Gordon Ramsay is done being nice on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’

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There’s not a lot of sympathy for contestants on the world’s most punishing job interview -- a.k.a. Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen.” After all, they volunteered to be Gordon Ramsay’s abused acolytes in the race to win a $250,000 prize and a job working for the Michelin-starred, foul-mouthed chef. But if you tune in tonight as Season 5 gets underway, you’ll see one contestant who might be getting more than she bargained for: Watching Colleen, the Nebraska cooking instructor who charges $300 per lesson, is like watching a career go up in flames. Her dismal performance includes an inability to tell the difference between sugar and salt. Without giving too much away, at the traditional first challenge, seen in tonight’s premiere, contestants are asked to prepare their signature dish, so Colleen made chicken enchiladas. Ramsay said they looked liked diapers on a plate.

‘You seriously charge $300 to teach people how to make that crap?’ he asked. ‘Yes, chef,’ she answered. Then he tasted them. And, in an insult that only Ramsay could deliver, he suggested . . . how do we put this delicately . . . that he could use a diaper of his own.

That aside, Ramsay said this crop of contestants is the strongest and most talented yet, which means he ‘can start really turning up the heat on them for the first time in ‘Hell’s Kitchen.’ ‘

That’s right. He claims he’s been taking it easy so far.

‘The better they are, the more pressure they can take,’ Ramsay said during a recent telephone interview. ‘I’ve never really been able to intensify the pressure in the past. They haven’t been able to take it.’

Try keeping this in mind as you watch snippets from past seasons, when many of the contestants are driven to tears by the pressure.

While other competition shows tweak their formats here and there to keep things fresh -- ‘American Idol’ has added a new judge, for example -- Ramsay said he was happy to stick with the tried-and-true job interview routine.

After all, the ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ winner will help run the kitchen in Ramsay’s new restaurant in the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.

‘It’s an amazing platform for any chef, I would have given my right arm to have been given that prize when I was coming up,’ he said. With a laugh, he added, ‘Now, if only ‘Top Chef’ would stop stealing our ideas.’

rene.lynch@latimes.com

(Photo courtesy Fox)