What is it with Gordon Ramsay and crab cakes? Ramsay, host of Kitchen Nightmares on Fox, goes into restaurants (so far all within 40 miles of NYC) and gives them makeovers. Imagine Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but with more cursing.
Anyway, at the beginning of each episode, Gordon orders some food, and tells the camera how disgustingly bad it is. Here’s the thing: he always seems to order crab cakes. In four (!!) of the episodes, he has kicked off his meal with those fried mounds of crab and bread crumbs.
Ramsay, probably teaching these guys how REAL crab cakes are made.
Completely incredulous, I called my friend Dave, who worked at a restaurant, for an explanation as to why Ramsay would be so picky: “Well, I mean, it is the sort of dish that you could tell immediately whether it was fresh or not. Canned crab meat tastes fine, but it is still way different than fresh. Maybe he wants to see if they are being honest when they say the crab cakes are fresh. Or maybe he just really likes crab cakes, I don’t know, he’s British right?”
Good point by Dave, Ramsay did indeed ask if they were fresh, and in all but one case, the chefs were not being completely honest, and according to Ramsay the crab cakes sucked. Still, why not mix it up a little bit? How about a friseé salad? Clam chowder? Something that doesn’t have crabs in cake form?
Next week he is “fixing” a pizzeria. If he orders crab cakes there, I think I might just be turned off from pizza for a while.
