Jacques PepinTurn on any televised cooking program and you are likely to hear yelling--a lot of yelling. The drama drives ratings, but how much is what we are seeing like a real restaurant kitchen? If you ask Jacques Pépin, the answer is "not much." In a recent Daily Meal article, Pépin blasts this negative depiction of professional kitchens.

While he admits that sometimes the stress of service causes tempers to flare and results in the occasional verbal barrage, Pépin notes that this is usually temporary and that it often "ends in a friendly discussion over a glass of wine or a beer." Kitchens work best when there is order and dignity, and in these so-called reality shows "the confrontation and the bitter drama are not conducive to producing good food."

To add insult to injury, very little actual cooking is shown. We don't see "the process of combining ingredients together to create a dish...nor is the process of tasting, adding an ingredient, then tasting again and commenting ever shown." Pépin singles out Hell's Kitchen, noting that while the conflict depicted may be good for ratings, it is "unjust to dedicated cooks and unfair to the trade." He notes that if you were to visit the kitchen in a respected restaurant (citing restaurants run by Thomas Keller, Alice Waters, and Grant Achatz), you would see "a kitchen that is well organized, with a contented, dedicated, hard-working staff."

Do you agree with Chef Pépin or do you think he's being too hard on Gordon Ramsay and these shows?