The Restaurant 2009

Well, we have to assume that the judges don't see the TV footage until it's shown on TV (same for the Apprentice). Whether that's indeed the case, who knows? (apart from the production team ;))

I think it's a real shame though that all too often some seemingly decent cooks/chefs get let down by their front of house. We've seen it this year with R to R and B&B and we saw it last year with Harriet being let down by her Dad. I guess we can only hope that people see them on TV and give them a chance to cook in a real restaurant.
 
According to the ratings pages:

Nov 19th 1.54m
Last Night 1.51m

Contrast with extract from October 28 2008 article:

"The season finale of BBC's The Restaurant airs tomorrow, having pulled a series high of 2.7 million viewers last Wednesday".

That says it all.
 
Said at the start of the show wonder if Rebecca would cry tonight and yes she didn't disappoint. I am actually starting to come round to where RB is coming from. Those two would never cope with the pressure of running a restaurant.

So who to pick......The winkers with a cook who can't cook and a FOH who is full of bull-hit or Chris who is a great cook but can't gauge whether his food is hot and Nathan who really doesn't like people. (I wonder how on earth he ever became a hairdresser- wonder if he ever told a client exactly what he thought of them!!)

To be fair I remember last year an ex contestant poster on here always rabbiting on about it all being in the edit and am sure there is a lot of truth in that.

It really wouldn't surprise me if the winkers won and am sure RB could train JJ up to be an excellent chef. Which gives me hope for myself- maybe I should enter next year!
 
It's all been said here already, really.

The thing is, I'm prepared to believe that the Winkers had the best concept (though it does nothing for me), but that's the basis for a one-off programme, not an 8-part series (or maybe a different series where 8 couples who want to open a restaurant go through various food-related sales & marketing tasks.)

But this was like a detective story where the hero spenRAB 85 minutes following clues to track down the killer, and in the last 5 minutes bumps into him in the street by accident. It's not necessarily unrealistic, but it's fundamentally a poor story, and that's what we had here.

There's that old saying - "When the only tool you have is a hammer, after a while everything starts to look like a nail." That's the Winkers with their cocktails, the universal cure-all for every situation.

Best episode of this series though, stupid result notwithstanding. Definitely won't be watching again, au revoir Raymond.
 
It would have been interesting to see how Barrington & Badger would have got on had they stayed the course. I have a feeling they would have got to the final, in which case if JJ/James had also won in that scenario, the fuss made would be literally exploding ten fold to what it is now.

Or...if everyone is now thinking that the winners were already chosen early on, what would RB have given the reasons for sending home Barrington & Badger if they had stayed.....
 
Agreed.. to me it feels rushed and there just doesn't seem to be the same atmosphere this year. He used to take ages interviewing the couples at the end and now it's all done in 5 minutes.
 
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