‘Hell’s Kitchen’ interview: Anthony Rodriguez speaks out; plus, a look ahead

We’ve got a double-dose of “Hell’s Kitchen” goodness to help get you better prepared for the new episode airing on Fox Thursday night. If you check out the very bottom of this article, you can see a preview for what is coming up, which includes some literal fires being starting in the kitchen, and Gordon Ramsay possibly burning his own eye while trying to put it out. Scary, right? Well, we figure that he’s doing just fine given he still is able to do two million other things.

Now, we’ll turn to our chat with the recently-eliminated contestant Anthony Rodriguez, which we conducted late last week. He was one of the few guys on the Blue Team we were genuinely hoping to see get a black jacket, since he seemed pretty likable and had some good performances in the kitchen. Unfortunately some recent struggles did him him in, and John chose surprisingly to keep Zach over him when Ramsay asked him for his pick.

If nothing else, at least Anthony was a fun interview, and he gave some honest, insightful answers to a few questions.

CarterMatt – So why do you think John chose to keep Zach around?

We got along really well in the kitchen, I just think that in the end, he just felt that Zach had more experience, and he felt like he should go with that over the passion and the [rapport] that we had going.

I’ve said all season long that the guys had some good chefs, but you just couldn’t get it together. Do you know what the problem was?

We were a kitchen full of ten strong, really talented guys, but we could not get a solid line of communication going to save our lives. Before we could, we were all gone.

As someone who watched the show, did you go into the kitchen with a certain impression of Chef Ramsay? Did that change at all in doing this?

I was very intimidated by him going in there, since I did not know what to expect or that I would be yelled at quite a bit. But my opinion did definitely change. He is a great guy, inside and outside the kitchen. Inside the kitchen, he is 100% business. He wants perfection on a plate, and he’s not going to settle for anything less.

Your team was sadly on one of the worst losing streaks ever this season. What are these punishments really like for you, given that you were on so little sleep?

It is mentally and physically exhausting. You get so burnt out at times. We tried to get as much sleep as we could, but given all the punishments we were doing, there wasn’t much time for that. I don’t think you’ve ever seen a Blue Team lose that bad. We set a record.

Do you think there’s something to be said for the women bonding on the rewards and then being more capable of beating your team?

Well it definitely helped with morale. Happy people, or at least people who are better friends, are going to cook better than people who are not the best of friends. When you get constantly beat on like that, it breaks you down a little bit.

So even though John was partly responsible for sending you home, do you still root for him?

He may be very responsible (laughs), but I’m still pulling for him. He’s one of my good friends.

If you want to read some more of the latest “Hell’s Kitchen” news, you can do so over here.

Photo: Fox