Have you seen the show Restaurant Impossible on the Food Network? If you’ve seen Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, you’d be pretty close. Basically, Robert Irvine from Dinner Impossible (are you getting the trend here?) makes over a restaurant in 2 days, with $10,000. Now, both shows deal with stubborn and bull-headed restaurant owners who have absolutely no clue the reason for their failure is either the look of the restaurant, the staff, or the kitchen. They just refuse to acknowledge sometimes their food just doesn’t taste good.

Just recently, there was an episode where the owner did not realize how bad her food tasted. She claimed her chef was a “World class chef”. Really? How can you claim that if you’ve not tasted his food recently. The waiters/waitresses had admitted they never tasted the food. They haven’t because they were not allowed! What?? First of all, if I was the owner, I’d eat at my restaurant everyday or as much as I can just for quality purposes. If I don’t like the food, no one else will either. Second of all, the staff must eat the food. If they don’t eat the food, they cannot possibly sell the food. How can they sell something they’ve never tasted? Crazy. IMHO, all staff should get a comp meal at least once a month if not once a week.

It’s just surprising how crazy these people are. It’s also really crazy how dirty some of these restaurants are. I think if we knew just how dirty a place was, we’d never eat there. It better be like the world-class Kobe beef for me to eat there knowing the kitchen is as hellish as they are. It makes me wonder, how in the world do they pass health inspections? While I was in the Navy, I worked in Preventive Medicine and one of the responsibilities was to inspect restaurants. Now, I’ve seen some crazy dirty places, and believe me, we shut them down. They were not going to send a Marine to the clinic where we had to take care of them because they got food poisoning. Not on my watch. My point is, we inspected restaurants once a month. Now, I know the Navy standard is a bit stricter. So even if an inspection team inspected a restaurant one every 6 months (I’m being really flexible here), how in the world can they get as dirty as they are?! This poses a different question. Does this mean these restaurants clean every 6 months? (or whatever frequency inspections may be)

Robert Irvine does a great job of putting the fear of God into a lot of these people too. He is straightforward and to the point. “If I was in charge here, all three of you? Fired, fired, fired.” Well that quote might not be verbatim, but you get the idea. He’s harsh, but not the harsh like Gordon Ramsay. I think I like Robert Irvine just because sometimes he’s a bit funny. I think he does a great job of breaking the news that the restaurant isn’t doing so well because their food sucks or their decor sucks or whatever. He’s not quite the potty mouth as Gordon Ramsay and I’m sure he could be, but he does show a bit of restraint.

One thing I don’t like and what I think damages the show is the budget. In that respect, they just seem too much like Trading Spaces or some DIY show like it. Well, to that, I just say simply, this isn’t HGTV. It’s Food TV. It’s not necessarily so much about the renovation as it is about the restaurant and the cooking. That’s my opinion at least. It’s nice to see a big reveal of the new restaurant, but honestly, I want to know about the back-end of the house, and how they are doing with the real action. But that’s just me, perhaps my priorities aren’t right, or my idea of the show is wrong. I’ll accept that I’m wrong, but I’m just expressing my opinion.

In conclusion, I think the show is great. I enjoy watching it, and sometimes I really get a good feeling at the end of the show. Especially when I see they succeeded and turned the business around. Although I admit the shows where they reveal the restaurant folded or failed is a bit disappointing. It makes me wonder why exactly did Food Network dish out so much money (because you know they had to spend more than $10,000) and feel good about it. They can’t.

So what are your thoughts on this show? How do you compare it to Kitchen Nightmares?

So the new season of Worst Cooks in America pit Chef Anne Burrell up against Chef Robert Irvine. Both are formidable chefs. You might even remember Chef Anne cooking with Mario Batali in Iron Chef America. Chef Anne is definitely not a stranger to competition. In Season One, Chef Anne beat out Chef Beau MacMillan. So Chef Anne comes back as reigning champion.

At first, throughout the season, it was a pretty close battle, but it seemed Robert Irvine had the edge with his recruits. But they were both evenly matched in my opinion. When it came down to the final four, I was sorely upset at Anne Burrell for not cutting Joshie. Joshie seemed so annoying to me. Robert Irvine’s choice of George was an obvious choice to me in my opinion. She was definitely the better cook and I believed the best to represent Robert Irvine. Anne choosing Joshie was really upsetting, did I mention that? I really thought Carlos would have been the better person represent her.

Of course, in the end, I would eat my words.

Joshie won the overall competition, making Anne Burrell the winner between the two chefs. Of course, it was kinda sad that Anne Burrell won too, because I really would have liked to see what Anne looked like without the spiky hair. That would have been something else.