Hell’s Kitchen has a new head chef.

Gone is the infamous hot-headed tyrant Gordon Ramsay and New York Magazine says Marco Pierre White, Ramsay’s former mentor turned adversary, will be taking his place.

It’s a little hard for me to believe this. No one anywhere for any reason could ever dispute White’s chops. To some he’s a legend, to the rest he’s a god. The youngest British chef ever to be awarded three Michelin stars (he was 33 at the time), White was famous for his creative genius in the kitchen but also for his quick temper.

Will we see Ramsay-redux?

Not likely, says White.

“I might be the hardest person they’ll have ever met but I’ve got a heart just as big. It’s about picking people up off the floor and inspiring them to want to carry on ’til the end.”

I would expect that Hell’s Kitchen, under White, will be more about the food and innovative techniques and classic dishes than swearing and slamming plates of food into people’s chests.

It should be noted that White’s age has brought him a fair share of mellowing at as anyone who saw his appearance on No Reservations can tell you. No less passionate about food and quality ingredients, he certainly seems a far cry from the despot that made Gordon Ramsay cry at Harvey’s, White’s first restaurant after becoming a three-star chef.

Stay tuned.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bottom Line favs Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman have announced the nominees for their First Annual Golden Clog awards for the best and worst in food this year.

The pair will present the awards during the South Beach Food and Wine Festival later this month.

The greatest part about all of this isn’t really the nominees but instead the varying categories and who they honor or poke fun at.

For example:

THE “ROCCO” AWARD — for worst career move by a talented chef. Obviously a jab at Rocco DiSpirito, who after his short-lived reality show tanked his career and any culinary credibility he had. The nominees are: Gordon Ramsay for the cruel and pointless freak show that is Hell’s Kitchen; David Burke for the “Hooters in a Hula skirt” non-charms of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone in Times Square; Tyler Florence for Applebee’s, Applebee’s, Applebee’s.

For the complete list of nominees and the reasons they’ve been nominated, visit Serious Eats.

In other foodie-related news, Robert Sietsma has a great article today in the Village Voice about his trip to a taping of Iron Chef America and how utterly fake it is. I always presumed a level of deception when watching the show (I mean how is someone going to come up with a five-course tasting menu based on ingredients they don’t know, while coordinating that vision with a pair of sous chefs?) but the article points out how much of the show is completely fabricated and ridiculous, including the Chef stand-ins they use for Iron Chefs not competing at that taping.

Courtesy of Serious Eats:

Los Angeles-based artist Victoria Reynolds specializes in painting detailed pictures of meat. When have viscera ever looked so beautiful? You can view and buy her paintings at Richard Heller Gallery (the above bacon painting is $5,000 if you’re interested.

I love meat as much as anybody else and I love all things pork and pork related (with the exception of deli-sliced ham and ham in general, which I find terrible beyond words) but the day that I spend 5 grand on a painting of bacon, I hope someone has the decency to smother me with a pillow in my sleep.

I have just started reading Michael Ruhlman’s The Elements of Cooking. I know the litterati will scoff when I say that I normally avoid introductions and prologues like the plague but I think it’s important to read Ruhlman’s introduction, written by pal and Bottom Line fav Anthony Bourdain, to understand the intent of the book. It appears as if Ruhlman set out to write something of a reference book for novice chef. Notice that I don’t use the word beginner because I think, as it has been pointed out, Ruhlman’s book has a tone that suggests that he assumes a certainly culinary knowledge has been attained by the reader prior to picking up Elements. That being said, Ruhlman’s writing is informed, concise and passionate. It conveys quite well that cooking and teaching people to appreciate cooking is something he cares a great deal about. For the home cook serious about making good food, it’s definitely worth a read (thus far).

www.michaelruhlman.com

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Playoffs?!?!

NFL playoff time, boys and girls, in between watching a few movies and catching up on my TiVo, I’ll be consumed by Wildcard Weekend. My picks are as follows:

WASHINGTON over Seattle

JACKSONVILLE over Pittsburgh

NEW YORK over Tampa Bay

SAN DIEGO over Tennessee

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BCS DEBACLE

I speak, not of the system as a whole (though it could be said a similar description would be fitting), but of my .500 percent BCS batting average after Wednesday night’s Fiesta Bowl and last night’s Orange Bowl. My hats off to West Virginia and especially to Kansas, both of whom I thought had virtually no chance of winning their bowl games.

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OUTDOOR HOCKEY IS AWESOME!

Had it not been for a gripping Capital One Bowl, I surely would have watched the entirety of the Buffalo Sabres/Pittsburgh Penguins Winter Classic game Tuesday afternoon. It’d be hard to believe that one game could put the league back on the game but the NHL has gotten more press as a result and that’s never a bad thing for a league that plays the majority of its games on Versus.

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WHY WAS RICH RODRIGUEZ AT MICHIGAN’S BOWL GAME?

I thought this was absolutely classless. While many of the coaches who have taken jobs with programs playing in bowl games, most had the sense to stay away from the games and let the seniors and the outgoing coaching staff finish their season. Or at the very least not be filmed on the sidelines at the game, let alone interviewed during the game. Given how long Lloyd Carr had been at Michigan and that the bowl was his last game, I thought it was a low-class move for Rodriguez to try to steal the spotlight for a second. It’s not your team yet, Rich, stay away.

10. Sleeper Cell

Thank goodness for TV shows on DVD. Had it not been for the release of seasons one and two on DVD, I would have never gotten to see this show and my life certainly would have been the lesser for it. Frankly, Sleeper Cell is a smarter, better acted 24. It’s equal parts action and smart political drama. The show’s lead Michael Ealy from Barbershop finally got a Golden Globe nod for his work in the show and the nomination is well deserved as Ealy turns in one of the best performances I’ve seen on any television show in a long time. It helps that the show is on Showtime and has a little more leeway by way of violence, language, etc. I can’t imagine a diluted version of this show being on network television. It might look a little bit more like… well, like 24.

9. Six Feet Under

After the first three seasons of this show, I would have thought that this show would have certainly landed somewhere in the top five. The story lines were interesting, compelling and moving and the performances were wonderful. And then the end of the show happened and I’m not just talking about the final episode, which I believe to have had one of the best final sequences of any show ever, I’m talking about the end of the show as a whole. The writers, in an attempt to make the characters more interesting after four seasons just made them more flawed and unrelatable. By the end of the show, I had gotten so tired of all the characters and their abhorrent behavior that I was ready for it to end. None the less, the show is one that I loved intensely for years and thus makes an appearance.

8. Rescue Me

I have never been a Dennis Leary fan but he is unbelievably, spectacularly amazing as New York City firefighter Tommy Gavin in Rescue Me. On top of Leary’s performance, the show is help by a great supporting cast and great writing. I’ve only watched the show on DVD and I’ve heard some critical things about the fourth season but it would take an awful lot to throw me off the horse at this point.

7. Lost

Yes, the show is overly complex and has more story arcs than it probably needs but few shows have the following and the cult interest that Lost has. Season three returned and saved the show after what some (not myself, mind you) dubbed a disappointing season two. But my interest in this show is waning and will likely continue to do so this year as ABC will air the first eight episodes of season four in late January followed by, what could be, a year break before the viewers get to see how the season ends. A favorite since I started watching the show on DVD a couple years ago, this could be the year that Lost cements in position on my list or gets the old heave-ho.

6. Top Chef 

It was Bravo’s reality cooking series that really put competitions of this sort on the map and I think brought a whole new level of awareness to cooking and haute cuisine. The new season of Top Chef in Chicago starts soon and I’m ecstatic to see Top Chef finally come to the Midwest. And besides, any show that makes Eric Ripert a household name is ok by me.

I like…

USAToday’s Pop Candy blog has a cool story about the pen pal relationship between John Waters and a young Fred Armisen, now a cast member on SNL.

Arctic Monkeys have released some new tracks under a fake name.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Mark Bradley tears into the BCS.

Spin has a cool interview with Mike Doughty.

Anthony Bourdain is returning to work the sauté station at Les Halles in New York for a night. Working the grill station? Eric Ripert of Le Bernadin. Might not be a bad time to think about booking a table at Les Halles in the near future.

The new Chronicles of Narnia trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

To view the trailer in HD, head on over to Yahoo! Movies.

I don’t like…

BCS Coordinator and SEC Comish Mike Silve says increased parity in college football won’t change the BCS.

The Sabres have ended their 29-year relationship with the Rochester Americans.

Bob Knight may have shot a couple more people. I generally think Bob Knight is a complete moron so it’s not all that surprising to hear that a man claimed Knight or his hunting partner shot at him intention after the man yelled at the pair for hunting too close to his house. Knight denies it.

Comcast sent a cease and desist letter to NFL Network for urging customers to switch from the cable service.

Can the Kindle help the newspaper industry?

Warner Brother’s viral marketing for the new Batman flick has kicked into high gear?

The fake Gordon Ramsay blog is hilariously funny.

Top Chef season 1 contestant Dave Martin has opened a new restaurant in New York.

The Colts new $11.4 million scoreboard in Lucas Oil Stadium is amazing.

Chef Traci Des Jardins prepared recipes for a Thanksgiving menu with wine parings for Epicurious and in return she wants to ask homecooks to request that their diners donate money to America’s Second Harvest, a national food bank that helps 9 million families annually.

Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Jensen gives the Heroes graphic novel collective a B-.Glad I didn’t buy it.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Tony Barnhart thinks Georgia fans would be crazy to hope that Tennessee makes the SEC Championship to practically guarantee the Dawgs a trip to a BCS Bowl.

The AJC also has a good piece on UGA coach Mark Richt transforming into the football version of Bruce Pearl.

ESPN’s Todd McShay has a list of the top 10 freshmen in college football.

StarChefs.com has released their book of Chefs to Know.

I don’t like…

The writers’ strike may cause the final season of Scrubs to air without a series finale.

New York Magazine’s Vulture blog has some disturbing information about NBC’s “Create a Hero” feature on the Heroes site.

Eric Gordon drops 33 in his debut for the Hoosiers last night.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Mark Bradly says Georgia is every bit as tough as LSU.

Fanhouse has a funny take on the Missouri-Kansas border war.

Marvel is offering an archive of 2,500 back issues.. not for free but still pretty cool.  Lost creator Damon Lindelof has a list of what you should start with.

USAToday’s Beau Dure has devised a hypothetical playoff system.

I don’t like…

ESPN is stockpiling journalists.

The Michelin Guide gave zero stars to chef Thomas Keller’s Bouchon in Las Vegas. Keller is the only American-born chef with two three-star Michelin restaurants to his credit (French Laundry and Per Se).