Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares: Mastering the Basics

[Power]

I've seen several episodes of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares for the past months (I'm actually watching it atm). Ramsay is a successful chef who built his multimillion dollar business in restaurants. The show/episodes are about how he turns around a sinking restaurant business.

There were valuable lessons I've learned watching the show. All of the failing restaurants had one thing in common. Ramsay didn't change anything tremendous and he turned the businesses into a success, always.

Every failing businesses that he saved all had one thing in common: they all didn't know how to perform the basics. The basic of team work in the kitchen, the basics of food handling, the basics of cooking, etc. Once the basics was set in place, the restaurant simply takes off effortlessly. I realize that this is also similar and must be applied in our lives. Often enough we fail because we cannot even perform the basics. We don't have a good comprehension of the basics, whatever it is we are tryng to accomplish. Often enough we don't need out of this world ideas and super tools. First is mastering the basics and once we achieved that, we will see some good results.

Somehow we tend to skip this crucial step (mastering the basics) and we like to proceed with the more advance steps. The other common thing I realized with the episodes were that the people were obliviously ignorant of the matter. I can see that in all of us, that we are not aware of ourselves at times in the things we do that are wrong. Then other people will point it out to us and make us aware of the mistake. But what if there is no one there to point it out to us, what now?

The only way to tackle this is to question ourselves - "why isn't it working?" and "what are we doing wrong?" But how can you question yourself if you are not aware that there is something wrong. There are things that we cannot see for ourselves until someone else points it to us... but that is another story.

The lesson here about personal effectiveness and succes is to master the basics before anything else.

[moriez]

A great heads-up Power. Couldnt agree more with you that I often shift into gear 3 when I shouldve started in 1 ending up in not carrying it out the way I could have. Expectations from ourselves and people around us and not wanting to fail/not wanting to show that one doesnt know the basics is at the root of this. Nice to see that the show gives you something more than just entertainment. Its a good show too.

[Power]

Yeah, I hardy watch TV and if I end up watching a program it's because I wanted to learn something from it and get something valuable from it. The first time I heard of it, I was interested because I specifically wanted to know why do the businesses fails, since I'm in business too. I wanted to learn what to avoid.

Yeah, luckily it also is very entertaining as how Ramsay just swear all over the place, lol. I don't blame him, as I was watching the show everyone were just clueless and common sense were nowhere to be found. Every 5 minutes I also find myself shaking my head and saying that the performances were just ridiculous. Add a high stress to meet expectations and demands by paying customers and surely anyone on Ramsay's shoes will also be swearing like no tomorrow.

The other lessons that were consistent apart from mastering the basics were that the people involve couldn't accept their mistakes as Ramsay points it out. We are no different also, sometimes it is hard to accept when people finds the faults in us. The moment we accept that we are at fault and that fault needs to change, things starts to turn for the better.

[wakeshine]

This is such a great point. I start to stress over so many things...maybe when I do that I should just start asking myself: how are you doing on the basics? You've gotta have those right before you can move up a level.

[Old Soul]

I love to cook, I am happiest when in the kitchen creating!!

and the best* I mean the ultimate best dishes I have made always start from basic recipies and principles, when I vear away from this, the dish i am creating becomes a disaster!!!!

you can build on clasic basics in the kitchen but you can not !!! throw away the basics


so i understand Ramsay and why it works !!

[JimOfferman]

Cooking shows are great! There's much you can learn from a great chef...

The two most important things I learned watching Ramsey & co do their thing: keep it simple (stupid), but do always buy the best 'ingredients' you can buy.

[Old Soul]

yes I agree!!

and the more you cook, with best fresh quality ingrediants , the less "junk", fillers you need, so what happens is the pallet learns the difference and begins to turn off of fast foods and all that crap they put in your dish..........so really you become healthier

in the words of Martha Stewart, "And thats a good thing" !!:-)

[Power]

Another way to illustrate this (mastering the basics) and its true power.

Yesterday I was listening to some musics. I was listening to Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, Nelly Furtado, Christina Aguillera, and Maria Carey's latest album. These are mad songs, I was pumped up for hours after listening to the music. At one point I realized that I haven't touched my guitar for awhile and I wanted to play these music on guitar. One problem, I couldn't because the chords for these types of music are a bit complicated. They are not your simple standard G, E, C, D style chord progressions.

Then I put on some of the old time classics... BoyzIImen, the Eagles, Bread, Jonh Denver, Anne Murray, Kenny Rogers etc... The cd switched to one specific song: the Bangles, eternal flame. You know it "Close your eyes, give me your hands darling, do you feel my heart beaten'... "

I realized that simple tunes will always last for a very long time compared to a complicated tune, no matter what. Hey Justin Timberlake is Good, but will never be as good as the oldies. If I was a judge, I will choose "unchained melody" over "N-sync - bye bye bye" anytime. I grew up in the 90's and was in my teens and N-sync, Backstreet Boys, 98degress, Britney Spears, Spice girls, Blink 182, Green Day, Powderfingers, etc, was my era...

Simple tunes will tend to be always be more succesful and loved by all compared to a complicated tune. I guess it comes back to mastering the basics, we can achieve a lot with simple and direct approach. We don't reallly need to complicate things, unless we really want to complicate things.