Author: Mike Farley (Page 95 of 117)

Last night’s “Kitchen Nightmares” featured Gordon Ramsey visiting Finn McCool’s, an Irish Pub in Westhampton, Long Island. A place like this can thrive in the summertime when everyone goes to the Hamptons, but struggle in the winter when it’s just the locals. In addition, this place was not being run properly and, as with every restaurant on this show, was losing money fast.

Owner Buddy had his two sons, Brian (chef) and Jason (bartender) doing the bulk of the work. Jason’s wife, Janet, was also employed there as a server.

When Ramsey arrived, a middle aged waitress named Carol announced that she had the hots for him. This is another pattern with this show. In fact, as you’ll see, the whole show format is one big pattern.

Ramsey sits down for lunch to sample the menu, and orders spring rolls, salmon, and shepherd’s pie.
He barely touches the spring rolls, the salmon is drenched in balsamic vinegar sauce, and the shepherd’s pie is so greasy it literally makes Gordon run for the bathroom and puke. Or maybe that was the producers getting cute.

Still, Ramsey knew the food quality was a big problem. He also visits a local firehouse to see what the locals think of Finn McCool’s. They all say the food is too greasy, and Ramsey is not surprised. But he invites them back to try out his new menu. Then, Ramsey goes back and inpsects the kitchen, to find out that Brian is not keeping it very clean. Some of the food is rotting, the raw food is kept with the cooked food….ugh, it’s making me sick just thinking about it. To make matters worse, Ramsey witnesses sous chef Francis picking a chicken wing up off the floor and putting it back in the deep fryer. Yuck!

Ramsey then attempts to work with Brian and show him that you don’t have to make shepherd’s pie so greasy and offers other tips. Brian wants none of it, and storms out. Buddy says he would fire Brian if he weren’t his son. So with Brian gone, Buddy attempts to be the head chef, something he’s obviously not good at. He and Ramsey realize that Brian really is up against a lot, and when Brian returns four days later they tell him that. So Ramsey’s design team makes the place look more appealing, and he also has changed the menu to reflect the same items but fresher and with no fried food at all.

The re-launch is a crazy busy night, and everyone is having a hard time keeping up with the orders, especially Brian. But Ramsey keeps them going and holds it all together. Customers are waiting, some for more than an hour, and some even leave. But one that stays is food critic Sabrina Mashburn. Luckily, she announces that the food has been “worth the wait.” Everyone seems to love the new menu.

Ramsey takes them all outside after the dinner service and commends them for working together as a family and as a team. They show that two months later, the restaurant is going strong and the place is finally making money, and everyone has a renewed passion. Another feel good ending.

I like this show, but I’m getting just a bit tired of the patterns: older server having the hots for Gordon, at least one hot head storming out after feeling threatened by Ramsey, a disgusting kitchen, miraculous turnaround, and happy ending. But I guess that’s what this is about, and you can’t argue with the fact that Ramsey really does know what he’s doing.

Anyway, as always, they claim that next week is the best episode yet, so we’ll see. And I’ll see you all then….

Last night, FOX’s “Kitchen Nightmares” returned after a 3-week hiatus, with a bang. For the first time since the show started airing in the States, Gordon Ramsey visited a restaurant outside of New York. This time it was Sebastian’s Pizza in Burbank, California, near the TV studios. Not surprisingly, the staff, including owner Sebastian, are aspiring actors and actresses.

The draw for this restaurant, according to Sebastian, is the unique, gargantuan menu that features not just pizza, but weird flavor and meat combinations for entrees. We also learn early on that Sebastian’s wife, Nicole, has invested $300 K of her own money to help her husband get started, and it’s currently losing money like crazy. Maybe that’s because no one is eating there.

So Ramsey arrives and sits down for lunch. Sebastian boasts that he loves his large menu, complete with photos of the dishes he took himself, and that he also likes to visit with his customers and “drink wine” with them. Ramsey is already turned off. He orders calamari, pizza and New York strip, and asks Sebastian if the calamari is fresh. He says “yes,” and then Ramsey learns from the waitress that they are indeed frozen. In fact, almost everything on the menu is frozen, including the pizza dough.
Ramsey samples the food and is turned off by just about everything, especially the fact that Sebastian lied about the calamari. He tells the waitress he’d like a “sick bag,” which sets off Sebastian’s temper.

At the dinner service that night, Ramsey notices that nothing is fresh, and things take a bad turn when a customer finds a hair in her salad. Sebastian apologizes and comps her meal, along with $300 worth of other meals that night. Ramsey decides this place needs a revamped, fresh menu and sets that up for the following night’s dinner service. The menu is to focus on wood-fired pizza with fresh dough and ingredients. He then has his design team come in and give the interior a makeover, something Sebastian loves. But he doesn’t love the menu change, because he’s still so attached to his 20 flavor combination idea, and the fact that he thinks he’s going to franchise that idea someday. The night of the new menu also coincides with Oscar night in Burbank, so the place is hopping.

But during the dinner service, Sebastian keeps changing orders….having his staff revert back to his old menu. This creates chaos, and infuriates Ramsey. Sebastian’s ego has gotten in the way, and Ramsey tells him that in his 40 years he’s never met anyone he believes in less than Sebastian. Ouch. So you get the feeling Ramsey will leave and never come back, but what happens is that Sebastian takes a walk and comes back saying that Ramsey is right. I don’t know about you, but this theme seems to happen a lot on this show…..the lead “character” is not buying into Ramsey’s changes with five minutes left in the show, then suddenly changes his tune and goes along with them…..and everyone goes home happy.

Still, you know the producers love the conflict and play it up. And you know Ramsey knows what he is doing, and that these big egos need to listen to him in order to save their businesses. Next week Ramsey visits an Irish pub and another hotheaded family. I can’t wait!

Last night’s installment of Gordon Ramsey’s “Kitchen Nightmares” featured The Olde Stone Mill Restaurant in Tuckahoe, New York, a small town about 40 miles north of New York City in Westchester County. The space was a cotton mill in the 1800’s and a rubber factory for a while after that, long before current owner Dean took over and renovated it into his dream business: a restaurant.

The Olde Stone Mill focused on casual yet upscale dining in a really unique location along the Bronx River. So what was wrong with it? It was losing loads of money, and Dean admitted that if they closed the doors he would owe half a million dollars in debts.

Enter the great Gordon Ramsey.

Ramsey rode in on his motorcycle and was immediately marveling at the location of the restaurant. He met Dean, chef Michael, general manager Tom, and Dean’s wife Barbara and then sat down to lunch. He ordered crab cakes, chopped salad, mushroom risotto and fish that’s cooked in some sort of “edible bag.” First off, Ramsey notices the waiter chewing gum and kind of ribs him about it. Then, he tastes the food and is extremely disappointed all the way around. The crab cakes have a “sour mayonnaise” taste, the salad was shaped with a funnel, and the fish is like, as Ramsey said, “shit in a bag.” He sits Dean down and tells him point blank that his food is “crap.”

Then Ramsey sits down with Dean and Barbara to find out just how much money this place is losing. And that night, he witnessed a dinner service to really find out why. It didn’t take long to realize that it is in fact the food….customers are not happy, sending it back or just complaining that food is cold or doesn’t taste good. Thankfully, this episode spared us cockroaches and rats–the one thing chef Michael was doing good was keeping the kitchen clean. But he was feeding customers crappy food, and this was why no one except folks from a nearby retirement community were eating there. Ramsey also berated Dean, saying he was rushing meals out even though he knew they weren’t cooked properly. He even called Dean “a fake,” and questioned how bad he wants his restaurant to succeed. This resulted in a bit of a shouting match…or should we say, Dean was shouting a Ramsey and Ramsey was calmly calling Dean out for not wanting this bad enough.

Ramsey went and spoke to a local butcher who said the area desperately needed a good steakhouse, especially with so many Italian restaurants in the area. He took back some prime ribs and gets to work cooking with Michael. Ramsey then took a blow torch to Michael’s funnels that he uses for the chopped salad, showing him that the funnels are just not necessary. He also tells Dean that he’s revamping the menu to a steakhouse menu, and Dean is extremely resistant. Tell me, why would you be resistant when your restaurant is hemhorraging money? So he goes with it. Ramsey puts a nice new sign out front, re-does the interior and changes the menu. At the dinner service, the restaurant is hopping, but Tom is having trouble keeping up and is tripping over himself. Orders are not being filled, and there is a printer problem in the kitchen, which prompts a shouting match between Dean and Michael.

Finally, the printer is fixed and food gets served. The customers, including the mayor, are loving the new menu. Ramsey is shown talking to Dean, explaining that sometimes you have to fail first in order to succeed, and earns Dean’s respect when he tells him that he too first failed when he started in this business.

They showed that in the following weeks, Michael regained control of his restaurant, Tom became a better manager and Michael took back his own passion for cooking again. Ah, another feel-good story. We can only hope now that the place is making money now and back on track.

Chef Gordon Ramsey, you are the greatest. See you all next week, when Ramsey visits a Hollywood pizzeria. Finally, we get away from these brash, loud New Yorkers with raging tempers.

The Seascape Inn in Islip, New York used to be a vibrant, happening restaurant. At least it was 40 years ago when it opened. Recently, it was on the verge of shutting down because the mother and son ownership of Irene and Peter could not keep it running the way Peter’s father had run it before passing away two years prior. Enter Gordon Ramsey, who takes situations like this and does his best to turn them around.

Ramsey arrived and noticed right away that the place had a stench to it. The waitress let him know that it was sewage. Ewwwwww!!! It was also apparent that head chef Doug was arrogant and not happy that Ramsey was there to “save” things. Also, sous chef Charles didn’t care either, and seemed to think everything was a big joke. What’s worse, Ramsey ordered some lunch to sample the food, and was bitterly disappointed. The crab cakes were not fresh, the lobster ravioli had a “strange taste,” and the salmon was dry. That, and everything was sprayed with dried parsley. Doug was not happy that Ramsey was criticizing him, but it was clear where the problem with this restaurant was.

At the dinner service that evening, it was even more clear that there was a problem in the kitchen. Orders were going out, but the food was cold, not properly prepared or just not up to Ramsey’s or the customers’ standards. The next day Ramsey went into the kitchen and found out that it was a complete mess. Irene had told him at the start that the Board of Health gave them a 95% score and Peter said they cleaned every Tuesday. Well, he lied. The kitchen was filthy and food was getting moldy, including the pesto sauce served with Ramsey’s lunch the day before. So he did what he has done on previous episodes of this show–he shut down the kitchen for a night.

Ramsey decided the menu needed an overhaul too, and decided to put a focus on freshness and flavor.
This didn’t sit well with Doug at all, who said there was no need to change how he had been doing things for so many years. He didn’t even want to taste Ramsey’s cooking, insulting the great chef in a big way. The end result–Ramsey told Peter and Irene that Doug and Charles needed to be fired, on the spot. But Peter, ever lacking a backbone, couldn’t even do this right. He said “You guys are off tomorrow” and Doug responded “So we’re done for good?” and Peter said “Yes.” So they walked out, pissing and moaning as they left. Ramsey found a replacement head chef, Scott, and trained him on the new menu he had prepared. In addition, Ramsey had his design team remodel the inside of the restaurant, restoring it to its vibrancy of the sixties. Waitress Marilyn, who had been there since 1967, said it felt “alive” again.

Then there was the dinner service, and it was crowded and not quite what the staff here was used to. But everyone loved the food, and after Ramsey sat down with Peter and told him he needed to step up and run the restaurant like a real manager should, with hustle, Peter did just that. And finally, The Seascape was bustling and returned to its glory days. Even better, Irene was proud of her son for finally stepping up and “becoming a man.”

But apparently Peter wasn’t ready to make this a lifelong ambition, because at the end of the show it was announced that five months after the re-launch of The Seascape, Peter received “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” and sold the restaurant.

I’m sensing a pattern here. Every week there seems to be one bad manager or chef at the restaurant Ramsey tries to turn around, and that person either needs to get fired or whipped into shape in order for the restaurant to survive. It goes to show that it’s people who make restaurants or any business tick. It also makes me wonder how many places I’ve eaten at or will eat at with disgusting kitchens!

See you all next week…