A former chef at Gallagher's Steak House, Joseph Cerniglia appeared on the British TV personality's show "Kitchen Nightmares," where he was told by Ramsay that his New Jersey restaurant was in such a bad financial state it was "about to swim down the f-ing Hudson."

Rachel Brown, another aspiring chef who was eliminated in the fifth episode of Ramsay's "Hell's Kitchen," killed herself in 2007. 

Perhaps the titles of these shows — "Kitchen Nightmares," "Hell's Kitchen,"and others — have lost any of the edginess they once had, and are now simply morbid.

America has been hard on Mr. Ramsay, who is focusing "on his TV career in Fox shows such as 'Hell's Kitchen,' 'Kitchen Nightmares' and 'MasterChef.'" Last fiscal year, after entering the U.S. restaurant market, his company nearly doubled its losses. 

Eater points to the newly released trailer for Bitter Feast, a movie about a TV chef who receives a bad write-up and kidnaps his reviewer. On the movie's Web site, the film's writer and director, Joe Maggio, explains how Bruni's failure to get worked up over Ramsay's London Hotel planted the seeds of the script:

The origins of BITTER FEAST go back to June, 2007. I was reading a Frank Bruni review of Gordon Ramsay's first New York City restaurant, "London Hotel." There was a lassitude in Bruni's writing that gave you the sense he liked the food, but wanted to dislike it, and so he delivered this odd, middling, lazy review, ultimately con- demning it for lack of what Bruni considered "the most important thing of all - excitement." It struck me that this was totally ridiculous and unfair. Then I started thinking what I would do to Frank Bruni if I were Gordon Ramsay. After many strange imaginings, I concluded that more than anything else, what Ramsay would prob- ably want is to somehow force Bruni to live in Ramsay's shoes for a bit, to teach him empathy, to force him to care about cooking with the intensity that Ramsay cared about it, and then to randomly and arbitrarily shit all over Bruni's dreams. Thus, BITTER FEAST.

The trailer below doesn't make this movie seem very good. "You just don't get it," says Mario Batali, who is in it for some reason and speaking of a negative review on a food blog. "This is a disaster." (0:35) "Am I a person of interest?" The creepy chef asks a man who is clearly not a police officer. (1:10) 

Bruni's real-life disputes seem far more interesting! Remember when Jeffrey Chodorow took out a full-page ad in the Times opposite Bruni? Or those posters that circulated in high-end restaurants in an attempt to catch the mysterious taste-maker? But like all good critics, we'll wait before passing judgement.

via Eater

Monday: Dateline NBC: Vegas Undercover
Normally, we make a point to shy away from these Dateline NBC specials reports, but, since we’re still on a contact high from watching The Hangover (backlash be damned!), we’ll make an exception here. Chris Hanson, obviously taking a break from outing sexual predators, goes undercover with the Vegas police department to explore the seedy underbelly of Sin City. Expect hookers, pimps, drug dealers and gunrunners. Don’t expect to see Mike Tyson’s tiger. [NBC, 10 p.m.]

Tuesday: HawthoRNe
Nurses are so hot right now! Just a week after the premiere of Nurse Jackie, here comes HawthoRNe, starring Jada Pinkett-Smith as Christina Hawthorne, a tough-as-nails Chief Nursing Officer (hence the capitalized “RN” in the title). We give TNT credit for producing yet another series with a strong female lead (Ms. Pinkett-Smith joins Holly Hunter and Kyra Sedgwick on the network’s roster of ladies), but we’re not quite convinced that this earnest show is going to cut through the clutter. At the very least it might be worth checking out to see Michael Vartan, no doubt fresh out of the Witness Protection Program, in a co-starring role as the hospital’s very own McDreamy. [TNT, 9 p.m.]

Wednesday: Gordon Ramsay’s F-Word
This is the iPod Shuffle of reality shows. F-Word (which either derives its name from the restaurant on the show, or, from Mr. Ramsay’s favorite expletive) combines the elements of no less than five types of programs (cooking, celebrity interview, adventure, competition and even Japanese game shows), and whips everything together to create a constantly entertaining hodgepodge of forward momentum. Unlike his brash and contemptible persona on Kitchen Confidential, here Mr. Ramsay seems decidedly laid-back by comparison. Oh, don’t worry: He’s still overcaffeinated and cursing like a sailor, but, on F-Word, he’s also wildly charming and pretty darn hilarious. To wit: The fourth season premiere features Mr. Ramsay asking former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell how many “balls” she’s had in her mouth at one time. Meatballs, you dirty bird! Though considering this show is called F-Word, we can understand the confusion. [BBC-America, 9 p.m.]

Thursday: The Happening
The scariest part of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening isn’t that the Earth’s plant life starts killing us pesky humans, but rather that some studio executive actually green-lighted this patently ridiculous enviro-horror film. No one is safe from this bomb, least of all Mark Wahlberg, who preens like a confused child and winds up being out-acted by a tree. True story! Don’t take our word for it, though: You really need to experience The Happening for yourself. [Action Max, 8 p.m.]

Friday: The Doors
On the list of Oliver Stone’s historical polemics, The Doors is but a footnote. Still, despite being a completely standard biopic, the film has great charms, mostly in thanks to its cast. Meg Ryan plays against type as Jim Morrison’s dead sexy and tripped-out true love; as the Lizard King himself, Val Kilmer is absolutely riveting; and Kevin Dillon does Johnny Drama proud as drummer John Densmore. Victory! [HBO, 3 a.m.]

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and their half-dozen children caused a traffic jam outside their hotel in midtown Manhattan. Said someone on the scene: "Angelina undoubtedly has more foreign-policy knowledge than Sarah Palin. … No wonder people don't know where to direct their attention." [The Scoop]

Madonna and Alex Rodriguez, who caused a stir by denying their relationship this summer, had a "secret dinner" at Dos Caminos. [P6]

Conservative cheerleader Elizabeth Hasselbeck says that she will not give up her spot on The View for a position with Fox News. [US Weekly]

Sharon Stone is denying that she ever suggested Botox as a remedy for her son's foot odor problem. [People]

Chef Gordon Ramsay is casting for the next season of Hell's Kitchen via Craigslist. [Grub Street]

Tuesday: Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
In America, Scottish celebrity chef is best known for his cartoonish, abusive outbursts on the Fox reality cooking competition Hell's Kitchen. But across the pond, his far superior television show, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, showed a softer side of the rough-and-tumble chef. That program, which follows Ramsay as he tries to help failing restaurants, has also been remade for a U.S. audience (also for Fox), but skip that and DVR the BBC America reruns of the original. Today, Ramsay travels to Paris to help a Scottish woman who's opened up a vegetarian place—with an uncontrollable chef, a bratty waitress and terrible food. Expect tough love, and Ramsay's signature short fuse. [BBC America, 1 p.m.]

Wednesday: Hand Behind the Mouse
This documentary about Ub Iwerks, one of the early geniuses of animation technology, offers a sort of alternative history of early cartoons, focusing on Disney's 'go to' guy rather than the more recognizable names associated with our early animated friends. The film also features tons of old cartoons that, despite an entire cable channel devoted to Disney productions, are rarely broadcast on tv. [Ovation, 8 p.m.]

Thursday: Stand By Me
Oh, Corey Feldman before he was a mess. Wil Wheaton before he became a computer nerd. Jerry O'Connell before he got skinny. And River Phoenix before he became an icon. The Observer can still quote this 80s classic, based on Stephen King's short story "The Body," about four boys coming of age in the 50s who set off on a day's journey in search of a teenager's dead body. Scary, hilarious, and unbelievably sad. [AMC, 12 p.m.]

Friday: Doctor Who
We're totally obsessed with the remade Doctor Who series, which stars adorable, foppish Scottish actor David Tennant as the well-dressed time lord (bespoke suits! Chuck Taylors!) who zips around in a police box fighting aliens and rooting out bad extraterrestrials. Today, the first part of one of our most favorite episodes airs on the SciFi channel. In it, the Doctor and his season 3 companion, Martha Jones, appear in Britain in 1913 where the Doctor has been forced to forsake his time lord self and become human in an attempt to evade some alien pursuers. There are also scary scarecrows. Trust us: this is not the Doctor Who of your youth. [SciFi, 5 a.m.]

While CBS may be getting shellacked in the ratings war by Fox (who isn’t, really?), that doesn’t mean the network with a reputation for being a little bit stodgy (sorry, Les) doesn’t have a few tricks up its sleeve. How I Met Your Mother (CBS, 8:30 p.m.) is a case study in how a network leverages a show with a prime demographic to not only market its advertisers, but itself to a younger, hipper audience.

Case in point: last week’s episode starring Britney Spears, which broke the show’s ratings records in key demos (to use the industry parlance). And this was not an aberration. When Bob Barker was set to retire from CBS’s long-running game show The Price Is Right, Mother had an episode celebrating the beloved host with an elaborate plotline in which Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), believing Mr. Barker to be his father, negotiated his way onto the show, where he won the Showcase Showdown (naturally). Earlier this season, around the time CBS had scheduled a Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, in sashayed Heidi Klum and friends. And this week, Barney will promote the network’s NCAA tournament coverage by implementing a tournament-style bracket system to figure out which of his many exes has a vendetta against him. It’s clear the show knows how to play well with its corporate overlords—and without jeopardizing its increasing popularity. What does that say about its key demos?

Don’t worry baby boomers! T.V. hasn’t forgotten about you. That babe Paula Zahn hosts Retirement Revolution (PBS, 10 p.m.). The challenges of becoming a senior citizen are addressed (peeing freely notwithstanding) and a history of the retirement trend is traced. Record it and watch it later—perhaps before your bed time on another day—to avoid the ubiquitous commercials for Life Alert. And the geriatric fun continues …

TUESDAY

Live to Be 150 …Can You Do It? (ABC, 10 p.m.) is hosted by Barbara Walters, who studies the new fountain of youth: drugs which slow the aging process. She also does some interviews—which is typically her wont—with Dorothy Young, a 102 year-old woman who was Harry Houdini’s stage assistant in 1926, yet still dances and paints, and Paul Newman, who’s 83 and likes to race cars. Then Ms. Walters asks a specialist the one question everyone wants to know the answer to: Will she be hosting The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2083?

Between his eight TV shows and 43 restaurants, its hard to tell when Gordon Ramsay is supposed to get a wink of shut-eye, which goes a long way toward explaining his regularly tantrums on Hell’s Kitchen (Fox, 9 p.m.). Or else it's just showbiz! In its fourth season, expect it to become all that much more clear that the American version of the show isn't really about cooking at all, but rather about the volatile Mr. Ramsay and the audience's anticipation of the next, bigger mental explostion—preferably over a bowl of under-cooked ri-zah-to.

WEDNESDAY

As if the heartrending works of Tamara Jenkins (The Savages) or David Franzen (The Corrections) or Mark Haddon (A Spot of Bother) hadn’t done enough, PBS—is there some kind of old people theme this week?—unveils the documentary Caring for Your Parents (9 p.m.) It follows five families as they struggle to take care of old mum and dad. Still want to live to be 150?

Wednesday nights have become a bit of a joke. If you’re a network and you’re not Fox, you’re struggling to get over six million viewers to watch your shows. American Idol (Fox, 9 p.m.) quadruples that in a bad week, even though it’s not the best competition-based reality series on on Wednesday nights. That distinction of course goes to Top Chef (Bravo, 10 p.m.). Who cares what the ratings say? Tonight, however, Idol may have a tiny edge, as it plays host to Dolly Parton, who will be performing to promote her new album. Guess her back is feeling better!

THURSDAY

It’s a well-known fact that NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker likes to be in front of the camera almost as much as he likes to run the company which owns it (see Curb Your Enthusiasm). Even so, it was odd to read that he will personally offer a recap of this season of My Name Is Earl (NBC, 8 p.m.). Upfronts can’t come soon enough, eh, Jeff?

Meanwhile, ABC drops the curtain on Miss/Guided (ABC, 8 p.m.). It had a solid, if uneventful run, but it was always planned as a short series. Either way, it was not the smartest lead-in for Lost (ABC, 9 p.m.), which, for better or worse, was in reruns for most of the comedy’s run. Lost returns with new episodes on April 24, long after it could have been any help to Miss/Guided or vice versa.

FRIDAY

There are people out there who just love that Battlestar Galactica (Sci-Fi, 8 p.m.). Don’t bother them tonight, it’s the premiere of season four. As for the fans, isn’t nice to have plans on a Friday night, for once?

As the old but prescient Lorenz Hart song Manhattan goes: “It’s very fancy on old Delancey Street, you know …”.

Another friend was seated at the long black glass candle-lit bar in the front when we walked in. She was staring down at a thimbleful of white wine. “This is what they give you for $12.”

“True,” responded the bartender. “But I did offer to top it up.”

The two dining rooms at Allen & Delancey, which has been a year in the making, remind me of the Old Drovers Inn upstate, all ye olde worlde atmosphere, with dripping candles, beamed ceilings, bare brick walls and plank floors. There are shelves of books, knickknacks and old photographs, flea market paintings, cleverly placed mirrors, wine racks (behind glass for temperature control) and candles, candles everywhere. It’s sexy and romantic, especially in the back room, which has round green leather banquettes and dark walnut paneling. The staff is dressed in black.

The kitchen is headed by Neil Ferguson, who worked for a decade for Gordon Ramsay and was the chef de cuisine at the latter’s eponymous restaurant when it opened in New York last year. But after a lukewarm review from The Times’ Frank Bruni, Ramsay told Ferguson to chef off, complaining later that he’d been too nice to the staff.

Happily for us, Ferguson stayed in America. His menu at Allen & Delancey—trendily served on a clipboard—is classic Anglo-French, with touches of the Irish, German and Jewish cooking of the immigrant Lower East Side. So dinner begins with a bagel roll and a bacon roll.

In recent days I’ve had my fill, so to speak, of tiny tasting plates, so it was a pleasure for a change to sit down to a three-course meal, especially with food of this caliber. The caramelized bone marrow is a great way to start. It’s served out of the bone, cut in a dainty, unctuous rectangle topped with beads of paddlefish caviar. The marrow is first poached in a beef brisket and oxtail consommé, and then caramelized. It comes with a shallot purée and a gastrique—or thick reduction sauce—of crunchy chopped cornichons, and it’s wonderful.

There are chunks of foie gras in the terrine, nestling alongside pieces of guinea hen and smoked ham knuckle. Foie gras also accompanies a main course of moulard duck magret, meaty and rare, with turnip confit and, interestingly, buttered radishes and a ham gastrique.

Like any good cook, Ferguson knows that a touch of ham or bacon does wonders for a dish. He tosses tiny leeks in a vinaigrette laced with truffled fingerling potatoes and shavings of prosciutto. Prosciutto also wraps braised fluke fillet, served with parsley root and cauliflower cream, while bacon gnocchi accompany a wedge of skin-on mackerel, an apple and apple cider vinaigrette cutting the grease.

On the lighter side, you can begin with juicy seared sea scallops with braised cippollini onions, celery root cream and cubes of celery, or a simple plate of thinly shaved hamachi, dotted with pink grapefruit beads and slivers of pickled fennel bulb.

The sweetbread raviolo was the only dish I didn’t like. The pasta is rubbery, and none of the silkiness of sweetbreads is in evidence because they are chopped up as a filling. The ravioli runs aground on a nubbly bolognese sauce; savoy cabbage and a plethora of slivered carrots make this a bit of a shipwreck.

But the cod is sensational. How does Ferguson do it? The skin is papery and crisp, the flesh melting. The fish comes with ratatouille vegetables, not in a swamp, as is so often the case, but cooked separately—roast tomatoes, roast shallots, olives, fennel, artichokes, eggplant, confit lemon—each retaining its distinctive flavor, all brought together in a red wine sauce.

Pork belly has become a cliché, but Ferguson makes it new. The meat is slow-roasted and served with pickled pear, roasted parsnips, fenugreek syrup and a delicate parsnip foam that adds another layer of taste without making the dish heavy. Beef with cabbage is a cunning postmodern reworking of the dish my Scots-Irish grandmother used to make: a leaf of savoy cabbage stuffed with braised beef, and an onion filled with cabbage, both served along with a square of pommes dauphinoise and a square of medium-rare steak.

Desserts include a fine puff pastry apple tart, glazed pineapple wrapped in filo with angelica ice cream and candied celery, and a scoop of creamy milk-chocolate mousse served with a moist pistachio biscuit and olive oil ice cream. No egg creams, alas.

While it’s certainly not your grandfather’s Lower East Side, it’s not yet your grandson’s, either. One evening, sitting at a table in the front of the packed and lively dining room, I could see all the way down the long hall to the front door, which is made of plate glass. It was an incongruous sight. A bus had stopped outside and people were getting off.

At Allen & Delancey, there may be foie gras and caviar and $12 glasses of wine. But there’s still a bus, not a limo, outside the front door.

Asked “Do you think the recent temporary shuttering of some NYC restaurants for health violations is…?” only 15 percent answered “[a]n overreaction,” while a whopping 65 percent said “[w]arranted.” (Another 20 percent were undecided.)

The overwhelming support for the continuing Health Department crackdown on the city’s food-service sector comes on the heels of last month’s New York Post report, which found that city health inspectors had flunked 25 percent of all 28,955 eateries they inspected during fiscal year 2007.

Other findings from the brand-spanking new Zagat 2008 New York City Restaurants guide:

- Only Danny Meyer Can Top Danny Meyer: For the first time in four years, Gramercy Tavern has been dethroned as Manhattan’s most popular restaurant. The new king? Sister spot Union Square Café. Daniel, meanwhile, has unseated Le Bernardin as the top spot for food.

- Brooklyn Booming, Dom DeMarco Soaring: Despite increasing criticism, Peter Luger remains the city’s top steakhouse for the 24^th consecutive year. Long the lone Brooklyn eatery among Zagat’s Top 20, the Williamsburg porterhouse palace is now joined by Boerum Hill standout Saul and beloved Di Fara pizzeria in Midwood. Can’t find Smith Street? The new guide now has a map of the borough’s best dining destinations.

- Ramsay’s Kitchen Pipe-Dreams: This week’s love fest for star chef Gordon Ramsay continues. After earning two Michelin stars, Gordon Ramsay at the London NYC also nabs honors as Zagat’s Top Newcomer. “[L]ives up to the hype,” according to the guide, but “not for the faint of pocketbook.” Meanwhile, Mr. Ramsay's controversial TV makeover project Purnima (formerly known as Dillon's) doesn't rate a mention.

- Vanity Fare, Seeking Correction: Hugely hyped “celeb-centric” Waverly Inn earned a not-too-shabby score of 18 for food. But give Zagat a big fat ‘F’ for spell-checking. Or lack thereof. Don’t know who “Grayson Carter” is, but if media titan Graydon Carter were publishing this guide, then heads would roll in the copy-editing department.

Martin Hyde, the former restaurant manager of Dillon’s in the theater district, who angrily quit during a spat with the combative celebrity cook on the set of the Fox reality series Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares—and who later made international headlines by suing the network—is no longer supervising waiters and bartenders, but rather limo drivers at an upscale uptown car service.

Mr. Hyde, 52, started his new job on Friday, just two days after the hugely hyped Sept. 26 episode finally aired. He blamed the show’s producers, who pegged him as the fall guy for the embattled eatery’s woes, for ruining his chances of ever again working in food service.

“They’ve blocked me from the restaurant business,” Mr. Hyde fumed to the Transom over beers at the Boat Basin Café on West 79th Street on Friday, Sept. 28.

Depicted on the program as a bumbling buffoon of a manager, who seemed eternally glued to his cellphone and entirely oblivious to the chaos in the kitchen, Mr. Hyde had unsuccessfully sought a court order to block the broadcast.

In his lawsuit, he claimed that many aspects of the so-called reality show were actually staged, including rotten meat allegedly planted in the refrigerator, and that important details were intentionally edited out, particularly the part about him not having any real role in the kitchen.

“As general manager, I took responsibility for the front of house, hiring and training bar and wait staff and, most importantly, booking shows for the cabaret theater,” he said. “The kitchen was out of bounds to me.”

Yet, during the episode, Mr. Ramsay singles him out for blistering criticism about unclean cooking conditions in the back of the restaurant. (In an interview with CNN’s Larry King last week, Mr. Ramsay called Dillon’s “one of the most disgusting kitchens ever found in my entire cooking career.”)

Another discrepancy: Dillon’s 100-seat cabaret theater is never mentioned on the program, a bit of context sorely lacking during all those shots of Mr. Hyde affixed to his mobile. “I was on the phone booking shows,” he said.

Some scenes mentioned in Mr. Hyde’s lawsuit never made it on air; most notably, an alleged incident in which Mr. Ramsay forced him to crawl “on his hands and knees” in search of his phone, which the celebrity chef had supposedly tossed out onto the street.

“I was relieved the most degrading part was cut out,” Mr. Hyde said. “But, at the same time, there’s so much humiliation anyway, it doesn’t make much difference.”

An employment agency warned him that notoriety would probably follow him wherever he goes, he said.

But in the days immediately following the broadcast, that infamy had yet to really manifest itself.

Until, that is, comely Westchester yoga instructor Joanna Rothschild spotted the lanky Brit on his way out of the Boat Basin.

“I think all reality TV is bullshit,” said the friendly brunette.