You DONKEY!!!

Oddly, thus far into this season of Hell's Kitchen -- four episodes that I've watched thus far, with one more waiting to be seen -- Chef Ramsay has yet to call anyone by my favorite term of endearment, "You [bleep] donkey!" For some reason that always makes me laugh.

Anyway, this is an entertaining season thus far, as always. Seeing these chefs of varying culinary talent and experience nevertheless struggle equally to make Ramsay happy is always fun, as are his unending string of expletives directed at those who inspire his wrath.

One thing from an episode a couple of weeks ago struck me as odd, though. The chefs were all made to get up very early and go for a walking tour of a commercial butcher operation, which was basically a big warehouse where a number of workers are processing sides of beef. Most of the chefs reacted horribly: "It's cold! It smells awful!" and so on. And I'm thinking, "You're cooks, and this is meat. You should be fascinated by this, not repulsed!"

Ditto later on, when the female team lost the Gordon Ramsay version of that old Letterman chestnut, "Know Your Cuts of Meat"; as part of their punishment they were fed a lunch of various beef innards. Again, you're cooks. At least a few of you should actually like innards, right? Aren't lots of very famous dishes in fact made of innards? Foie gras is an innard, isn't it? (Yeah, an innard of a goose, but it's the same principle.) I always end up wondering just how serious some of these people are about food.