Gordon's Great Escape
Posted: April 12th, 2010, 7:58
Gordon's Great Escape is where Mr Sweary goes off around India, learning new things about food and then cooking up something at the end of it. As a brief look at how cooking is done in India, it's ok, but rather light on actual cooking for a 90 minute programme.
It had good potential to really show people a bit more about the food and culture, but unfortunately Ramsay is just the wrong person to do it. In his shows in England, he's the expert in the kitchen, and so I feel inclined to forgive his attitude towards other people, especially when they're patently being idiots. However, he seems to forget that in India, he isn't the expert.
For example, he calls someone a pain in the arse to their face when they say his food isn't spicy enough, as if somehow they're the one in the wrong. Then at the end, when he's cooking in the kitchen of a restaurant which is supposedly well-know for being very good, he starts bitching about the lack of equipment and the fact that none of the other chefs speak English, as if somehow it's all a failing on their part. I didn't see him trying to speak Indian at any point.
English people abroad complaining about the locals not speaking English without any attempt to speak the local language themselves is a pet hate of mine, but Ramsay's overall approach seems rather patronising, and I just wish they'd done this show with someone else.
However, they do cook an entire goat (skinned, but with head and all attached), stuffed with chickens, stuffed with quail, stuffed with saffron-coated eggs.
It had good potential to really show people a bit more about the food and culture, but unfortunately Ramsay is just the wrong person to do it. In his shows in England, he's the expert in the kitchen, and so I feel inclined to forgive his attitude towards other people, especially when they're patently being idiots. However, he seems to forget that in India, he isn't the expert.
For example, he calls someone a pain in the arse to their face when they say his food isn't spicy enough, as if somehow they're the one in the wrong. Then at the end, when he's cooking in the kitchen of a restaurant which is supposedly well-know for being very good, he starts bitching about the lack of equipment and the fact that none of the other chefs speak English, as if somehow it's all a failing on their part. I didn't see him trying to speak Indian at any point.
English people abroad complaining about the locals not speaking English without any attempt to speak the local language themselves is a pet hate of mine, but Ramsay's overall approach seems rather patronising, and I just wish they'd done this show with someone else.
However, they do cook an entire goat (skinned, but with head and all attached), stuffed with chickens, stuffed with quail, stuffed with saffron-coated eggs.
He managed to epitomise everything I dislike about how the British are or can be perceived by other people, being unnecessarily rude to total strangers, intolerant of their inability to speak English, and generally failing to amend his behaviour the slightest bit, no matter who he is talking to.