Hell's Kitchen: Danny Wins The Prize

23 year old Danny won Hell's Kitchen and the quarter million dollar prize, plus being head chef at a restaurant in Atlantic City.

Danny is a culinary prodigy, according to Danny. He did seem to be quiet a good cook for such a young guy.

Unlike Top Chef, I never learn any new cooking ideas when watching Hell's Kitchen. Hell's Kitchen is much more amusing than Top Chef, due, mostly, to Chef Gordon Ramsey's over the top maniac personality. You can't help but like the guy, at least I can't.

The formula for Hell's Kitchen is to have several really bad chefs who provide good fodder for drama. The best this time was Lacey. She had moments when she did okay, but a little stress and she'd start falling apart. She was pretty funny at times. She didn't get booted off the show in the usual way. Instead she was so bad at a dinner service that Ramsey kicked her off the show right then.

And then had her come back, as one of the helper chefs for the finale cook off, with second place Paula stuck with Lacey in the school yard pick, where Danny got first pick due to winning the last challenge, you just knew things were going to be tough for Paula.

I always find the ending of Hell's Kitchen entertaining, this time more so than ever. Both Danny and Paula seemed quite deserving of winning, but when Danny was the one to walk through the door and do the most maniacal jumping up and down and screaming I've ever seen a Reality TV Show winner do, well, it was special.

And then in his confessional, as he talked about how much this meant to him, he started crying and that was the first I learned his mom had died, he sort of broke down when he said he wished his mom could have been there to see her son make something of himself. I'm badly paraphrasing, but it was a good Reality TV moment.

One thing about the cooking shows like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen that bugs me is how is it that so many chefs and cooks smoke? Doesn't smoking sort of cloud up your taste buds. It seems if your life revolved around making things taste good the last thing you'd want in your mouth would be a cigarette. And yet, most of them smoke. It perplexes me.