Hell's Kitchen (American TV series)

This article is about the American television show. For the New York City neighborhood, see Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan.

Hell's Kitchen
Title Card for Hell's Kitchen
Created by	Gordon Ramsay
Starring	Gordon Ramsay Scott Leibfried MaryAnn Salcedo (season 1-3) Gloria Felix (season 4-5) Heather West (season 6) Andi Van Willigan (Season 7-present) Jean-Philippe Susilovic
Opening theme	Fire by the Ohio Players
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	7 (renewed through Season 8)
No. of episodes	85
Production
Producers	ITV Studios Granada America; A. Smith & Co. Consulting Producer:Daniel Kay
Original release
Network	FOX
Release	May 30, 2005 (2005-05-30) – present
Related
Hell's Kitchen (UK)

Hell's Kitchen is an American reality-television cooking competition (based on a series of the same name, broadcast in the UK) broadcast on FOX. It is hosted by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

The program debuted on May 30, 2005, and has run every year since on an annual and semi-annual basis. The seventh season of Hell's Kitchen ran Tuesdays nights from June 1, 2010 to August 10, 2010 at 8pm ET/7pm CT on FOX.

Hell's Kitchen is the 2nd highest-rated competitive reality show in the United States, behind Survivor. It has surpassed The Apprentice (hosted by Donald Trump) in its number of non-celebrity contestant seasons and has not attempted to bolster ratings with major format changes. Also, every season of Hell's Kitchen has been shown consecutively on a yearly (or twice yearly) basis since 2005 (as of 2010, seven seasons have aired). Based on Nielsen ratings, each season has seen enough viewer loyalty to have Fox renew the show's contract for another season. Accordingly, on August 6, 2009, Hell's Kitchen was renewed for an eighth season.

Format

The format of the program is similar to the United Kingdom version, with a red team and a blue team competing in various cooking challenges for most of the season; once the number of remaining contestants is reduced to five (or six in seasons 4, 5, 6, and 7), the two teams combine to become a single black team and compete individually.

Each episode begins with a team or individual challenge; the winning chef or team may get a reward, while the losing team or players are required to perform some form of manual labor, usually consisting of kitchen duty in preparation for the dinner service but may also be cleaning the dormitories or decorating the restaurant for a particular event. It may also take the form of "punishment fitting the crime," meaning preparing the same foodstuffs that were used in the challenge for a dinner service. This punishment sometimes includes a lunch consisting of less palatable parts of those foodstuffs, such as those of bovines.

During dinner service, teams are responsible for preparing food to Gordon Ramsay's very demanding taste and appearance requirements as well as within a limited time frame. Ramsay may throw away an entire plate of food due to one element being off, requiring the team to re-prepare the dish or the entire table if necessary, and usually sends a barrage of insults and obscenities to the responsible player or team. If Ramsay sees failure in the kitchen, he may force one player to take over for another. If the entire kitchen is in a debacle, Ramsay may end the dinner service prematurely, often using his catchphrase "Shut it down" or "Switch it off!"

After the dinner service, Ramsay will select the winning team who may get an additional reward, and then will select the best player on the losing team to make a decision about which two fellow teammates to nominate for elimination. Alternatively, if the service is exceptionally bad (or good), Ramsay may declare no team the winner, or no specific player on the losing team as the best, requiring the team(s) to nominate someone for elimination. Sometimes Ramsay overrules the nominations and chooses someone else entirely. When the game is down to a single team but still more than three people, the winning player will select the two to be nominated. Each nominated player has a chance to plead their case to Ramsay, but he makes the final decision, at which point the eliminated player hands over their chef's jacket, which he forcefully hangs up on a hook until the hook pokes a hole in the jacket and also causes an above photo of the player to burn to symbolize their elimination.

When the competition is down to the final two players, Ramsay splits the Hell's Kitchen dining area into two sections, and each of the two final contestants runs their own restaurant; each contestant is allowed to choose the decoration, style, and menu for his or her restaurant. Six previously eliminated contestants return to help the two finalists to prepare the meals. Ramsay will use his observations of how the finalists work in the kitchen and with their teams, not just during the final service, but throughout the whole competition as well, and feedback from the patrons of each restaurant, to select the ultimate winner of the show.

Hell's Kitchen is somewhat rare among elimination-style reality shows in that all of the responsibilities of judging and eliminating fall to a single person, Ramsay, instead of a full panel of judges, or a majority vote by the contestants. Additionally, Ramsay has the power to override the basic format of the competition, such as ignoring the losing team's nominations for elimination, eliminating contestants from a winning team, eliminating contestants in the middle of dinner service, or changing around team members.

Cast

The show is hosted by Gordon Ramsay and narrated by Jason Thompson. The restaurant's Belgian maître d', Jean-Philippe Susilovic, comes from Petrus, one of Ramsay's London restaurants. Jean-Phillipe was also the maître d' for the first UK series of Hell's Kitchen.

Each team also has the services of one of two sous-chefs. Scott Leibfried has appeared in all seasons. MaryAnn Salcedo appeared in Seasons 1-3, Gloria Felix in Seasons 4 and 5, Heather West in Season 6 and Andi Van Willigan [5] in Season 7.

Production

Broadcasting

The theme song of the show is "Fire" by the Ohio Players.

Profanity by Ramsay at the chefs, and sometimes even at the customers, is quite frequent on the show. Due to regulations in the United States regarding profanity and network broadcasting, the episodes as aired in the United States employ bleep censoring and pixelization to mask the profanity. The words are bleeped in their entirety.

In Belgium, Australia, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Korea, Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia, Israel, Mexico and Brazil, all the profane language is transmitted uncensored, however in Hungary, the show is dubbed with Hungarian voices, so the original voices can't be heard clearly. After the season is complete it is aired in the United Kingdom a few months later, as Hell's Kitchen USA. First-run broadcast occurs in a late evening timeslot on ITV2, after the UK 9pm watershed, and retain all profanity. However, re-runs are often aired during earlier timeslots (8pm), with censorship restored. Some UK airings were followed by extra uncut footage from the just shown episode, in a spin-off show Hells Kitchen USA: Served Raw

Hells Kitchen, (Renamed to Hells Kitchen USA, to differ from the UK version) airs on ITV2. It is currently broadcasting Season 6 of the show. In Poland, the fifth season is currently broadcast by TVN Style. The channel also broadcast season three and four. The first and second season were broadcast in Poland by Polsat and kuchnia.tv.

In Australia it was axed after only about 3 weeks on the Nine Network in June 2007, supposedly due to the very foul profanity, losing viewers to major rival Seven Network. However, in April 2008, Channel Nine began broadcasting the first season from the beginning, in conjunction with the UK-based Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. Seasons 1-3 were screened on the 'Lifestyle Food' network (via pay TV) in early 2008, and season 4 started on the 19th Sept 2008, also on Lifestyle Food. The series is now shown on the Nine Network's new channel GO!.

In New Zealand it is currently being aired on TV2. All of the profanity is censored.

In Canada, it is aired on CityTV, simulcast with the FOX network, and is censored. Reruns air on Food Network Canada; originally broadcast uncensored, though broadcasts of later seasons are censored. It is also airing now on Global Reality, it is currently airing the 4 season.

Hell's Kitchen is also being shown in Malaysia on ntv7, every Sunday at 10:45p.m.

In Sweden it is aired on TV3.

In Bulgaria it is aired on Nova+ and Nova Television.

In Brazil, it is aired by GNT, and also by Latin American network Casa Club TV.

In Hungary it is aired on Viasat3.

In the Arab World it is aired on MBC 4

In Slovenia, the show's aired on Kanal A (reruns on TV Pika).

In Finland the show is aired on MTV3. The title is translated as Kauhukeittiö which means "The Kitchen of Horrors".

In Israel it is first aired on yesStars Drama, and then on yesStars Next.

In France, it's aired on TMC.

In Belgium, it's aired on VT4.

Setting

For the show's first two seasons, the Hell's Kitchen restaurant set itself was housed in the former studios of Los Angeles television station KCOP at 915 North La Brea Avenue, in Hollywood, which at one time hosted production of game shows Tic Tac Dough and The Joker's Wild. KCOP was acquired by News Corporation in 2001 and its studios were integrated with those of Fox affiliate KTTV in 2003, leaving the La Brea facility vacant. Originally the studio was put up for sale, but in the end they were retooled for the production of Hell's Kitchen. The dining room area is the location of the former KCOP news studios, and living quarters for the contestants were built on behind the restaurant. The Hell's Kitchen studio address is 8660 Hayden Place Culver City, California.

Seasons

Airdates	New features	Winner	Prize/epilogue
Season 1
May 30 - August 1, 2005	12 chefs competing in two teams; final five combined into one team	Michael Wray	Accepted an offer to work with Ramsay in London, but returned to US after a few days; after return, made custom knives; formerly the head chef at Tatou in Los Angeles, CA
Season 2
June 12 - August 14, 2006	Teams divided by gender at start of competition	Heather West	Former senior chef of Terra Rossa at the Red Rock Resort Spa and Casino (contract has since expired); currently the executive chef at the Monterey Restaurant in Long Beach, NY and was a sous chef for Hell's Kitchen in season 6
Season 3
June 4 - August 13, 2007	First contestant kicked out during dinner service	Rahman "Rock" Harper	Head chef of Green Valley Ranch's Terra Verde; served as the executive chef at Ben's Next Door in Washington D.C. in early 2009
Season 4
April 1 - July 8, 2008	15 chefs competing; final six combined into one team	Christina Machamer	Senior sous chef under Gordon Ramsay at the London in West Hollywood with a $250,000 salary
Season 5
January 29 - May 14, 2009	16 chefs competing; "Hall of Fame" of past winners	Danny Veltri	Chef working under head chef Stephen Kalt at the Italian restaurant Fornelletto in the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa in Atlantic City, New Jersey with a $250,000 prize
Season 6
July 21 - October 13, 2009	17 chefs competing	Dave Levey	Chef at the Araxi Restaurant, under Executive Chef James Walt, in Whistler, BC Later departed due to other commitments.
Season 7
June 1 - August 10, 2010	Guaranteed completion of first dinner service; four chefs participate in semi-final	Holli Ugalde	Executive Chef at Gordon Ramsay's new restaurant at the Savoy Hotel in London, England.
Season 8
September 22 - ? 2010

Reception

Awards and nominations

Hell's Kitchen has been nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards in the Outstanding Art Direction for Variety, Music or Nonfiction Programming category in 2007,2008 and 2009. It has also been nominated for two Art Directors Guild Awards in the Television — Awards Show, Variety, Music or Non-Fiction Program category in 2007 and 2008, winning one in 2008. It has also been nominated for a Teen Choice Award for Choice Summer Series.

In 2009, Gordon Ramsay won an Astra Award for Favourite International Personality or Actor.

Other media

DVD releases

Visual Entertainment has released the first two seasons of Hell's Kitchen on DVD in Region 1. Season 3 will be released in Canada on August 10, 2010 and in the USA on September 21, 2010. Season 4 will be released on October 26, 2010 in Canada and on November 9, 2010 in the US.

In Region 4, Shock Entertainment has released seasons 1-5 on DVD in Australia.

DVD name	Ep #	Release dates
		Region 1 (CAN)	Region 1 (US)	Region 4
Hell's Kitchen- Season 1: Raw and Uncensored	10	April 8, 2008		December 1, 2008
Hell's Kitchen- Season 2: Raw and Uncensored	10	October 27, 2009	May 11, 2010	February 2, 2009
Hell's Kitchen- Season 3: Raw and Uncensored	10	August 10, 2010	September 21, 2010	February 2, 2009
Hell's Kitchen- Season 4: Raw and Uncensored	14	October 26, 2010	November 9, 2010	April 1, 2009
Hell's Kitchen- Season 5: Raw and Uncensored	14	TBA	TBA	November 27, 2009

Video games

Hells Kitchen: The Game
Developer(s)	Ludia
Publisher(s)	Ubisoft
Platform(s)	Nintendo DS, Wii, Windows, iPhone OS
Release	September 11, 2008
Genre(s)	Sim

On September 11, 2008, Ubisoft released Hell's Kitchen: The Game for the Nintendo DS, Windows, iPhone OS and Wii, which features the likeness of Ramsay, and the many important tasks shown in the U.S. version of the show.

On April 2, 2009, Ludia and Social2u released the official Facebook version of the Hell's Kitchen game.

Hells Kitchen on Facebook
Developer(s)	Ludia / Social2u
Platform(s)	Facebook
Release	April 2, 2009
Genre(s)	Sim

External links

• Official website
• Hell's Kitchen at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com