Michael Graham Watching Gordon Ramsay is always a treat for me. Between his superior skill in cooking and judging, paired with his foul mouth and accent, he truly is an interesting man.Best Restaurant is no exception to this.As he tests two restaurants of the same style against each other, as usual the fun comes in the cooking. Here's a brief order of operations per episode: Meet and great with restaurant owners/chefs and taste their food.Pressure test them with his 30 diners all at once.Meet them for review after surprise mystery diner visit.Restaurants battle in the kitchen before overall judgment.Winner is chosen, moves on to finals.As I've seen many of Ramsay's shows, sometimes things begin to feel similar. And although this falls into that category, it's still a great "zone-out" kind of watch, as you can put it on and just watch mindlessly with a friend.

jedi10-682-101769 I love the concept of Gordon Ramsey showcasing Britain's different restaurants from Italian to Indian to English. It shows how diverse the U.K. has become over the last few decades, something even Gordon admits is a problem. It starts off well enough, but there is one episode where you start to see a bit of favoritism to the eventual winner when by all rights, they should be sent home.However, the massive flaw comes in getting to the semi finals. Prior to this each restaurant goes through three tests. One is serving 30 customers at once in an hour's time. The other test is a secret customer who on purpose acts like a jerk. The last test is cooking a three course meal for Ramsey's hand picked friends and experts in that style of cooking. Now, this is all great TV for these restaurants to get in. Going into the semi-finals, its just Gordon shows up with some friends for an hour service and a secret customer. That is it. No, other cook offs and does this for four restaurants at a time instead of the traditional two. So, for the quarterfinals which everything has been leading it, its done in like two episodes.Here is the interesting part, the eventual winner looks again to dead in the water, but ecks out due to other restaurant being worse which begs the question, why didn't you do the cook offs again to avoid having two terrible restaurants at the end? It doesn't make much sense. Also, if you pay close attention, you start to see the restaurants with ethnic ie non-whites owners are all gone sans the Indian one.The Indian restaurant seems to be doing everything right in the finals, but comes up short due to....a cheap parlor tricks involving dried ice and lemons. The winner is a Michelin Star Italian restaurant that had a ton of problems getting food out even at the end run by two sons and their doting parents. Their parents spent all of their money on their kids dream, but when you see their restaurant you have to think they didn't spend all of their cash. The Indian restaurant is family run vegetarian style, but only fits 20 and had to make massive changes to fit the 30. So, small and being Veg is almost two strikes against them. However, minus a hiccup in the semi-final seems to be doing everything right while the Italian skates on by.I hate when people raise the specter of racism. I am not trying to do that here, but man, some stuff just feels off. It feels if this was a competition to validate the Michelin Star then to find the best restaurant. Of course, the restaurant with all the bells and whistles is going to win. It just feels pointless. I feel the entire point of the show was give the U.K. and the rest of the world, a good view of the U.K. restaurant scene. Instead, it was Gordon Ramsey making at time questionable calls and a winner that really didn't deserve it at all.I gave it a low rating do the insane quarterfinals and the highly questionable ending. Its a great idea and Gordon is great and you can easily cheer for some of the restaurants, but by the mid-way point in turns into a mess that it seems Gordon at the end is bored with everything and is giving the award grudgingly to two spoiled brats and their fairly rich and over protective parents.