TV Eye: Food for thought

There is something peculiar about a couple of food programmes on the telly at the moment. Last week's Top Chef (TV3, Thursday, 7.30pm) came with a warning that it contained sexual material, and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (TV One, Friday, 9.30pm) was preceded by an unnecessary caution about language.

But the style and purpose of the two shows are worlds apart. Top Chef is yet another US reality show where a bunch of cooks are given a series of challenges and compete hard out against each other. Some of these wannabes seem nice, but as always in this kind of format there are monsters. In the latter category is smug Stephen, who thinks he is God's gift and that everyone else is beneath him. He was at his worst during the Sexy Dessert Elimination Challenge, when the food was presented at a bizarre cocktail party at the Mr S. Fetish Store for host-judge Madame S. and some tragic drag queens.

This is San Francisco, where anything goes, as did contestant Andrea. Tonight, it might be Stephen who's going. The judges have twigged on to the fact that Stephen is a nasty little twerp and NLWs don't make diners feel good.

Whether Stephen gets kicked out or not, it's not going to make much difference. So far Top Chef is dreary viewing, far too slow and drawn out.

On the other hand, Kitchen Nightmares proves the @#$%ing Gordon Ramsay is a force for good. Last week's show focused on a young cook called Alex who had sunk debt, dirt and panic in his efforts to keep his Italian restaurant afloat.

Alex hadn't slept for four months and was keeping hyped up with Red Bull. With wrinkled nose, Ramsay found rotting veges, packet bechamel and - horror! - pot noodles.

Valiantly, Ramsay sampled Alex's menu: greasy minestrone and limp sausages which reminded him of poodle genitalia. Even worse was the self-delusion in Alex, proud owner of a flash car with an A1CHEF numberplate. Ramsay made Alex put the car up for sale, and tried to flog off the numberplate to Anthony Worrall-Thompson, who declined. Later, it looked as if Ramsay had talked Gary Rhodes into buying the numberplate. That was pretty funny.

But the end result was serious. Ramsay taught Alex to calm down, focus on cooking fresh food and turning his fortunes around. When he popped back six weeks later, Alex was doing well. It was like seeing a new man, and a new restaurant.

My favourite food programme has to be Hunger For the Wild (TV One, Saturdays, 7pm) in which Wellington restaurateurs Steve Logan and Al Brown travel around the country sampling the food, the wine and the locals. Logie and Brownie (what is this, Australia?) are laidback chaps who nevertheless manage to slip in a lot of information during their regional forays. Last week's episode, for instance, in Castlepoint, revealed that paua take 12 years to grow to the harvest size of 12.5cm, and that they are haemophiliac.

The people Logan and Brown encounter are usually blokes of few words, who nod out to the sea and growl, "Lookin' dirty, lookin' dirty."

At the end of last week's show, they were on the beach with two new mates making paua sammies with locally made white bread, washed down with local riesling.

They have a dream job and they are kindly sharing it with us. Now that is tops, chefs.