Every cook dreams of running his or her own kitchen one day. I know I did. I worked my butt off to get where I am today, and I've just opened my third restaurant, Hey Meatball, by the age of 35. Trust me, it wasn't a cake walk.
As difficult as it is, running your own kitchen means you get to call the shots. It's your food and your name patrons will sing the praises of — or drag through the gutter — at the end of every meal. It's the privilege of having cooks call you "chef."
And there is no tougher, more demanding, more intense, more prestigious chef in the world right now than Gordon Ramsay.
So why wouldn't you want to try his app? Hell's Kitchen VS puts you in the shoes of an aspiring chef in Ramsey's kitchen, battling head-to-head with friends, or participating in individual challenges. If you step into his kitchen, will you see if you've got the stuff today's finest chefs are made of?
That's what I thought when I saw it, but the game is nothing like working in a real kitchen at all. But then, not much in the world can replicate an experience like that.
The game opens with a simple menu, and navigating through your options is straightforward and easy. You can play in arcade or multi-player mode. There is also an options menu for adjusting the sound effects, which, I must say, are awesome! During gameplay, the bubbling pots, sizzling pans, egg timer and even the “going to the plate” noises are very believable and fun. You can also control the volume of Chef Ramsay's voice, which, in my opinion, makes the game, so crank it up. The music, however, is somewhere between a '70s cop show and terrible new-wave jazz. I recommend turning it off. It will compete with Chef Ramsay's voice, and what would he say to that?
I didn't play the wireless multi-player mode, although I can only imagine the amount of smack talk that would ensue between friends and fellow wannabe chefs as they battle tete a tete. Ramsay knows the kitchen is a virtual arena, these days.
The arcade mode opens with a computer model of Chef Ramsay boldly asking, “Are we ready?” Which we (meaning me), completely was not, because the help option in the main menu tells you very little about how to play the game right off the bat. It explains the result you want to achieve, but it doesn't quite tell you how to get there. I was clueless coming into the challenge, which requires you to make sure the right food goes in the right pot at the right time.
At the beginning of the challenge, several icons appear at the bottom of the screen (poultry, seafood, beef, fruit, eggs, dairy, pasta). There are several burners, as well as a picture of what must go in the pot and the amount of time it will take to cook. The object is to tap on the product to prep it (a mini-whirlwind ensues) and turn it into proper mise en place (a fancy French term for prep-ready food), which must then be put into the correct pot. The key is to time what goes into the next pot, so you finish the course, and plate it at the same time, to score points. You do this by tapping on the finished pot as soon as the timer reaches zero and plating the finished food quickly. This is where it gets tricky. If you leave the pot on the stove too long, it will catch fire. If you have too much time in between plating, you'll lose points, which doesn't impress Chef Ramsay and boy, does he let you know! The better your timing, speed, and ability to continue prepping, the better you'll do at this game.
My favourite part is at the end, after you've managed to screw it up or make it all work. That's when Chef Ramsay stares out from the screen and belittles you (or makes you feel like a million bucks, depending on how you played) in that very special way of his. In just under one hour of playing time, I managed to move through the ranks of the kitchen from dishwasher to kitchen help to full-blown station cook. It took me five years to do that in the real world.
Newfoundland native Rodney Bowers, owner of Hey Meatball, a new restaurant in downtown Toronto, is no stranger to television. In 2009, he and his wife, Natalie, took part in HGTV's Marriage Under Construction. He currently co-hosts Food Network Canada's Delinquent Gourmet, and he's a regular on the Steven and Chris show on CBC. Follow Rodney on Twitter @rodneybowers or at www.rodneybowers.com.
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