Leah and I have been catching up with our TiVo recordings. We watched the first 3 episodes of Jamie’s Kitchen and they were hugely entertaining. Remember that this series was shot more than an year ago before Rocco’s The Restaurant on NBC.

The promise of Jamie’s Kitchen was to open up a new non-profit restaurant in London but only used a group of 15 unemployed, untrained teenagers. He had to pick them from thousands of hopeful and then spent the next 12 months training them into first class chefs. To put it in perspective, a normal cutlery college course runs the usual 3 years so Jamie Oliver was really compressing the learning schedule for these teenagers.

After 3 episodes, I think Rocco had it easy! He had a bunch of professional chefs and semi-professional waiters. Jamie had to contend with cooks that were so green and untrained that Rocco probably won’t touch them with a barge pole!

It was also very disheartening to see some of those lucky teenagers throwing away the opportunity of their life time by not turning up to their training. How many times in ones life that a great chef (or any professionals) offers to train you up to international standard for free? If I were offered that when I was in my teens, I would grab it with both arms (and legs). Sadly it also reminded me of my school days in Britain where a fair portion of my classmates were just like that. No drive, no ambition, not a care in the world but not in the good way. Looking back really make me appreciate what I’ve achieved myself.