The first day went by in a daze. As always, we were split into two teams: the women's red team and the men's blue team. Our first challenge was to cook our signature dishes. Regardless of the quality of our cooking, as some sort of a twisted initiation rite we all got our fair share of the famed Ramsay treatment – according to Chef Ramsay we were, among various other insults, wastes of oxygen and he would not feed our food to even his dog. But that was to be expected; he had a certain image to live up to, after all.
The blue team emerged victorious from the signature dish challenge and the boys were rewarded a luxurious day away from the kitchen. The girls were stuck cleaning and prepping for dinner service. We were fuming and hell-bent on winning the dinner service to avoid elimination. No such luck. We couldn't get any entrees out as they kept getting rejected by Chef Ramsay. Raw, overcooked, raw, too salty… Something was wrong with every single dish. We let even our own expectations down, not to mention Chef Ramsay's. Our kitchen was shut down and in the end, one of us was sent home.
Upon our return at the dorms after dinner service, the boys told us about their day off with Chef Ramsay and spoke of the mysterious "Gordon" who was nothing at all like they'd expected. Apparently Chef Ramsay had revealed his soft side to the boys and the girls were green with envy. All we ever got was screaming, swearing and damn near assault. We did, however, get to spend quality time with Maître d' Jean-Philippe Susilovic, that mercilessly handsome and almost painfully polite piece of Belgian eye candy. There wasn't a woman (and few men) in the house who would not have loved some alone time with JP.
In the kitchen we were quickly settling into a routine. Our days there always followed the same pattern: in the mornings and early afternoons we'd have skill tests, which led to either rewards or punishments. The men constantly outshined the women and we were stuck cleaning, ironing, mopping, prepping and God only knows what other grueling tasks Chef Ramsay would come up with as punishment. Meanwhile, the boys enjoyed their time off with "Gordon". The thing that mostly annoyed me was that I had never seen Chef Ramsay's soft side. I'd been yelled at, humiliated, made feel stupid and insignificant, been thrown out of the kitchen in the middle of dinner service, punished and called all imaginable names possible. Who was this elusive "Gordon" and would I ever get the chance to meet him?