Gordon Ramsay and restaurants and me

After watching seasons of Kitchen Nightmares and the 24 Hour to Hell and Back shows, I am really wary of going into a restaurant and sitting down for food. I keep seeing the grease, roaches, rats, mold, rotten food and a mouse coming out of a toaster. I can’t help wonder when my food was cooked, frozen and then microwaved . . . and possibly dropped on the floor.

I am certain I am being terribly unfair to many restaurants but when I think of all the variables involved in running a restaurant, I can see how a business could get in trouble. It seems odd to say that I feel most comfortable standing at a counter watching my burrito being prepared just a few feet away.

I’m not a good cook; in fact, I just don’t like it. You work on something and BAM, someone EATS it. It’s gone. Or it’s not eaten and it’s in the refrigerator where it gets pushed farther and farther back and soon that refrigerator could easily be on Kitchen Nightmares. Sort of open the door and look at death a hundred times over.

That’s why we specialize in slices of bread and peanut butter out of jars. We use clean knives to spread it . . . and we like it that way.

However, I must say that I ate at a Gordon Ramsay restaurant in Las Vegas and it was the best food I have ever tasted. I mean if I could eat that way three times a day, I would not snack between meals and that is saying something.

Of course, Gordon might be dismayed by my limited palate. Pearls before swine sort of thing.

Returning to my initial point, I think I would like a restaurant where you entered through a glass hallway beside the kitchen. Perhaps restaurants should not advertise with pictures of food, but pictures of clean kitchens.