coming, the last being one of the most surprising and controversial of the series.
5. Jack's Waterfront Restaurant Fails Kitchen Inspection
Appeared on: Kitchen Nightmares
After scoping out the horror that was the "before" version of Jack's Waterfront Restaurant on Kitchen Nightmares, it's not hard to see why the place shuttered despite Ramsay's best attempts to help the brolic bunch revitalize their flailing business. The guy is characteristically over the top, but those bloody meat bits and hardened risotto are the stuff that nightmares are made of. In this case, we firmly back every last bit of hilarious hating.
4. The Non-stick Pan
Appeared on: Hell's Kitchen
Think you've got what it takes to go head to head with the Hell's Kitchen crew? Well, chances are you've got an edge over at least one of Ramsay's competitors, Sara, who endured his wrath early on in the form of the world's most humiliating cookware 101 lesson. As you can hear in that last-second voice crack, Ramsay even managed to wear himself out with those screamed words of wisdom on the distinguishing characteristics of a non-stick pan.
3. The Toilet Brush Jab
Appeared on: Hell's Kitchen
If we decided to start doing shots each time we heard Ramsay call one chef or another a "fucking donkey" over the course of an episode, we'd probably be twisted only minutes into the show. However, when he decides to give the phrase a rest every once in a while, he has a talent for coming up with innovative snaps that venture into territory beyond food. Observe above as he saves the best for last.
2. The Lamb Sauce Flip-Out
Appeared on: Hell's Kitchen
Who'd have guessed that lamb sauce could ever be the source of so much terror. Or hilarity. Thanks to one particularly memorable episode of Hell's Kitchen, we can just imagine the temporary boom in mutton sales, if only for the sake of buyers having the pleasure of screaming, "WHERE IS THE LAMB SAAAAUCE?!" at their "Yankee Doodle shite" friends while manning the kitchen.
1. "Dickface"
Appeared on: Hell's Kitchen
Poor Giovanni. The guy should've known that attempting to pass off some mangled meat bone as the centerpiece of a diner's entree would never fly with Ramsay. Having your kitchen competence called into question on national TV is bad enough as is. Being called a "dickface" on top of that, over and over, before the entire kitchen staff and restaurant, is a whole new level of rough.