Television Notes: Kitchen Nightmares

September 24th, 2007

Kitchen Nightmares
Kitchen Nightmares: Dishing it out.

TelevisionKitchen Nightmares stars abrasive chef Gordon Ramsay where the set-up is failing restaurants in dire need of professional help. I guess this show has been running in Britain for a while and this is its first season in America. Chef Ramsay has a blunt and slightly rude style where he swears profusely and berates the proprietors - chefs all the way down to wait-staff - and implements his plan to save a different restaurant each week from ruin.

Anyhow, the first episode was free in iTunes so I checked it out. It was definitely entertaining, although it had that over-the-top and now formulaic reality television show feel, where the build-up (featuring editing so quick it made me nauseas) was tastier than the actual pay off.

The Italian eatery “Peter’s Restaurant” is made to look totally hopeless, a haven for fist-fights and Goodfellas style preening. Everyone works extra hard, but the Peter of the title is a big Goomba type guy who’s more interested in looking cool, giving away dinners to his pals, and asking mom to make him espressos and cranberry Italian sodas - all instead of running the restaurant. Meanwhile, his sister is overworked managing things, and the kitchen has fallen into disrepair to where the angry chefs have only one working stove and a walk-in kitchen full of rotting food. Needless to say, the food sucks, too.

Early on, Ramsay sits down for typical Peter’s style dinner. The salad has several day’s old rotten lettuce in it, the fried crab cakes contain old crab, and the lobster ravioli has pure mush inside. This place needs help.

As Ramsay’s plan is put into action, other reality show stand bys make appearances - Ramsey buys new equipment home-makeover style, the younger sister who manages the shop bursts into tears to provide that emotional moment, and yes - at one point a fist fight does break out when some bill collectors say they “just wanna talk” to Peter, inspiring some traditional Italian displays of manliness. If only some of that tradition was in the sauce.

If you’re a die-hard foodie, Kitchen Nightmares doesn’t seem like it will have any impressive culinary masterpieces. But if you’re amused by dysfunctional families, people shamed for screwing up, and clashing egos, you may enjoy this show. I felt like I was watching Super Nanny (where a babysitter disciplines unruly children) but here, the bratty kids were the chefs. Fairly entertaining, but I must admit it did nothing for my appetite.

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Viewing 2 Comments

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    Funny you should review this. My business partner is watching it on iTunes right now.

    I caught it on TV last week. I'm a big fan of the UK version of the show (and Ramsay in general), so I was worried about how Fox might "juice it up". They did juice it up a bit what with the rapid-fire video editing and amped up mafia angle. The show settled down after about 30 minutes though. Pretty decent overall. Will have to see if it lives up to the UK series after a few more episodes.

    My main gripes are that the episode feels shorter than the UK show (maybe our commercial breaks are longer?). Also, at the end of the UK program, Gordon returns to the restaurant a few months later during the last 5 minutes to see if the restaurant has fallen back into its bad habits or is still using his advice (it's usually a 50-50 proposition). This last bit always brought some nice closure to the episode that was missing from this one.

    One interesting thing about the show is that sometimes he focuses on the food and sometimes he focuses on the management and other times he'll focus on the building/setting. It really depends on the restaurant and what the biggest problem is.

    Sad to say though, rotten food in the fridge is a common thread in many of the episodes...food for thought on your next restaurant outing :-(
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    Wow, that's cool that you've been watching the BBC version. I think I might check out some of those shows - do you have any particular epsiodes that you'd recommend?

    The rotten food in the restaurant is pretty shameful, but doesn't surprise me - seems like you never know what *really* goes on in the kitchens these days. Plus I've had (as I'm sure we all have) some fairly gross experiences of finding strange stuff in restaurant food that shouldn't be there. Not sure if I ever told you about the "white bean" in a burrito.
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