Hell’s Kitchen Season 16 Episode 1 Recap:

Gordon Ramsay has once again opened the doors to “Hell’s Kitchen” for another pair of chefs all wanting a head chef’s position at one of his restaurants. This season seems like we’ve got the usual peanut gallery we’re used to seeing on this show.

As usual, this season started off with the chefs going on a detour. Here, it was to an army base. First, the chefs were treated like recruits on the first day of boot camp. Then Ramsay arrived inside a tank. Gordon Ramsay in a tank. Get that image into your head and make it stay there.

Ramsay wanted the chefs to complete a military boot camp to see if they have the disciple to survive “Hell’s Kitchen.” After just the first two minute of boot camp (ask any soldier) the chefs met Ramsay in front of a wall that collapsed onto Ramsay to reveal this “base” was actually “Hell’s Kitchen.” Ramsay doing the wall falling on you and going through a hole that’s safe bit was awesome to see.

This season’s intro has the chefs in the kitchen throwing stuff all over the place with soundbites of Ramsay saying some of his famous lines. The soundbites were what made the intro. If not for them, this intro would be boring.

At the signature dish challenge, Ramsay announced the prize is an executive chef’s position at “Yardbird Southern Table and Bar” at the “Venetian Hotel” in Las Vegas. Each signature dish was graded -15 and the team with the points won. The worst dishes (1/5) were Devin’s bacon wrapped scallops, Kimberly’s canned everything, Matt’s pigeon Bolognese, Jessica and Genaro’s duck. The final score was Red 27, Blue 25. There haven’t been this many horrible signature dishes since Season 1.

The first reward of the season was dinner at “Takami Sushi and Robata Restaurant.” Ramsay said he’d join them. They were also joined by “Hell’s Kitchen” winners Scott and Christina.

The first punishment was cleaning the kitchen and taking out all the stands in the dining room and replacing them with the usual tables and chairs. Everyone was picking on Matt for inventing pigeon Bolognese.

At the first dinner service, the Red were perfect. The Blue on the other hand…

Pat started off by making a risotto that looks like “a bowl of vomit has been dipped in oil.” He also helped make a salty risotto. Later, Matt brought up raw scallops even when Andrew told him they were raw. Ramsay flipped out on him saying if anyone mentioned a camera one more time he’d shove a GoPro up their ass to show them how *bleep* they are. Add that to the list of classic Gordon Ramsay lines. Matt would later make a raw sea bass and Genaro brought it up. Both were thrown out. The rest of the team would join them after Paulie’s raw sea bass.
The Blue nominated Pat and Matt with Pat being eliminated.

Matt should’ve been eliminated. He did much worse than Pat. In all, an entertaining start to a new season. Having five one-point signature dishes is just sad. It’s still the first episode, so there’s plenty of stuff to see and room for these chefs to improve.