Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted shows TV chef’s no Anthony Bourdain – at least, not yet
- Ramsay is clearly aiming to fill a food-travelogue void, but he lacks the boundless curiosity for things other than food, or the humility, of the late Bourdain
- Still, there’s something strangely vulnerable about Ramsay in the series, for all the artificiality of reality television. This could become compelling viewing
Announced a year ago, less than two months after Bourdain died, Uncharted was met with fierce, white-fanged criticism when the show’s news release touted that Ramsay would be “discovering the undiscovered” and cooking against local chefs in some “friendly competition”.
Three episodes into the debut season of the National Geographic series and I’m ready to issue some opinions: Uncharted presents a cuddlier, self-deprecating version of Ramsay, a Michelin-starred chef who willingly turns the tables on himself so that he’s the neophyte suffering for the sake of something to eat.
Serving up fewer f-bombs (all bleeped) and not a single moment in which Ramsay looks like he might spontaneously self-combust into rage dust, Uncharted won’t easily lend itself to YouTube collections of the chef’s greatest outbursts.