We’ve established a number of times in this column that food preparation can make for good television. Well, I should qualify that a bit more by saying that good and proper food preparation makes good television.
The culinary train wreck television shows like “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Chefs Academy” pretty much come off as lessons in how not to conduct oneself in a restaurant kitchen, and especially how not to serve bad food to innocent customers.
Last year while channel-surfing, I came across a program quite by accident that caught my fancy and I can’t seem to get enough of it. I don’t have much call to watch BBC America, but they run a program that’s a runaway hit in England, called “Last Restaurant Standing.” I’m hooked.
I’ve mentioned this particular program before, I know, and now that a new season has begun, it once again has captured my fancy.
The premise is that eight or nine couples (I don’t know how they’ve been chosen) compete over a period of weeks to become partners in a new restaurant with Michelin-starred chef Raymond Blanc. The BBC calls Chef Blanc “legendary,” and that’s probably an apt description, as he has a track record of successes that include at least six high-end restaurants, in British terms what are called “high street” restaurants.
Chef Blanc’s heavily-accented English warrants subtitles, and if you’ve ever heard some of the dialects of British English, then you might wish for subtitles for some of the contestants, too.
The premise is interesting in that each couple (they come in all varieties: fathers and daughters; mothers and sons; lovers; married couples; British Navy chums, etc.) gets to operate a restaurant on a test basis. Chef Blanc has two associates, another Michelin-starred chef-restaurateur and a restaurant marketing expert, who drop in on the couples as they attempt to put across their restaurant concept, prepare and serve the food, and then tally the receipts.
This is the third season for the show and seven couples once again vie for the opportunity to open their own restaurant. But before offering them keys to their own place, Chef Blanc gives them preliminary challenges. For instance, in one task last season, couples opened restaurants in which customers only paid what they thought the meal was worth. The teams also had to run highway rest stop eateries, prepare formal dinners for Oxford students, integrate the national cuisine of a foreign country into their menus, serve five-star food at 35,000 feet on a British Airways flight, create a takeout business, organize private dinner parties for Chef Blanc’s demanding friends, perform a public cooking demonstration, and write cookbooks to promote their restaurants.
This season, to get keys to one of the restaurants the contestants must overcome a final obstacle. Divided into teams, they must run three chain restaurants. The menus look simple – pizzas, noodles and sushi. But under the watchful eyes of the three “judges,” the couples open the doors to hundreds of customers and service does not run smoothly. In the end, only six of the couples will receive keys to an empty restaurant to begin competing in earnest.
This season, the competition takes place in the English resort city of Bristol. The couples have to quickly get to know their locations, including the various tourist and residential districts of the city.
Before their openings, they must decide the name of their restaurant, plan their menus, and attract customers. Then the couples have to devise a way to attract customers to their new restaurants by offering samples to the public. With Chef Blanc, Sarah Willingham, a restaurant marketing expert, and David Moore, himself a Michelin-starred restaurateur, watching the couples’ every move, it becomes clear that some are on the wrong track. They get a little advice from the experts and then they’re sent off to prepare and open their experimental restaurants.
Opening night arrives, and it’s time for the chefs to show that they can run a busy commercial kitchen and that their partners can run a smooth front-of-house service that will win customer loyalty. As well as pleasing their customers, the couples also receive unannounced visits from Blanc, Willingham and Moore, who this year will invest in the winning couple’s restaurant and become their partners. The visits usually come at the busiest time of the evening.
What they see and taste decides which couples stay and which couple’s restaurant will close, hence the name, “Last Restaurant Standing.”
For those of you who’ve always dreamed of owning a restaurant because you think it’s a glamorous life, watch this program and you’ll soon see very clearly that you never actually get to own a restaurant. The restaurant owns you.