This Friday, May 20, 2022, Cauchemar en cuisine is back on M6, with, again and again, Philippe Etchebest at the controls. If the show has been a great success since its creation, the famous French chef is often singled out for his very cavalier method…
Whether in « Top Chef » or « Objective Top Chef », Philippe Etchebest likes to distill his wise advice to young apprentices who come to rub shoulders with the M6 culinary competition. In a completely different register, the starred chef and best worker in France travels the roads of France to try to save the establishments of desperate restaurateurs in « Nightmare in the kitchen ». Which always offers us sequences of anthology, to the detriment, sometimes, of those and those who call on his help.
Video. Discover the portrait of Philippe Etchebest
Methods that divide
Philippe Etchebest is not a man who takes half measures. In addition to his job as a chef, he is also a sports enthusiast, from rugby to boxing. It is undoubtedly the addition of all these passions that gave him this fiery temperament. With him, it is better to stay in the ranks. And that, the candidates of « Nightmare in the kitchen » have all understood. As soon as he arrives in a restaurant with a catastrophic organization, Philippe Etchebest does not go overboard and very often raises his voice in the face of the most recalcitrant. But that doesn’t happen with everyone.
In 2020, Thierry, former candidate for « Cauchemar in the kitchen » had crushed the method of chef Etchebest in the columns of Télé-Loisirs: « I felt humiliated. There were really times I really wanted to send it shit. I swallowed my pride all the time. » A year earlier, it was Pascale and Patrick, a couple of restaurateurs based in the Var, who had denounced not only Philippe Etchebest’s attitude but also the production methods: « It was very trying! My wife took three weeks to recover… She is much more sensitive than me. Myself, I had suffered a lot” remembered Patrick then in the columns of Parisian, and to add about the production: “They say a little what they want too. Journalists insist on things they want to hear. »
If he felt that Philippe Etchebest’s intervention was « more than beneficial » for him, Patrick still harbored some bitterness: « I don’t think I would do it again… It’s still trying, I didn’t think that it was like that. »
Video. Nightmare in the kitchen: how does production find customers to fill restaurants?
Philippe Etchebest persists and signs
Nothing too surprising after all. You only have to watch an episode of « Cauchemar en cuisine » to understand that the experience can be trying for those who submit to it. And even if he seems very hard at first, Philippe Etchebest always ends up being benevolent and understanding with the restaurateurs he helps. In 2020, he had thus wanted to respond to the accusations of Thierry who had felt “humiliated” by his intervention under the eye of the cameras. « I had Thierry on the phone. He retains positive things. My method, we can criticize it, I don’t care. What matters to me is the result », he had launched at the Parisian.
Video. Philippe Etchebest: these drastic measures he had to take to save his restaurant
Because this fiery temper, Philippe Etchebest has always had it in other M6 shows, like in « Top Chef » where he is not always tender with the members of his brigade. Here again, everything is assumed: « I’m not always shouting. There are still times that are a little calmer when I’m a lot in training, because the objective is transmission and training of young apprentices. Afterwards, I push them to their limits to select the best (e) « he explained on the airwaves of Europe 1 in 2021.
This Friday, May 20, 2022, Philippe Etchebest will try to save a restaurant in Châtel-Guyon, in Puy-de-Dôme, where Damien and his wife Élodie are struggling to get by. Which promises, again and again, a string of strong sequences.
VIDEO – Top Chef objective: Philippe Etchebest burned in the middle of the test by a candidate
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