MONDO EXTRAS

After observing how useless Gavin is as a maître d' one night -- booking too many guests, not having any authority in the dining room, and not pushing the right dishes to give Chef Alessandro room to breathe -- Ramsay points at a plate of profiteroles and tells weedy Gavin that's how big his front-of-house balls need to be. To toughen him up, Ramsay takes Gavin out to a rain-drenched field and roundly abuses him, hoping the maître d' will fight back. Unfortunately, Gavin just breaks out in silly, embarrassed grins every time Ramsay calls him a "jumped-up little fucking prick." You know, I don't think this show is going to translate well to our side of the pond. Americans are too fucking sensitive; they will never see the humor in Ramsay's highly profane, red-faced tirades.

After completely overhauling Lanterna's menu and banning all "plastic sauces" in the form of Chef Alessandro's favored béchamels and demi-glaces from the kitchen, Ramsay puts Chef Alessandro and Gavin through a blind pasta taste test. He wants them to pick one pasta from three offerings that they think will best pair with a new grilled swordfish entrée. After tasting a pasta with homemade blue cheese sauce and another with fresh herbs and olive oil, both Gavin and Chef Alessandro choose the Curry Pot Noodle as the best of the bunch. Poor, suffering Ramsay frog-marches Chef Alessandro to a small neighborhood restaurant and forces him to taste and learn that fresh, simple Italian cuisine is not Curry Pot Noodle.