SeeCalifornia.com

Beach Photos of Master Chef, a Fox TV show, filming an August 2013 episode in Huntington Beach this week with Chef Gordon Ramsay (megaphone), Chef Graham Elliot (plaid shirt), and Chef Joe Bastianich (wearing dark clothes)

Like many of you, I’ve watched my share of those kitchen shows in which the best chef wins, or something to that effect. But the stories have become more personal as I flipped on the TV recently and saw someone I actually knew in a series called Kitchen Nightmares on Fox. The Cristiano family, owners of Nino’s Italian restauarant in Long Beach, were featured on the series with Chef Gordon Ramsay, a Brit who visits failing restaurants and shakes things up, trying to kick-start them back into success. It was shocking watching friends air their dirty laundry on TV. They had to swallow their pride as Ramsay took his dinner knife and began scraping  bubble gum wads under the table where he was served 5-day old meatballs as a dinner guest.  It went downhill even more before Ramsay had the place remodeled and worked with the kitchen staff on menus.

Yesterday I was driving along PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) and saw Chef Gordon Ramsay back at it again on the beach in the filming of a TV series called Master Chef. In addition to owning a series of restaurants in England, Ramsay is riding the wave of success in a variety of food-drama shows for Fox network.  In this on-location episode there are surfboards and plenty of props to liven up what might otherwise be just another food contest show.  For casting call locations and dates, see fox.com!

If you love magic, another friend of the SeeCalifornia.com family, David Minkin, appears on The Travel Channel in a pilot show, Magic Outlaws, on March 10, 2013 around 9 or 10 p.m. Minkin is one of the nation’s top magicians performing regularly in Los Angeles at Magic Castle.