Share this page!

Serenity “Filtered Bee Paste” Dee Profile picture
Twitter logo
28 Dec 21, 670 tweets, 88 min read
currently watching episodes of Kitchen Nightmares on YouTube and seeing how far I can get before I get too pissed off at the chefs to continue

right now the chef is saying that they can't get fresh fish in Brighton (UK), in a storefront 100m from the beach

in BRIGHTON
they pre-cooked the lobster and the mussels are all open

that's straight up gonna kill someone
the owner of this seafood restaurant doesn't even eat seafood
I keep noping out after like 5-10 minutes because I keep wanting to take their faces gently in my hands and bellow at them to get out of food service while they're still ahead, or at least not even further behind
oh god

I'm currently struggling with the episode about the Italian casual dining slash fast food restaurant in Woodland Park, CO
Gordon complains that the mashed potatoes taste old

The owner says that's bullshit because those mashed potatoes were made the night before
Ramsay: [enumerates everything wrong with the food he was served]

Owner, over and over: "The food's good."
Gordon finds literal buckets of pre-cooked pasta in the walk-in, hundreds of portions

for a restaurant that's had not even fifty customers during dinner service
one of the servers is clearly very experienced in food service, and he's extremely conscious of just how bad it is
the owner just walked out in the middle of dinner service after Gordon told all the customers that everything was frozen

one of the customers was like, "yeah, I can tell"
I cannot begin to unpack everything fucked up in this restaurant

like, I used to do food service where we heated up things made off-site and frozen, but it was a bookstore cafe, not a proper restaurant, and the cookies were freshly baked even though we got frozen dough
when it's an Italian restaurant the absolute minimum for the head chef is to be able to make fresh pasta and make the meatballs in house
currently watching S1E3 of the American version, Sebastian's, and it's a pizza restaurant that uses frozen dough and a menu that can charitably be described as "byzantine"
one might even call it baroque and labyrinthine to the point of risibility

yes, these are $25 words, but I don't think even a $5 vocabulary is adequately expressive
what is it with would-be restauranteurs who think that reheating frozen food in a microwave constitutes cooking
"if you know so much about it why aren't you running a restaurant"

because I also know I'd be fucking awful at it

I can write like a motherfucker, I'm a good public speaker, and I am a goddess of applied econometrics, but I have no business in food service and I know it
but I have worked in food service, I have spent time with chefs talking about what they do, and for a home cook with zero real culinary training I know a lot about food

and because I'm always experimenting in my kitchen I'm always learning more
when I indulge myself in an impulse buy it's usually some kitchen implement or another that costs me $10-$20

for my birthday and Christmas present to myself I bought a small (3-cup) Cuisinart food processor
my next indulgence will be a set of new cutting boards because my old one is getting too warped and cracked

I'm never going to mistake myself for a trained chef just because I'm like this

if nothing else, my back will remind me
"all of you now are going to become great tossers"

okay, Gordon, you're British, I know you did that on purpose
holy hell, how much did the production spend on this remodeling

that 20 quart commercial mixer is easily $1500-$2000 on its own
okay, the non-slang meaning of tosser is "one who tosses [thing]"

the slang meaning? this Sebastian asshole talking about how he's a great chef when all he does is reheat frozen food, and how he plans on franchising? he's a tosser of the highest order
there's a blog that tracks what's happened to each restaurant after the episode, and it amounts to:

- closed because they reverted some or all or Gordon's changes and business went south
- closed for unrelated reasons
- open, kept Gordon's changes entirely or mostly so
(one restaurant restored a few of the customer favorites from the old menu)

the most heartbreaking one was Campania's, which started doing nearly double the business from before Gordon's visit, fulfilling the owner's dream

sadly, he died of suicide a few years later
apparently this Sebastian dude is now running a landscaping service with his wife in the Boston area
whenever I think about how to succeed in food service I remember that there is, or at least was before pandemic, a wildly successful food truck that made exactly one thing: grilled cheese sandwiches

and they make/made them really fucking well, by all accounts
if you're doing a gimmick, do it so goddamn well that you're what people think of when they think of a food

and for the love of every god of revelry EAT YOUR OWN FOOD from time to time
this Sebastian dude just doesn't know how not to shoot himself in the foot
Sebastian: "When it comes down to it, I know what I'm doing"

… except you obviously don't
"If you look at the numbers, I guess it looks like I'm failing"

yeah, that's generally how you tell if you're failing
switching over to S1E1 of Hell's Kitchen US, and currently being entertained because I know for a fact that Gordon Ramsay plays up the meanness for the cameras
it's also to shock the contestants out of complacency and remind them of the standard to which they're being held

but mostly it's for the camera

in the UK version he can still be quite harsh but they edit in him also being supportive and stuff
I got through three episodes of Hell's Kitchen and my favorite part was him telling the diners who came up to the hot plate to fuck off

now I'm starting S4E15, Cafe Hon, which apparently has the most self-sabotaging head chef ever
or S5E15

apparently this YouTube channel is using a different episode designation than everyone else
argh lack of ADHD meds not only making me sleepy, also make it challenge to make it through episode
just started a different episode, this one about an alleged farm to table restaurant in rural Ohio

you can tell the owner is a pretentious dick because he micromanages language but still mispronounces "bruschetta"
most L1 English speakers do and I don't lose sleep over it, but when you're going to be an asshole about verbiage I'm going to be turbo fucking judgmental
in which I clarify the pronunciation with exciting footage of my bedroom ceiling
dude owns a ranch with free range buffalo, elk, and steer, but all of his steaks come from, like, BJ's or Costco or something
gotta love it when people think they know more about food than Gordon Ramsay

like, I don't mean specific cuisines or traditions that are uncommon, I mean believing that he doesn't know what elk is supposed to taste like
Gordon asked his server where he should go get something to eat because he ordered probably $200 worth of food and it was all inedible
dude's tearing the owner a new one and the whole staff is sitting there like
his sous chef (because the owner has delusions of adequacy about his cooking) is standing right next to him like
oh, right, I'm watching it on YouTube, I can do this Image
like, I couldn't make this shit up Image
Gordon: "…blow smoke up your phony ass!" Image
server: [imitates bomb falling and exploding]
I'm dying Image
dude was yelling at his staff while customers walked in Image
dude keeps cracking "jokes" about Gordon Ramsay like dude's from some Scottish backwater and, yeah, he was born there, but he hasn't sounded like it for as long as I have been aware of him

*googles* yeah, dude grew up in the West Midlands and sounds like it
there's a great big "quiet" sign in the kitchen and

uh

have you BEEN in a real professional kitchen

Gordon is checking in with the kitchen staff like Image
there is a ROCK IN THE RAVIOLI
"like frozen astroturf"
dude had fucking Bleu cheese in his freezer

WHY WOULD YOU PUT BLEU CHEESE IN A FREEZER
"I gotta cook right now"
"I wish you would!"
Gordon told him that his french onion soup didn't have enough onion

so he chopped up some raw onion and tossed it in
now I want some french onion soup
it's a two-parter

if it wasn't for Amy's Baking Co. I would struggle to believe that anyone owning and operating a restaurant could be in this level of denial
holy shit

"When you [Gordon] were having lunch the guy behind you wanted to send it back but he didn't want Joe yelling at him"

"If people see his vehicle outside they'll go somewhere else because they don't want him at their table bothering them"
it's so rich and warming on a cold day

and, unlike a lot of similarly filling and satisfying dishes, it's actually not very bad for you; mostly, it depends on how much butter and sugar you add to caramelize the onions
if you want to own a restaurant? fine! that's great, restaurants are wonderful! hell, in classical Rome, it used to be that restaurants and food stands and such were how you ate, because only the richest could afford to have a kitchen in their homes!

HOWEVER
if you're not a restauranteur, a chef, something like that? hire good people and let them do their job.

good servers are worth their weight in gold. a good chef, dedicated to the food? brilliant.

but also taste the food, listen to them, and don't let them take you for a ride.
also, I learned recently that "idiot sandwich" was from a comedy skit, and people will show up at, like, book signings with sliced bread and beg him to call them an idiot sandwich
Gordon: "Every time I smell BS, I'm coming to you."
Joe: "Can I interject something?"
Gordon: "I'm busy." [walks away]
oh my god I want to physically drag this man out of his restaurant
Gordon kicked the dude out of the kitchen entirely
like I said: I have no business running a restaurant or anything like that, even though I'm a markedly better cook than the average person, but the difference is that I know that
let's just hope this dude can stay out of his own way
signs point to "no"

he was back in the kitchen in a follow-up visit months later
and now, in dishonor of Amy and Sonny apparently getting ready to open a bakery in Israel, it's time for the second Amy's Baking Co episode, when the producers' claws came out ImageImageImageImage
er, Sammy, rather
Gordon walked out after their repeated demonstrable incorrigibility and intransigence, but now they claim that Amy pulled the plug and kicked them out during the dinner service Gordon watched

Which doesn't explain why the cameras were still set up the following morning
They also claim that the crew sabotaged their POS systems, which was why Sammy was struggling with it

sure, Jan
oh hey @arthaey had 0.3 seconds of fame in this episode Image
"I'm not in denial about anything!"
there really is no way to summarize the rants that Amy went on in the follow-up interview

well, not the content

the tone of it is "Amy but more so"
it should not be a surprise to anyone that the place closed and they wound up living in Israel after Samy (I think I have it right now) got deported

I still suspect it was a money laundering front, but it's just my guess, not an assertion
currently watching an episode of the UK edition of Kitchen Nightmares, about a place called Bonapartes in Silsden

the blogger I refer to for summaries and outcomes describes it as a "wine bar come restaurant", a hypercorrection that amuses me
see, it's supposed to be cum, as in the Latin preposition meaning "with," but because of the homonymic slang term that's derived from a euphemism for orgasm, they took a phrase that means "wine bar and restaurant" and invented a neologism to avoid NSFW tagging
oh, hey, speaking of NSFW, go ahead and check out @Oglaf because it's that time of year: the good kind of TSA, the True Slut Adventures!

(I was reminded of this by my phone keyboard suggestion for what should follow NSFW: Oglaf)
anyway, this absolute train wreck features an owner who apparently couldn't manage a dinner party for four including herself, a head chef who can't cook an omelet*, and a refrigerator of horrors
* I can't cook an omelet, I always end up with scrambled eggs, but I'm not trying to be a head chef
oh god he managed to set his croutons on fire
my god, dude couldn't fuckin handle dinner service for four with Chef Gordon doing some of the work, I don't know how he thinks he can be a head chef
dude kicked ass on Valentine's Day dinner service with Gordon's hand firmly on his shoulder, but a month later and it's all gone to shite again
apparently, the owner sold off the restaurant and wine bar but didn't get enough to clear her debts, so she wound up homeless and jobless before getting arrested for drunk driving

she's now living on state benefits

the clueless soi-disant chef hasn't exactly done well either
he kept omitting Bonapartes from his resume and getting fired when people found out who he was

also got arrested for drunk driving

the owner sued the show alleging that they'd caused all the problems and the show was staged, but it was dismissed
a newspaper printed those allegations, and Gordon successfully sued them for £75,000 in damages

gods, restaurants are hard enough to get off the ground when you know what you're doing, let alone when you're making it up as you go along
at least the sous chef, who had something of a clue, has wound up doing well for himself; he's now the head chef at an area bistro
now the Walnut Tree inn, in Lan… Llandd… in Wales

*googles*

Llanddewi Ysgyryd

there, much clearer
apparently it has a Michelin star, but the head chef who earned that star, Stephen Terry, left, and they've been limping along with the front-of-house manager & sommelier, Franco Mattioli as the acting head chef

they're currently interviewing a second potential head chef
Gordon is going so far to keep Francesco (correction from earlier; Franco Taruschio was the prior owner) out of the kitchen as to put down a line of tape and telling him not to cross it
oh, and both of the interviews for head chef were disasters; the first one wanted a salary of £30k but served them raw pasta, and the second one delivered food that was cooked but tasted like aged ass, apparently

"£22,000? I wouldn't pay him 22,000 lira," Gordon says
(for those of you too young to remember, the lira had a valuation such that L. 22k ≈ £9.50 or so; this was filmed just a couple of years after Euro day, so it would have been fresh enough in people's minds to be understandable)
(as I recall, at the time, the Daily Show would report weekend box office takings in Italian lira, but that was over a decade before The Avengers set an incomprehensibly high benchmark for box office, so that "200 billion lira" sounded a lot more impressive)
Gordon went into town to find out why nobody was going to this restaurant

Franco was beloved, but they view Francesco's management as overpriced and underwhelming
he's also unwilling to consider either of the highly talented chefs for head chef
well, they interviewed a guy named Spencer Henry for the head chef job, and they like him

he's a sous chef at a London restaurant with a Michelin star
could have done without the striptease
one thing Gordon does when he's excited that I hope he never gets conscious of because it's adorable: he'll bounce on the balls of his feet
correction: Spencer Ralph

what a name
Gordon is trying to get this guy to understand that his menu prices are too high and he's just not listening

it's basically this:
postmortem: the Walnut Tree Inn is now co-owned by head chef Shaun Hill and a local hotelier, who bought the place in late 2007 after it closed in February of the same year; they regained the Michelin star in 2010 and have retained it since
Francesco is now managing La Petite Maison in Mayfair, head chef Spencer went to The Swan Inn in Chiddingfold, and Stefano, who quit when Spencer was hired, is now at Osteria Emilia in London
you are correct, sir! I've never needed sugar because a lot of my cooking is "walk away for an hour to let my back rest" but many home recipes prescribe sugar to jump-start the caramelization
back to that vegetarian restaurant in Paris

if you're familiar with the Parisian palate you already know that this is an uphill battle

zut alors! aliments sans viande? nous sommes français, pas des imbéciles affamés maigres!
"It's a blessing in disguise that meat hasn't been cooked in this kitchen. With hygiene standards this low, they would've been wheeling out customers by the coffin load."
Gordon knows that vegetarians are too rare in France to really support a restaurant, so he's trying to see if maybe the tourists are a better target

the first person he goes to is like, "no, I'm not a vegetarian, I'm Italian"
like, Western and Northern Europe are packed full of cooking traditions in which meat is integral, be it cow, pig, chicken, or seafood

the only pockets of vegetarianism you're likely to find are, like East, SE, and South Asian communities where Buddhism and Hinduism are common
even then, assimilationist pressures mean that they're less likely to be vegetarian than people in the old country
he found one Italian "vegetarian," who clarifies that he still eats a little fish
their part-time morning chef says that she never puts salt on anything because she's vegetarian

Gordon is not impressed
Gordon spent three years in Paris working under French chefs and his French shows it, he's very comfortable and fluent in the language
good God, nobody in this restaurant seems to actually care
oh god the postmortem on this one is wild
but we'll save that one for later

in the meantime, Gordon is dead set on proving that the restaurant should be open for weekday lunches, so he's opening it by himself without the owner Rachel's knowledge
he says that he always wanted a restaurant in Paris but unfortunately it's a fuckin vegetarian restaurant
for lunch service he's making tomato soup with cheese on toast

self note: learn to make tomato soup from scratch
"je suis dans le merde"
he served 75 fucking people in lunch service by himself

€450 at €6 per person

now you know he's the real fucking deal
Rachel's father, who is invested in the business to the tune of €300,000, has found a young and hungry Scottish chef who is eager to prove herself
her name is India Innes, and, yes, she reads as white to me

here's Gordon, Rachel, and India Image
he went and pointed out the flat he lived in while he was working in Paris, where he'd sit in the window over a baguette and think about recipes
"Paris screams sex, glamour, indulgence, and hedonism, everything vegetarian food isn't but needs to be."
tits! so many tits!

they went to a can-can show
in the background of one shot there's a partially visible Ratatouille poster

this amuses me
"We've enlisted a few of Paris' finest tarts."

[cut to: can-can dancers, this time fully clothed]
India fucks girls, I'm certain of it
have found confirmation that she married a woman and now has kids, works as a caterer for expensive parties
(female chefs tend to be queer at a much higher rate than the general population)
yeah, Rachel still doesn't seem to actually give a meaningful fuck

she gets a waitress at the last possible second

her father is way, way more invested in the restaurant succeeding
Six weeks after leaving the business in a good position, when Gordon comes back, the restaurant is permanently shuttered

India went home to get her belongings so that she could get properly settled, and in the days she was gone, the kitchen became an absolute nightmare mess
it took her four days to clean, working by herself, because Rachel was nowhere to be found

she did one lunch service with Rachel's father Brian, and that was it, Brian threw in the towel and is selling the business

fortunately, Gordon gave India a job in London
she became head chef at different restaurants across the UK before landing back in her hometown of Edinburgh, where she quit restaurant work in 2017 to devote time to her wife and children

Brian sold off the business to try to recoup some of the losses
Rachel saddled him with all the debt, and when Gordon upbraided her about how much she took advantage of her father's generosity, to the point of abusing it, she just up and walked out
according to a British tabloid, so take it with all the salt, her next gig was as a €200+ per night prostitute, and she quite enjoyed it

according to the article, she used footage from Kitchen Nightmares to drum up clients

which, if true, then I'm happy for her
it's better that she's in a line of work she enjoys rather than something she obviously saw as a burden and had no enthusiasm for

maybe she even paid back her father, who knows

at least we know India did quite well for herself
WELP
back to US S5E3, and the restaurant owner has just called an ambulance for a customer who ate rotten lobster
the head chef is clearly relieved when he tells his crew that nothing leaves the kitchen unless it's in a garbage bag
the deep cleaning and remodeling actually seems to have reinvigorated the owner, who loved the place but was resigned to the suck
postmortem: both Sal's Pizzeria and Mama Maria's are still open! John, the owner, kept all of Gordon's changes along with some items from the old menu at customer request, and Yelp reviews are mostly quite positive, though apparently the take-out menu is underwhelming
and now for Le Bistro, a South Florida restaurant run by an autocratic dick
one of the cameras got a shot of some very rare steak

and it reminds me of a trailer bit from a Catherine Zeta-Jones movie where she storms out of a kitchen with a raw steak on a serving fork and slams it down on a diner's plate, asking if it's rare enough for him
trust me when I say that chefs would VASTLY prefer to undercook a fine steak than overcooking it
oh no

Gordon managed to chip a tooth on some duck bone, or nearly so
okay, back after an interlude to sharpen my chef's knife
oh my god this dude

he's yelling and swearing at everyone, but there's a difference between him and Gordon

When Gordon rips into someone, it's because he cares about food, about customers, about the craft

This dude is doing it because he's completely insecure about his cooking
And he's blaming everyone else for everything that's going wrong: the staff, the customers, his wife who he just swore at a lot
This dude may be the closest Gordon ever came to quitting before ABC
speaking of, let's have a cartoon break

and as much as I despise and loathe Dr fucking Phil, he has my empathy here
and this compilation of servers who deserve better is a nice palate cleanser
okay I feel sufficiently girded for the rest of this Le Bistro episode
Gordon rented a yacht to take Andy and Elin out and meet with former customers

dude got sarcastic and defensive
this is what Gordon did to make a point:

an hour into dinner service, he went to a seafood restaurant nearby, ordered an entree to go, and had it in hand in less than fifteen minutes, and it was "fucking delicious"
for the relaunch, in addition to the usual overnight remodeling and a new menu tuned for local tastes and to be quick to get out of the kitchen, Gordon went and secured dinner guests including the police chief, the fire chief, a local food critic of some note, a morning DJ, and…
the city commissioner, figuring this density of influential VIPs will get the word out if Andy doesn't fuck it up
Oh thank fuck

dude almost shoved his head up his ass again so Gordon gave him a swift kick to remind him which end goes up
postmortem: Le Bistro is still open, Andy continues to trust his sous-chef and work brilliantly with him, and the Yelp reviews are glowing

Andy and Elin even looked years younger in the follow-up footage
current episode: Burger Kitchen in LA

and hoo boy this one is a doozy

the backstory, which the producers may or may not have been aware of at the time of filming, is even juicier than the dry-ass frozen patties are not

#sapphixywatches #kitchennightmares
anyway, what's presented in the episode is that Alan Saffron is so in love with meat that he wanted to open up his own burger restaurant, and so he used his $250,000 inheritance to fund it
when he started running short before it even opened, he, as trustee, took another $250,000 from his son Daniel's trust fund, which was inherited from Alan's father, without Daniel's knowledge or consent

he says on camera that he doesn't understand why Daniel resents him
they've got a menu dictated by Alan, who insists on using frozen Australian wagyu beef patties even though they come out absurdly dry, and he rejects seasoning

they also tend to come out underdone
Alan's wife Jen is constantly interfering in the kitchen, pushing back on any changes executive chef David makes to the recipes

it also comes out that they owe David back pay
the expediting is absolute chaos
(for those not up on lingo: the expediter is the one who calls out orders to the kitchen, checks plates, and calls for servers to pick up orders; the position is also called hot plate)
the expediter also checks out any food that comes back uneaten and passes along customer complaints along with any insights from uneaten food
watching this breathtakingly, astoundingly dysfunctional kitchen like
this is very much a "no names are changed because nobody is innocent" situation, except maybe for Daniel's girlfriend
oh god it's a two-parter

I need a break before diving back in
okay here we go

comments will be sparse because I'm going to be chopping up some onions
Alan was complaining about Yelpers and asserted that there was a conspiracy by Yelp against him, so Gordon arranged for a bunch of Yelpers to come to an outside venue (a small theater) and tell him face to face
Gen very performatively fell asleep while these people were talking
gods, Wendy is a fucking hero
they're talking now about Alan's father

we're going to be talking about Alan's father

a LOT

here's a teaser: the Wikipedia article on him

seriously: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abe_Saffr…
when Chef Gordon is touching his face while saying doneness levels, he's teaching them what each different level of doneness feels like when you poke it with a finger

you can also do this with the palm of your hand; I'll explain later
Daniel is a brilliant expediter when his parents aren't constantly sabotaging him

that he's able to do that with the confusing and messy paper tickets they're using is impressive
compare the give of the patty to the give of the flesh at these locations on your palm:

bottom of the hand, across from the thumb: rare
ball of the thumb: medium rare
base of index and middle fingers: medium
base of ring and pinky fingers: medium well
center: well done Image
that is a slick new POS that should make everyone's life infinitely easier
oh yes, I definitely need to learn how to make tzatziki sauce
Alan desperately needs to stop helping
and the follow-up footage suggests that it was doing very well, but here in the postmortem, I am compelled to report that it closed, and not too long after Kitchen Nightmares; it was sold in August 2011, even before the episode's airdate in November
and here's where it gets juicy: there's a very real possibility that the Saffrons, or at least Alan, were not exactly on the level

see, Alan wrote a book about his crime boss father, and he gave Gordon a copy of it
and one blogger smelled a rat and did some digging: web.archive.org/web/2014010618…

Alan may have lied a lot about the money situation, and Daniel definitely had more cash than what Alan took, and Alan's other kids also had money
Daniel made some statements on Yelp which suggest that he wanted to run a burger restaurant with his dad, dreamed about it in fact, although that doesn't preclude Alan taking the money without permission
Also, Alan apparently owned a steakhouse back in Australia, before he left the country for the US, so Daniel was wrong to say they had no experience

The gist of it is that Alan was trying to sell his story as the son of the biggest Aussie crime boss of the 20th century
Apparently his book did very well down under, but he wanted more, and Aussie press described him as an "agent" of some kind, I assume a talent agent

Again, I can't begin to guess how much Daniel, Gen, or Wendy knew at the time
but if Daniel was a useful dupe and not in on it, it could explain why the restaurant was sold so precipitously

the space is now occupied by a Middle Eastern restaurant that's apparently quite good
Alan Saffron passed away last year; I haven't seen anything in my casual googling about what Daniel or Wendy or Gen are doing now
now for another juicy two-parter

La Galleria 33 in Boston's North End, one of the many, many, many Italian restaurants in the area

seriously, the North End is even lousier with Italian restaurants than southeastern PA or southern CT, and that's saying a LOT
admittedly, I'm watching this because of the server Sara, who has absolutely no fucks left to give
so far:

- Rita (owner 1) smokes
- Lisa (owner 2) drinks
- the busboy has convinced himself he's the manager
- Doug, the head chef, doesn't care, and he's not caring as hard as he can

by which I mean he dropped a chicken on the floor and started cooking it again
fortunately for everyone involved, Gordon kept him from serving a customer floor chicken

It also turns out that Doug and Rita used to be married

Rita is adamant that every Italian restaurant on the North End uses frozen ravioli

which, uh, no
currently waiting for my back to hurt less so I can finish preparing the ingredients for this salad

in the meantime, I'm kinda amazed at how much denial they're involved in
one customer sent back her ravioli because it was cold

owner Rita decided to go back to the table and argue with her
Rita, during an interview: "Am I in denial? I don't think I am."

That's… that's generally how denial works, yes.
Lisa just walked out
Gordon told her that if she goes, he goes

So she walked out
this was after he showed them all the rotten food in the basement storage area, and the vast volumes of cooked and frozen pasta in the freezers
Gordon convinced her to come back but she immediately went for a glass of wine
my only commentary so far on part two is just me rubbing my face in exasperation
one of the waiters scratches his balls in the dining room and he says it doesn't make him a bad waiter 🤢🤢🤢🤢
we're back to /popcorn watching the owners and staff yell at each other
Sara ended up walking out on this staff meeting

but at least Gordon got a commitment from everyone to do better and to actually follow the bosses' rules, while Rita and Lisa are going to quit smoking and drinking, respectively, during service hours
aww

Rita just did the most Italian thing I can imagine and made Chef Gordon an apology tiramisu
Gordon just introduced a consulting chef who will be training the kitchen crew on the new menu and I swear Lisa's eyes actually made physical heart shapes when she saw him
aside from issues with the POS and a waiter who had a brief craniorectal inversion, the relaunch worked, and La Galleria 33 was open for over six years after Kitchen Nightmares

L'Osteria, their parents' restaurant, is still in business
Nicky *deep breath* DiPietrantonio, Lisa and Rita's father, passed away in 2016; his obituary lists him as the owner of both La Galleria 33 and L'Osteria

Someone named Daniella DiPietrantonio was listed as a co-owner in an article from earlier this year
Perhaps she's another daughter? Information is scarce but it appears that the restaurant is still doing well (considering the pandemic) and still in the family
Bouncing back to Kitchen Nightmares UK, this episode is about The Granary in rural Hampshire

"[Successful businessman] Nigel's dream project is failing, and it's an all too familiar tale in my trade. Running a successful business doesn't mean you can run a restaurant."
the head chef is what we in the US would call an ex-con, who found his path out of recidivism by learning to cook when he was incarcerated

he's made a point of hiring teenage boys who get in trouble with the law to keep them from going down his road
thus, he has an assistant chef nicknamed "Chav"

(if you're not familiar with the term, it's, uh, not flattering)
the owner, Nigel, wanted it to be upscale and "modern British" cuisine, but mostly it feels stuffy and it's clear nobody involved is terribly clear on what "modern British" might be
Nigel cannot do the one thing he needs to do: delegate

nobody can be in four places at once, but that's what his inability to delegate well is effectively requiring him to do
he's got the spine of a jellyfish when it comes to making sure the servers are actually doing things right
every time I see an owner acting like they know more about running a restaurant than Gordon, I'm like "y'all can't keep one restaurant in the black, let alone the dozens he owns"

no, he's not running them day-to-day anymore, but he's still fully capable of doing so
he proves that he's fully got his chops despite most of his daily life being more about managing media as a celebrity chef and looking at big picture plans

even the ones he's closed, it's not because they're hemorrhaging money, as far as I can tell
most of them, it was things like a lease running out of strategic shifts in priorities, although he closed Amaryllis because it was too entangled with the suicide of the former head chef, as far as I can tell
*or strategic shifts
Gordon had the restaurant put on a food fair to make over the local image, to make it an accessible local eatery featuring local food rather than the exclusive club Nigel originally intended
there's a petting zoo, and Gordon made Nigel put on a chicken costume Image
this is easily the saddest relaunch I've seen yet

Martin, the head chef, is again going mute as he feels overwhelmed, and the kitchen is falling apart
every so often I get reminded of the language gap between America and the UK, such as seeing "homemade pork faggots" on the menu
The Granary managed to pull its shit together by the time Gordon made his return at the six week mark, with sous-chef Peter ready to take over as head chef as Martin was departing to lead a government-funded program to help at-risk boys (14-16) by giving them culinary training
unfortunately, in 2008, two weeks after the episode aired, a man named Richard Bowman broke inside and set fire to the building after someone allegedly paid him £2,500 to burn it down, and with the insurance company arguing it was an insurance scam, Nigel and his wife got nothing
Bowman wasn't apprehended until 2018, when he was sentenced to five years in prison for the act and, I assume, related charges

Nigel's marriage broke down from the stress, although his ex-wife, Sally-Ann, narrowly avoided being caught in the blaze
She'd planned to spend the night in the building but stayed home to care for their son, who was feeling poorly that night
well this is an ominous thumbnail that looks more like a true crime documentary than an attempt to resuscitate a dying restaurant Image
this is about a restaurant Sushi Ko, and the dude in the thumbnail above looking like the one everyone thought was just really quiet is Akira Hatae, a Japanese born-and-trained sushi chef who progressed from head chef to manager to owner
the photo dates back decades, when he was young and hungry and a phenomenal sushi chef, when he was happy and in love with his work

now he's depressed because patronage fell off a cliff and he's got no idea why
wow, this dude is just … he's given up completely
he's serving frozen sashimi in a restaurant in Thousand Oaks
I don't want to get into the unhygienic nightmare that I'm seeing

I mean, my god, fears of food poisoning from eating raw fish at sushi restaurants are vastly overblown, but COME ON
Gordon put Akira behind the sushi bar actually being a sushi chef, and also got him all new refrigerators, a new deep fryer, and a new range, and he's found himself again

Then Gordon had to kick Lisa's ass (Lisa being his wife) so that she wouldn't drag him back down
Idle curiosity: I wonder if his kids are bilingual

either way, I imagine that they would have trouble really hearing his accent when he speaks English

my father had a pronounced Southern accent his entire life and I could never hear it
the only thing that I noticed was the intrusive "r" when he said "wash" ("warsh")

I wonder if my niblings can hear their dad's accent
Akira went right back into his old bad habit of trying to run the entire restaurant on his own
Lisa as hostess is wearing a lovely sakura yukata

for once it's not weebish or appropriative
the episode ends on a positive note, with Akira and Lisa looking for a location that's less expensive, but unfortunately they had to close the doors only five months after the relaunch; they'd fallen too far down the hole to dig themselves back out
The YouTube channel I'm watching these on is run by streaming distributor FilmRise, and I'm not sure how they arrived at this episode order; it's definitely not broadcast order, at least for the first two seasons

they've consolidated S1 and S2 into a single 22-episode season
and the S2 episodes might be in broadcast order, but the S1 episodes definitely aren't

example:
The Secret Garden: broadcast episode 10, FilmRise episode 1
Lela's: broadcast episode 8, FilmRise episode 2
Sebastian's: broadcast episode 6, FilmRise episode 3
looking at the geography, I suspect this might be production order, given that the first three FilmRise episodes are all locations in SoCal (Moorpark, Pomona, Toluca Lake)
anyway, I'm now on FilmRise S1E4, broadcast S1E7, Finn McCool's

Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicized spelling Finn McCool, or Fionn, son of Cumhaill, is a central figure in Irish mythology and folklore, being the principle character of the Fenian Cycle
This Finn McCool's is an Irish pub and family restaurant, owned and operated by a retired cop who apparently cashed in his pension to fund it, along with a mortgage on his house, and his sons work there for him, Jason as the supportive bartender, Brian as the asshole chef
Jason's wife works as a server as well

The family surname is Mazzio, which just goes to show how intertwined Irish and Italian families in the NY area can be, despite the often vitriolic relationships between

When Gordon arrives, the restaurant is deep in the red, as is typical
one of the waitresses is immediately in lust with Gordon
"I don't think he even likes the water."
Gordon invited the local fire station to the restaurant as his guest and they were visibly squirming to figure out how to decline
head chef Brian is a fractal technicolor asshole
he just walked out because he couldn't stand being shown up by Gordon

he thought he was hot shit, and Gordon proved he wasn't even cold diarrhea
the relaunch is perhaps too successful

the kitchen is overwhelmed and wait times are out of hand
they manage to pull it out, and the food critic is impressed
postscript: the restaurant was sold a couple of years later, but the family stayed on, until Brian left to open a restaurant called Shuckers with a friend; he's now a chef at Sundays at the Bay with a catering business on the side (probably a necessity in the Hamptons)
the new owners had to close the restaurant in 2012 due to lease problems

Jason reportedly works as a courier in the area, and Buddy, after surviving a heart attack, opened up a private investigation firm
after checking the blog, yeah, I'm 100% certain that this is production order

the three California episodes were filmed in February 2007
next in production order, third in broadcast order; The Mixing Bowl in Bellmore, New York, on the South Shore of Long Island, in Nassau County
trivia: the county was named for the House of Nassau, a German aristocratic house from which the ruling houses of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg descend
If you really want to get into the weeds, the House of Orange-Nassau, the current ruling house of the Netherlands, is technically a cadet branch, while the Grand Duke of Luxembourg is the head of the main branch of the extant family, following cognatic descent
"cognatic," in this context, means "counting both male and female lines of descent"

However, as German aristocratic families followed agnatic (male-line) descent, the true house of Nassau went extinct in 1985 with the death of Grand Duchess Charlotte
speaking of the South Shore, every so often I get reminded Long Beach exists and shows that humans are ridiculous

LOOK AT THAT

if a sea god sneezed it'd be entirely underwater Image
back from a break

so here's what's happening:

the place used to be hopping, now it's a ghost town

the chef/owner, Billy, has half given up; his wife, Lisa, who works as a server and is co-owner, wants it closed; and the manager, Mike, thinks he's King Shit
Mike: "To me [Gordon is] a god of the restaurant industry."

One, it's the hospitality industry*.

Two, Gordon Ramsay is arguably the most successful restauranteur in human history. And it starts with him being a chef who is passionate about food.
* you have no idea how much my Norse reconstructionist soul hurts at the idea of industrialized hospitality, but capitalism.
My biggest problem with Gordon remains his frequent reliance on anti-fatness to attack people

like, one of my rules is that I'm always a little bit suspicious of a chef who doesn't carry around a bit of pudge
Gordon looks like someone who used to be fatter but hits the gym religiously, tbh, so there's probably some internalized shit going on there, too
"Nobody wants to come away from lunch wanting to reek of garlic."

Speak for yourself, Gordo.
the chef did better than average for a lunch at one of these restaurants

his crab cakes were pretty good, and the rest of the food was unexciting but didn't make Gordon run to the bathroom to retch or anything
You know that episode of the Simpsons where Homer is trying to get the bowling alley more business?

yeah, that
Mike has spent a bunch of money on signs that scream "bargain basement shit food" when what actually gets asses in seats is *good fuckin food*
Gordon just put Mike's precious signs through a woodchipper

Mike looks like Gordon just kicked him in the puppy
I gotta say, though, Lisa and Billy are a striking couple Image
Mike, on the other hand, somehow looks even more like a potato than I do
Gordon to Mike: "Don't point at the customers. We're running a restaurant, not a fucking zoo."

Have I mentioned that this is uncensored? I love the unbleeped cluster f-bombs.
oh fuck Mike

he's a fucking parasite, vacuuming up 50% of the tips
oh wow they recruited New York Dragons players from the Arena Football League to drum up buzz

I really wish indoor football had more traction; in many ways, it's more legible and accessible than play on a full-size field, and because of that smaller field they do some wild shit
Mike double booked a bunch of reservations and tried to blame one of the waitresses
After Gordon sent him outside Mike started pulling his shit together, and Gordon even got terminally shy Billy to come out of the kitchen
The restaurant continued to do well in the months after, but ultimately closed in 2009

Billy is now president of Jr Alta Foods, a food distributor for the hospitality industry
the next episode (again, production order) is Campania, owned and operated by Joe Cerniglia

I'm going to go ahead and spoil the postmortem for you, because in this case it's literal and I don't want anyone to be caught unawares: Campania did excellent business afterwards
but in September 2010 Cerniglia died of suicide eight days after selling the restaurant to a holding company (I assume to make things easier for his heir(s))

He was in a relationship with a pastry chef at the restaurant at the time

The restaurant closed the following January
Sage, an Italian/American restaurant, opened in the space a couple of months later, and is very well-reviewed on Yelp
argh the narrator mispronounces "Cerniglia"

it's "chair-nili-ya", not "sirnigglia"
oh god Joe mispronounces his own last name

and he says "I'm southern Italian" to Gordon
"too much garlic" Gordon says

I don't understand
honestly, what is it with Gordon complaining about garlic? is it his a part of his English upbringing? did garlic piss in his cereal?

garlic makes food better
Gordon: "there's too much garlic in this Italian food"

me: [eats an entire bulb of raw garlic while holding eye contact]
no, really, when I'm crushing or chopping garlic for cooking I'll often eat a raw clove
they stock their (slightly broken) fridges like they're feeding a packed house every lunch and dinner service and Joe sets portion sizes that'd make *me* want a doggie bag

that's not easy to do

I don't actually eat huge amounts daily but if you put it in front of me I'll eat it
you're correct, of course! I was trying to communicate the pronunciation to L1 English speakers who don't necessarily read IPA
Joe's wife is absolutely gorgeous and their house is pristine and very upper middle class despite him being hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole

But his personality and behavior around his staff mean I'm not surprised that he was schtupping an employee
obviously, I'm not trying to blame him in any way, and I suspect the affair, like the party atmosphere at his restaurant, was only another way for him to try to cope with his depression
and, yes, I feel confident that he had depression, in the same way that I'm confident someone presenting with hemiplegia is having some kind of ischemic event affecting the brain
anyway, I don't blame him for being skeptical of the new menu

I have certain expectations of any Italian restaurant in the greater NY tri-state area
like, at a minimum, they make a bunch of pasta dough before service and then cut it to order, or premake the most popular kinds

if they have filled pastas on the menu, I expect the filling will be made during prep time
also, I was googling for gnocchi recipes just now, and this popped up: Is gnocchi pasta or potato?
y'all know me by now: my answer is "yes, that's right"
oh no

someone's about to set off Gordon's enrage phase
they complained about the food, Gordon checked it over and found it was made to recipe, and Gordon told the woman leading the group that she's talking out of her rear

when some customers came in while she was yelling at him, he said "sorry about the old bag"
one woman said "it was like eating Ragu" where Joe's mother overheard it

she was like "I want to strangle that witch"

I'm mildly surprised she didn't flay the woman alive

you have to understand: for Italian-Americans, that's a deathly insult
another customer called her out

"if it was that bad why did you keep eating? you just want it for free, you greedy bitch"

never change, north Jersey, never change
"yeah, my fucking cunt, Italian"

I want have this ground up and sprinkled over every meal
you know, as many jokes about New Jersey as my southwestern Connecticut upbringing obliges me to make, there really is no place like it

which is, on the balance, probably for the best
next episode: Peter's, broadcast order S1E1, production order S1E8

also the only one, near as I can tell, with a British narrator, as a bridge between this series and UK series Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
fun thing about the "uncensored" version

there's something fucky with the audio masters, I suspect, because occasionally there's a bleep, which is hilarious when it occurs right before a "fuck" or "cunt"
like, it's not a swear they're bleeping out, it's a cognitohazard or the Black Speech of Mordor or something
it's owned by one Tina Pellegrino, but her brother Peter "Pasta" (seriously) Pellegrino is the manager and host and thinks he's a co-owner because it was named after him
Peter is a caricature of a wannabe mobster from Long Island who in reality is at most a second cousin to an actual made man
Peter, who I'm just going to call Penis from now on, bought himself a new suit instead of buying the restaurant a new oven

half the kitchen equipment doesn't even work
Penis rolled up 40 minutes late to pick up Gordon

in his conspicuously expensive Mercedes
Penis: "what's not to like about the lobster ravioli?"
Robert (head chef): "It's from Restaurant Depot."
Gordon can hear all the arguing in the kitchen and he looks utterly flabbergasted over it
"Bread rolls…" [thwack thwack] "… bread rocks…"
"there's onions growing on top onions"
Penis doesn't want to be held accountable for the state of the kitchen, which should probably be cleansed in fire
the kitchen crew is deep cleaning and Penis is standing around drinking coffee
Penis isn't just spending money on himself directly, he's also blowing the restaurant's money on comped meals
Penis treats the restaurant as his personal piggy bank

he's not a manager, he's a fucking parasite
Gordon put Penis in the kitchen along with their father while filling up the dining room for lunch service so that he could understand how shit the kitchen equipment was
a debt collector showed up to try to get money from Penis, and he just tried to pick a fight with the guy

I wonder how he imagines this ending
the initial relaunch went well in spite of Penis getting in the way constantly

Gordon is letting the ambulatory phallus have it with both barrels and head chef Robert looks like he's getting a lap dance from the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader squad Image
(or maybe from the Dallas Cowboys, I dunno, although he doesn't ping my gaydar at all)
the Human Phallus got his shit together enough to stay on as manager

the restaurant closed a year and a half later (December 2008); Yogi Pellegrino, Tina and Dickhead's father, passed away in 2009

apparently Trouser Salami did, in fact, work for the Bonannos at one point
which would explain why his creditors had a definite aura of loan shark

but I doubt he ever became the mobster he posed as
anyway, I watched a few episodes sans commentary last night while I was cooking (a very delicious chicken tomato bean soup), so we're picking back up with the tail end of FilmRise episode S1E11, broadcast episode S2E2, the Handlebar in Mount Sinai, New York
We join as Dee Snider (ugh) rolls up on his bike to lead a motorcycle rally to promote the relaunch as a gastropub

The owners, by the way, are Billy and Carolyn, and the head chef is named Melissa, and they're frustrated, resigned, and apathetic, respectively
Melissa even says several times that she doesn't want to be a chef, but I think that comes far more from a lack of confidence than actual antipathy towards the job
also, I'm partially withdrawing my "ugh" about Dee Snider because:
(I was under the impression that he'd gone full Christofascist)

They're in the relaunch night and Melissa is going back to being quiet under stress, and that's not what she needs to be doing as a chef
I've told the story of how I accidentally got Dee Snider to say the phrase "eructation montage" on the air before, which is somewhat embarrassing because it was a *flatulence* montage
thankfully, Melissa remembered that she had two other cooks there to help her so that she didn't have to cook everything herself
Gordon visited the restaurant again a year later, and it was still doing very well; shortly afterwards, Billy and Carolyn sold it

Seeing as Billy passed away from cancer in 2015, I'm thinking I know why they chose to sell it
Next up is Trobiano's, in Great Neck, New York

it's yet another troubled Italian eatery run by an arrogant prick
(this is S1E12, or S2E4 in broadcast order)
Anthony, the head chef and co-owner, started off doing really well with the place, but ran into problems with not being able to keep up with demand in the kitchen
the co-owners are his girlfriend Tiffany's parents, Joe and Pat, who have sunk half a million dollars into the place and will lose everything if it fails

as a result, they all work at the place daily, Tiffany as a server, Pat as hostess, and Joe as manager (I think)
the first thing Gordon sees is a sign advertising the early bird special, which he mistakes for a for sale sign

s̶o̶m̶e̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶$̶2̶0̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶o̶r̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶e̶g̶g̶p̶l̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶m̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶z̶z̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶c̶k̶s̶
"chef Ramsay was making me feel like it's my fault the restaurant is struggling"

there's a reason for that, hoss
the early bird crowd is, as one would expect, retirees, and they're not exactly sprightly

one of them has dozed off
"looks like chicken, tastes like shrimp… or shit"
"I was furious at Chef Ramsay for saying that my food is shit"

stop making shit food, then
while the family is having an after-hours debate in the bar, Gordon is looking through the kitchen and ye gods
you can tell where the editors and producers decided to up the drama by making it look like Ramsay was walking away entirely when he was clearly just taking a walk to get some air and have some one-on-one time with Anthony

he's not wearing his coat!
okay, break time while I assemble some food to eat
and back!
they're now at a farm where Gordon is having them milk a cow so they can learn how to make fresh mozzarella

it's actually not that difficult, especially if you have a commercial kitchen to work in where you can have very precise temperature control
but for me it's just a bit too finicky to want to do it myself
also, a reminder that dairy cows MUST be milked to stay healthy

they produce so much milk that if they go unmilked they can easily develop infections, and, either way, as any person who has breastfed a child can attest, it can be very uncomfortable to be full
"teats are not your strong point"
oh, and fresh mozzarella is unbelievably tasty
Gordon's relaunch is, as usual, a success with some hiccups, but this one also ends with Anthony proposing to Tiffany, which she accepts

and THEN

Gordon surprises them with a wedding ceremony and attire all ready for them to get married THAT NIGHT at the restaurant
the postscript is a little disheartening: the restaurant was seized for back taxes about seven months after Ramsey's visit, but Anthony and Tiffany are still married and have children now, and Anthony is still a working chef at New York Italian restaurants
next episode, after a break: Fiesta Sunrise, a West Nyack family-owned Mexican restaurant
and, as always, tips appreciated, especially right now when I've got meds to pick up

venmo.com/sapphixy
cash.me/$sapphixy
ko-fi.com/sapphixy
okay, Fiesta Sunrise, where it's baseline messy because Vic and Yolanda, having already had one restaurant that failed, needed Yolanda's daughter Patty to front the cash and credit to open this new one

Patty is thus the sole owner on paper, but Vic acts like he is
"It looks like Tijuana threw up in here. He has a stuffed chili pepper named Manuel that he moves around."
said chili pepper looks terrifying Image
Vic brought over the menu and the chefs from his previously failed restaurant, apparently without the slightest awareness of how this might have factored into that restaurant failed
WHAT THE FUCK Image
customers sent back the table chips for being tasteless and the server was just going to put them back in the drawer
*puts on pedant hat* technically, Gordon, that's not blood; blood is drained in the butchering process, and you should know that

that's myoglobin accumulating in the tray

*takes off hat* and it's still fucking alarming
they intercut shots of people eating with Gordon's discovery of the kitchen horrors
"You are a walking disaster!"
"I wouldn't trust you running a bath, let alone a restaurant!"
Gordon just ended service because of the state of the kitchen

he pointed to one dude and was like, "put that down, don't eat another bite"
back after an unplanned break
the kitchen was even more dire than previously discovered; it's not as dire as Dillion's/Purnima from the first season, but it's not far behind it, either
Gordon brought in a consulting chef, Julieta Ballesteros, who kinda pings my gaydar but only somewhat, like maybe she needs TikTok to discover her bisexuality, I dunno for sure
like right now she's burying the needle but when I googled her, her Instagram photos don't feel nearly as gay

I did find an interview where she mentions that she's married but doesn't elaborate; it was from 2013, so gay marriage was legal in New York at the time Image
"How the fuck do you burn nachos?!"
As is usual, the relaunch went well, with the mayor of Nyack in to try it out
No word on the final fate of Manuel the Chili Pepper

I hope he's doing well

Unfortunately, despite the successful relaunch, the restaurant closed in September 2008 due to unpaid taxes

What makes that really bad is that the restaurant was closed in 2007 for the same reason
I'm guessing that the $50,000 Patty's husband mentioned having to pay one month was the overdue tax bill
Next up: FRS1E13, or BCS2E7, Hannah and Mason's in scenic Cranberry, New Jersey.

*puts finger to ear* uh huh. huh, really? okay.

That's in Cranbury, New Jersey.
The owners, who are neither Hannah nor Mason, are instead head chef Chris and useless lump Brian.
The only reason Brian is involved is that he worked there under the previous owner with Chris and could front the other half of the cash to buy it.
They only open the restaurant three nights a week. Brian doesn't think they're losing business.
my god, they're like "I don't think the food is that bad"
once again Gordon is shutting a restaurant down because if he doesn't someone might die
Brian just straight up walked in the middle of dinner service because he didn't like how Gordon was talking to him
was afk for cooking 🥦🥘

head chef Chris was very skeptical of the menu changes, but the story the episode tells is that he came around and embraced them

however, a few months after filming, they reverted to the old menu and redecorated again; the restaurant closed in Feb 2010
Chris blamed Gordon's changes and the economic downturn, but the restaurant was already bouncing paychecks when Gordon arrived, and they reverted the changes, so 🤷‍♀️
and for the next commentary, we go to Sabatiello's in Stamford, CT

Stamford is the second most populous city in Connecticut, behind my hometown of Bridgeport, and its downtown is very shiny and glitzy while its residential areas tend to the wealthy Image
along with neighboring ultra-wealthy suburban town Greenwich, it's very much the Connecticut people who've never been to the state imagine

it definitely has a working class segment, but a fair number of them commute in from the poorer parts of Norwalk, or even from Bridgeport
when I was growing up in the Constitution State, I only ever made a trip to Stamford twice, both times when I was quite young, and my main impression was that they had a really big mall

anyway, the narrator annoys me here because he keeps pronouncing "Stamford" as "Stanford"
oh god please stop talking

you froze the lasagna and that makes it NOT FRESH
for once, the kitchen isn't a sanitary nightmare

except for where he's storing cooked chicken next to raw chicken
customer asks for her rack of lamb to be a little more done

Sammy, owner, tells chef Jose to just put it in a microwave and sends it back

the customer can tell it was microwaved and is unhappy about that

Sammy goes and argues with her
the fuck of it is that Sammy was a successful restauranteur and chef, but he's kinda fallen apart now that he's out of the kitchen, it seems to me
the first pass, Gordon gives them two specials, a homemade lasagna and a filet mignon carved tableside, and the chef is rushing while trying to do everything himself and Sammy is getting rather dickish about it all
indeed, Sammy jumping into the line and doing a lot of the cooking actually saved the relaunch dinner service

unfortunately, the restaurant closed in between the filming and the broadcast, and Sammy was arrested for vandalizing the interior of the restaurant prior to eviction…
and for credit card fraud

he also opened a pizzeria in December of 2008 that closed due to unpaid rent

the blog I check reports that he's working as a pizza chef at a place in New York, in the outer suburbs of the city
we're now on the Black Pearl, which started off as a successful downtown lobster shack in Manhattan, and then moved to midtown under a misguided ambition to become the premier lobster restaurant in the city
the highlight of this episode is this adorable and flamingly campy gay server Steven, who is, as I recall, a fairly successful casting agent in Hollywood now
Gordon complains about the Maine lobster roll being bland and owner David, the egotistical asshole of the three owners (the others are Brian, who seems like he'd rather be literally anywhere else, and Greg, who actually seems to give a damn but refuses to make decisions) protests
that an an authentic Maine lobster salad is just lobster and mayonnaise

Gordon is like, "I lived in Maine for three months, they have salt there!"

so I googled Maine lobster salad recipes

including one from a Kennebunkport newspaper ImageImageImageImage
"In a nutshell, Sleepy, Dopey, and Grumpy. And who am I? Snow fucking White?"
"There's supposed to be some sand in the clams and mussels. That's why there's a broth."

what the fuck, David
David is also selling Canadian lobster as Maine lobster

there's a reason Canadian lobsters are half the price, David
I feel like Gordon should bring a bush into the restaurant so David can physically beat around it
"You're so full of shit you could be a fucking politician."
(taking a short break)
back now
for the remodeling Gordon's people found a claw machine that's a lobster tank

it's ADORABLE
Gordon got a dude in a lobster costume and went down to Times Square with him, two of the three owners, and the server Steven to drum up interest, giving away T-shirts and signing autographs

Dopey (David) was like "I don't think it'll make difference"
Dopey also hates all of the new menu items Gordon introduced while the other two owners and the entire staff are moaning with pleasure
before relaunch dinner service, Gordon had Sleepy and Dopey sign an agreement that Greg would run the restaurant day to day, and he'd only consult with them on major decisions

Dopey can't stop complaining about the changes though the customers love the new vibe
"Homarus americanus my arsus"
Just four days after this episode aired, the Black Pearl closed

David was belligerent and contrary right through the end of the episode, and he blamed Gordon for the restaurant's closure, not the bland food or his own priggish behavior.
There's a video that unpacks a bunch of the aftermath:
You can also read the letter David wrote here: realitytvrevisited.com/2011/05/us-sea…
Apparently David went back to making terrible, passionless music, showing that he's at least consistently passionless
now we're in South Bend, Indiana, home of Notre Dame and a remarkably underwhelming restaurant called J Willy's

After sampling the food, Gordon stopped a table full of priests from eating their lunch because he didn't want to go to hell
Gordon has gone back to the kitchen, where the crew looks like central casting sent out three people answering the description of "yokel"
I shit you not, one of them is wearing a camouflage fishing hat
"It's an insult to fast food."
"Just let it all go!" one of the servers encourages an owner to throw out all the old bad food
I don't think he was much of a foodie, but okay Image
oh for fuck's sake, don't start backsliding
"We can keep them waiting, but we can't keep them waiting for that."
oh my god a customer literally got up and found her way into the kitchen to find out why the food was taking so long
"I've got a dining room full of locusts. They're eating everything but the plate."

(this is a good thing)
J Willy's won an award for their barbecue sauce, but, unfortunately, closed a year after filming due to declining receipts and increasing food costs

a coffee shop opened up in the building (what a fucking gigantic space for one), but that closed in 2015
the building is now gone

the other restaurant that two of the co-owners also owned closed as well, and they now do classic car restoration
we're now on Jack's Waterfront, a seafood restaurant in Saint Clair Shores, MI, in the Detroit metro area

As the name suggests, the restaurant is right on Lake St Clair, which is fed by St Clair River from Lake Huron, and in turn feeds into Lake Erie via the Detroit River
It's owned by three bodybuilders, unfortunately all men, Bill, Tammer, and Scott, and mismanaged by Tammer's father AJ. The head chef is Aaron, who is allergic to shellfish.

Let me say that again: the head chef at a seafood restaurant is allergic to shellfish.
Bill and Tammer had to ask Scott to become a silent partner because he keeps scaring customers and staff because he can't help looming

and he doesn't exactly look welcoming Image
Gordon meets with AJ, Scott, and Bill individually, and asks them what the problem is with the restaurant.

Bill: "The food sucks."
AJ: "I don't think anything is wrong. The restaurant is good."
Scott: "AJ. He's drinking all the time."

[pan to AJ drinking a big shot of ouzo]
JESUS FUCK

they're paying AJ $100,000 a year and basically all he appears to do is hit on female customers and drink
Scott is watching Gordon eat Image
"Why is 'crab' spelled with a k in the krab omelette?"
"Because it's not real crab meat." Image
correction: it's AJ that's deathly allergic to shellfish
Gordon just compared the fish in the fish and chips to a "breaded condom"
(took a short break for tea and GrayStillPlays)

Scott is … constipated? … over Gordon's reaction to the food Image
Assistant cook, about Gordon's reaction to the food: "That's one man's opinion, though."
Aaron, breezily: "It's a pretty successful opinion, though."
AJ is adamant that he has no control over the menu. Gordon's like, "You're the general fucking manager!"
the patrons are less than impressed with the speed of service

for full context, this was filmed in March 2008 "She said it's on the ..."Yeah, so is Christmas...
The kitchen is in the weeds, food is coming back like it was riding a bungee cord, and AJ's smoking (it was still legal to smoke in restaurants in 2008 in Michigan; the clean air law didn't pass until 2009 and went into effect January 1st, 2010) while flirting with customers
Bill and Scott are comping meals left, right, and center because of the atrocious service and food quality
AJ supposedly has 40 years experience in the restaurant industry, but so far it looks like his only skill is taking advantage of his son and his son's business partners
Gordon's doing his kitchen inspection

so far he's found salmon marinating in creamy Italian dressing and mushrooms risotto that stays in the tray when he turns it upside down, among other horrors
Gordon tells AJ that someone has to take responsibility for the state of the back of house

AJ explicitly says he's not going to
Gordon went to buy some fish off the local ice fishermen

the dude he was talking to is making quite the fashion statement with his headwear a man wearing a ball cap th...
Gordon asks Scott if he can smile

Gordon's response to the below: "Oh, fuckin hell." Scott attempts a smile but ...
AJ doesn't seem to have it all together mentally

he seems to get confused a bit too easily even when he's presumably sober
Gordon tells them he'd cut AJ's salary in half and spend that thousand dollars a week on something that'd do more for the restaurant, but Tammer is reluctant to cut his father's salary because, y'know, father

but $50k for one person is not a low income for Saint Clair Shores
the "next act" teaser implies that Scott is going to use his very intimidating presence to whip the kitchen brigade into shape, by which I mean actually following the head chef's calls
Gordon is amazed that a winter storm hasn't kept people from turning up in droves for a restaurant relaunch he's leading

my dude, you're IN MICHIGAN

a winter storm just means you put the chains on the tires if you're really worried about ice
"fuck me, it's cold," Gordon says

yeah, English and even Scottish winters have NOTHING on Michigan

Not even the Shetlands get as brutal as northern Midwest winters

the Gulf Stream and the oceanic heat capacity blunt the effects of being in subarctic latitudes
Bill has SUCH a Michigander accent

I wouldn't be surprised if he's from the UP
every time the camera cuts to this dude he has the same slack-jawed expression like he's shocked to be asked to work Image
yeah, Scott bellowed the fear of, well, Scott into the brigade to get them in line and communicating with Aaron
following the filming, AJ was fired and replaced with a new general manager, and Aaron was given full control of the kitchen, including staff, and the menu

he promptly fired two cooks and hired two experienced sous chefs

sadly, the restaurant closed in December 2010
presumably due to debts and back sales taxes, which were both enumerated as liabilities at the top of the episode

no word on the blog of what happened to any of the people afterwards
now I'm on Santé La Brea in Hollywood

it's owned by a guy named Dean and his two sons help him run the place

so far the most obvious dead weight is this dude named Mark who has already burned out my gaydar and who nobody seems to know what he does except that he gave Dean $10k
the theme of the restaurant is healthy food, and everything on the menu has a vegan option

Gordon asks about something called mogadofu, which I guess is a spin on mabo dofu?
Gordon fed part of his otherwise inedible turkey melt to Tubbs here Image
the mogadofu looked like the most dreadful of my early attempts at stir fry as a teenager

although at least I'd already learned to make sticky rice thanks to my sister's Lao boyfriend, along with a simple brown stir-fry sauce from corn starch, water, and soy sauce
Mark the alleged manager said that if Tubbs had refused to eat the food they would have been in real deep shit
"I've had unduck, unfish, unfuckingbelievable"

I'm wondering what those are made from; canned green jackfruit can be prepared to have a similar texture to fish, and flavored with seaweed

mock duck is an established ESEA duck substitute made from wheat gluten
there's also tofu duck and tofu chicken, in which tofu skins are prepared in such a way as to have a very similar flavor and texture to those meats

you can even get a mock drumstick to munch on
it should surprise nobody that the kitchen is a horror show

to say nothing of the wildlife in the grasses they've got growing in the ceiling as decor
Gordon brought Dean to a lookout over the canyon and got him to let out all the things he's been wanting to say to the staff
then he got an LAPD officer come in and physically handcuff Dean to get across the idea that he needs to be the boss and not do everything himself but tell his staff what to do
Mark: "I don't like wearing deodorant."

YOU LIVE IN LOS ANGELES

I thought cis gay men were supposed to be sticklers about grooming

(this is not an invitation to horror stories)
Mark called Gordon a "limey bastard" for buying him a bar of Secret deodorant
when Gordon showed them the new menu Dean embraced him and kissed him on the cheek before the chef could even get a word out
gods, that makes me wish Western anglophone ideals of masculine comportment encouraged men to be emotionally demonstrative the way MENA cultures often do

damned dysfunctional British stiff upper lip bullshit

damned toxic masculinity
Dean caught Mark taking orders again and physically dragged him by the collar out of the dining room to yell at him
Chef Aurelio just walked out because he didn't like Dean treating him like an employee

um

my dude

about that
of course, Gordon got them to pull it together

after filming, Dean decided to retire and moved overseas, handing the restaurant over to his sons Sammy and Arthur

Mark and Aurelio both left, no word on Aurelio but apparently Mark left because the staff had no respect for him
when Gordon revisited the restaurant, Sammy's girlfriend Dawn was the manager, and the food was excellent

Gordon ate some fake chicken and didn't even realize it; he had to be told after the fact

Sammy and Arthur sold the restaurant in the summer of 2011
the space is now apparently a very good German restaurant
perhaps my favorite Gordon line thus far
another moment that I'm sure was planned in advance but I still laughed
server Sara
and the moment Gordon learned why it's spelled "krab"
I watched FilmRise episodes S2E1 and S2E2, which are broadcast episodes S3E7 (Casa Roma) and S3E4 (Mojito) last night while afk to do some cooking

so commentary now resumes with FRS2E3/BCS3E3, Bazzini

I'm not sure how juicy this one will be
anyway, I'll just quickly go over the sequence established over the course of the first 23 episodes, especially in broadcast season 2
- Gordon arrives at the restaurant, meets the owner(s), tries the food, finds it revolting, sometimes even nauseating, and makes the chef(s)/owner(s) feel ashamed for serving terrible food, usually in the face of denial from at least one party
- he then observes a dinner service, which is atypically busy, presumably because the production team lets it be known that Gordon is in town to help the restaurant out; I assume they go as far as specifically inviting people to dine there, Gordon has done onscreen a couple times
- during or after the dinner service, he investigates the kitchen and food storage situation, which typically ranges anywhere from, say, perhaps some less than hygienic practices, or excessive levels of inventory for the level of business they do, to straight up fucking biohazard
- the kitchen is cleaned if necessary and inventory is turned over as needed, and Gordon comes up with two specials, either on his own or working with the chef(s), for dinner service that nigh

the specials fly out the door but kitchen dysfunction, if present, continues
- Gordon has his design team remodel the restaurant overnight, to whatever degree is deemed necessary, and comes up with a revised menu that centers on fresh ingredients, straightforward recipes that can be pushed out quickly, and perhaps a new theme for the restaurant
such as turning from a greasy spoon to a gastropub, or from a boring, dated, generic Italian restaurant to an Italian steakhouse, for examples

the following dinner service is the full relaunch, and it's typically depicted as having some hiccups but ending well
any postscript included with the original episode typically shows Gordon giving final words of encouragement and advice and leaving them happier, more functional, and more profitable
but these are still small businesses with all of the attendant risks and vulnerabilities, and they're also typically on the precipice of failure, so the majority end up closing anyway

and sometimes they close not because the owners have to, but because they're ready to move on
maybe the owner wants to retire, and so the chef decides to move on, etc

with all that established, I'm not going to be recapping the episode, so my comments are a supplement, not a replacement, so to speak
this place's hours are M-Th 5-9:30? what the fuck? no lunches? no weekends?
the restaurant space is very long and narrow, which just reminds me of working for Radio Shack in Connecticut
The head chef/owner, Paul Bazzini, failed to impress Gordon with the food, but Sharyn the pastry chef's desserts? he loved!
Gordon: "You make love to that carrot cake!"
Sharyn: "Well, I'm getting divorced, so it's either the cake or, uh…"
Gordon: "I'll go for the cake."
(note: please don't have sexual congress with pastries and desserts, you'll get a side of yeast infection with your orgasm)
For Paul's therapy, Gordon challenged him to make a fresh pasta dish in 15 minutes

Dude turned out handmade capellini with puttanesca*, and not only did Gordon love it, but when Paul started talking about pasta you could actually see him light up about food for the first time
(as always, take the edit with a grain of salt; this is a TV show and even if it's "reality" it's presented with a narrative arc, manufactured if necessary)

* yes, the root word means what you think it means
orecchietti!

they're called little ears because that's what they look like; it's a variety of pasta I've heard of but never had a chance to try
(Gordon basically forced them to do a lunch service, had Sharyn and Paul's wife Leslie work front of house)
they skipped over the night two dinner service, because the lunch service served its usual place in the narrative

as I was expecting, they put giant mirrors on one wall of the front of house, to make it feel less claustrophobic
okay, people who actually find men arousing: is Gordon Ramsay really that hot? I mean, yeah, he's good looking, but he doesn't strike me as especially or unusually so, but every few episodes someone gets really thirsty for him
the sous chef walked out when the kitchen got backed up and Paul couldn't put it together

So Sharyn hopped on the hot line to take over as sous chef and Gordon took control of the kitchen
after Gordon left, Sharyn left Bazzini to dedicate her time to making desserts; the narrator gives "to get away from Paul" as another reason for her departure, but see above about relying on editing and narration
Bazzini closed a bit less than a year after filming, and Paul went back to just being a chef rather than trying to operate his own restaurant; his son Andrew also became a chef and works with him
Paul and Leslie talked about the experience in an interview with a local paper: web.archive.org/web/2010040607…

there isn't anything in there that's super surprising if you already have been disabused of the illusions reality TV projects
obviously, there's a lot of truth in what we see; like, people in the Phoenix metro confirmed that Samy and Amy really were Like That and the food really was that horrible

but reality TV runs on character arcs and they'll find them or make them
for example, in the Mojito episode, I definitely think the producers were hoping that they could depict a reconciliation between Kata and Marcelo during the week of filming but clearly figured out that wasn't going to happen
that's understandable (and I've definitely been there), but very often they talk about his physical appearance and his body

maybe it's different in his physical presence? because he's reasonably photogenic but far from a model

he's no Nigella for sure
we're in Jersey again, for a place called Flamangos

It's a combination of "Florida" and "mangoes"

I'm not sure where the "e" went; it might be hiding in shame
the owners, Bill and Adele, are a married couple who netted a retirement nest egg of a bit over $1 million over the course of a career of owning a series of successful diners in Whitehouse Station
they retired to their farm, and within three days were so bored that they decided they needed to open another restaurant

their daughter Cheryl came up with the kitschy tropical tiki theme and that awful name, which clashes hideously with the alleged fine dining
like, I could get away with owning a kitschy tiki bar in New Jersey, because whimsy and quirkiness define my personal aesthetic, but even if I wanted to be a bar owner or restauranteur I wouldn't

(instead it'd probably look like I raided a renfaire)
head chef Bryan has been there all of four weeks and has fallen deeply in hate with the menu
the production sourced a vintage pickup for Gordon to roll into town in

he gets there bright and early, so he goes to meet the family at their farm instead of the restaurant
Cheryl is living at home because they haven't been able to cut her a paycheck in two years

Gordon is being rather judgmental about that, saying that he left home at 18, but his father was an abusive, alcoholic asshole, so he had a lot of reasons to get away
but there are just as many reasons someone might be living with one or both parents in their 40s; it's hardly a sign of immaturity in the 21st century, and the postwar norm of moving out as a rite of passage is kind of a historic aberration, especially for women
usually establishing your own household was something you did when you got married, if you established your own household at all

obviously, there have always been exceptions, but economically, that kind of thing was mostly for the upper classes
Gordon thought the restaurant name was Flamingos, so Cheryl had to correct him on the way over

once she explained it, he was as … dubious about a tropical themed restaurant in a New Jersey farm country commuter town as I was
On the interior:

Gordon: "Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. It's like a zoo in here. Who designed it?"
Adele: "My daughter decorated it."*
Gordon: "Amazing. How drunk was she when she put the final sketches together?"

Gordon is firing on all cylinders today
* there's an abrupt pitch, pace, and contour shift between "daughter" and "decorated" which can only mean the editors cut out something Adele said between those words, but this was probably deemed irrelevant and distracting

these kinds of edits happen all the time, mind
it's just that this one is quite stark; "daughter" is said slow and rising, and "decorated" comes in at much too low pitch to be immediately following that last syllable, and it's said at a faster pace, suggesting it's part of a larger clause separate from the "daughter" one
Bryan says "I think Gordon's jaw is going to drop to the floor when he sees a few of the things on our menu," and it's presented as him being proud of the food, but I'm guessing he thinks Gordon will be as unimpressed as he is

He already called the food "less than mediocre"
he thinks the ahi is much too spicy, but I'm skeptical of his judgment because he *is* British, and he doesn't strike me as the kind who loves heat for its own sake
although Bryan also thinks it's much too spicy, and I'm more inclined to believe him

apparently it's Cheryl who wants it that hot

(̶d̶o̶ ̶y̶'̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶n̶u̶m̶b̶e̶r̶?̶)̶
"Cheryl *is* the 80s"

also, they keep implying that the restaurant burns down, but if you know how the show works it's easy to predict that Gordon works with the local fire department to burn up the old sign and hideous decor
yeah, called it

BY FIRE BE PURGED
Adele: "I hate blue"

me:
tbqh I kinda hate the chairs Image
Adele is skeptical about the much more concise menu

look, not every restaurant needs to be a diner, let alone chain casual dining restaurants with gigantic menus that rely upon frozen ingredients and so can run out of steaks of a specific doneness
one of the ways diners keep such large menus workable is through their dishes mostly having common ingredients
When a table of customers compliment Adele on the new decor and menu, she complains about everything and calls Gordon stupid
according to the Reality TV Revisited blog, they reverted to the old menu after a week, but in the episode postscript it's said that the menu stayed 🤷‍♀️

Adele described the filming experience as "hell," and the producers definitely made an effort to make her look cantankerous
Gordon went back in a revisit episode in April 2011 (it was filmed in July 2009 and aired in February 2010) and according to that episode they were doing double the business that they were doing before his visit
either way, sometime in the following months they sold the restaurant so that Bill and Adele could retire again and this time go to Florida instead of trying to bring Florida to New Jersey

I hope his alpacas made out okay
also, Gordon told Cheryl he wanted her moved out by the time he came back; she was still living at home in the revisit episode, but in 2016 she posted to Gordon's Facebook page that she finally moved out
I'm guessing that means she moved with them to Florida and they sold the farm back in Jersey

She said at the time she moved she was still single

I'm wondering if the reason she seemingly never had a boyfriend is because she wasn't interested
she didn't ping my gaydar in the episode but not everyone does, and she may just be acearospec
next episode: Hot Potato Cafe in Philly

it's owned and operated by two sisters and their sister-in-law, and their chef is their niece who is only working there out of familial obligation because she has zero training as a cook and no passion for it as a career
the niece also pings my gaydar HARD even in the like half-second shot in the teaser montage cold open
the restaurant is in Fishtown, which means there's about a 50/50 chance they're gentrifiers
they apparently had no experience in the hospitality industry and had no idea how much goes into running a restaurant

and a local newspaper's food critic lambasted them, which nuked their receipts about eight months after opening and put them in the red
gaydar level: Kate McKinnon Image
Gordon: "What's wrong with the restaurant?"
Owners: 😐😐😐
he asks the owners what their respective favorite dishes from the restaurant are

1) Crab cakes
2) Shepherd's pie
3) Pierogi

then he says "not one of you recommended a potato"

?? two of them have potatoes as an integral ingredient, and the third (crab cakes) can use them?
eh, what do I expect from a man whose attempt at the "ultimate grilled cheese" is a crime against comfort food

(look, I just watched that video and YIKES)
(he pulled a fuckin Jamie Oliver in that one)
Gordon and a server:
"They are fresh when they come in. We do cut them and freeze them and then pull them to order."
"So they're not fresh, they're frozen."
"… c-correct."
"So the Hot Potato is Frozen Potato."
"Or Lukewarm Potato. Depends on which shift you come in on."
the blonde owner: "oh god he just made the first fucking godawful face"
the potato skins are THREE WEEKS OLD

they've spent that time in the freezer so they're not rotten or anything, but the texture has got to be so mealy and gross

that said, I don't get why he's critical of them for using the bulk of the potato flesh for other dishes
when I order potato skins I expect to be getting all of the skin with enough of the flesh to soak up some of the fat from the toppings

how does he make his? does he just use very flat potatoes?
the server straight up says "he wants you to taste the shit you serve people"
also, apparently his potato skins do use all of the potato flesh?

what?

that's … just a loaded baked potato you cut in half and stuck under the broiler
as I've said, he's arguably the most successful restauranteur in human history, but… still
Gordon says that food critic was being kind
the episode twist is that Gordon walks out after the first dinner service telling them that he can't help them if they don't give a shit

of course, probably under the producers' direction, he's walking away very slowly and the owners chase him down
this isn't an Amy's Baking Co where they're convinced they're utterly impervious to criticism
"too much garlic"

what the fuck is wrong with you, Gordon
Danielle just showed a remarkable level of creativity and intuition in the potato dish she made when Gordon challenged her and all three owners to make a good potato dish
the narrator calls it a potato Florentine

that's … not wrong *exactly*, but potatoes Florentine don't typically have roasted red peppers in addition to the spinach
the other cook on the hot line, who hasn't spoken yet, is also definitely queer
good God the portions are "your Italian friend's mom who thinks you're too skinny"

they're being served in bowls like soup tureens
I've been in plenty of Italian restaurants that have substantial portions but the only one that served THAT much priced accordingly
The show staff got the Idaho Potato Commission, which exists to promote the Idaho potato industry and owns the trademark on the state's name in relation to potato products and thus yields the mildly unsettling Idaho® potato construction, to donate three months of fresh potatoes
Gordon invited the food critic that called the place "Spuddy Hell" back for the relaunch
He also arranged for an established Philly restauranteur to come in and mentor Danielle, and the dude is working as her saucier on relaunch night
the episode was filmed in May 2009, and the episode heavily implied that it inspired Danielle to go into being a chef as a career, but she left not long after filming and went to nursing school

she's now working as both a nurse and bartender, according to her social media
the sisters initially put the restaurant up for sale on Craigslist in June 2010, and ultimately closed it when the lease expired in August 2010

no word on what the owners are up to now

the space is now a whiskey bar
hat tip to @RachelEvilM for the suggestion, and yeah, I agree 100% with the criticisms in this video of Gordon Ramsay's "ultimate grilled cheese"

the only thing ultimate about it is the disappointment you experience taking a bite of it and getting a mouthful of cold cheese, charred bread, and fucking kimchi

look, I love kimchi as much as the next girl who loves fermented vegetables and capsaicin
but it does NOT belong in the middle of a grilled cheese sandwich

if you want to eat your grilled cheese with kimchi, put it on top of finished sandwich or eat it as a side, it'll just ruin the texture of the sandwich
I don't even like putting ham on grilled cheese

a proper grilled cheese should be melty and gooey and stretchy (but not too stretchy) in the middle

it shouldn't be a fuckin brick in the middle of slightly warm bread that's charred on the outside
well this episode, Mama Rita's in Newbury Park, CA, I wasn't sure if I wanted to comment on, but then this beautifully elliptical exchange happened between Gordon and manager Cheryl:
Gordon: "What's wrong with the place?"
Cheryl: "Lack of customers."
Gordon: "So why are we lacking customers?"
Cheryl: "We need to get more customers. We need to get more people in here."
Gordon:
no, seriously Image
they're cooking for the restaurant like they're catering for it
there was twelve THOUSAND dollars in food in the freezer

some of it was a year old
Gordon* gathered a bunch of customers to tell Laura (owner) why they stopped coming and a bunch of them said they got sick after eating there

which, y'know, old food

* by which, of course, I mean the production staff and they got a shot of Gordon posting a single flyer
Perla, the nominal head chef, can't actually cook properly, at least not for a restaurant, and she had zero creativity in the challenge Gordon issued, just putting garlic salt on chicken breast

I'm guessing she got into her own head too much
Gordon, showing off the menu, compared it to a rainbow because of how colorful it is

I dunno, there are definitely a couple colors I'm not sure I want to see on my dinner plate at a Tex-Mex restaurant
Gordon brought in a chef he trained named Naris (pronounced like Major Kira's given name) to consult on the menu and train the brigade on how to operate like a restaurant crew instead of a catering crew
the episode says that Laura hired a new head chef and Perla stayed on in the catering business, but that blog I refer to says that Perla stayed on as head chef after several weeks of training by Naris, so 🤷‍♀️
in any event, Mama Rita's closed in December 2010 (the episode was filmed in May 2009) and Laura went back to the old menu, presumably because she was presenting her grandmother's recipes; the post-filming reviews on Yelp remained positive save for a handful of half-stars
after discovering Laura's Twitter account and seeing what she has to say, it seems that the nine month delay between filming and airing meant that the boost was too little too late

she's currently making organic salsa and um also me gay 🥵🥵:
apparently she still sometimes gets hate, over a decade later, from people who see the episode on YouTube, so this is a shout-out to @mamaritas to say that I'm sorry, I genuinely wish it hadn't gone that way, and I'm sorry Gordon isn't helping even a little bit
Laura isn't Amy or Samy, she's obviously a person who means well, and sometimes you can do everything right and still have it all go to shit and nobody should blame you for that, and I'd love to try her organic salsa even if I'm too broke to order anything right now
and, as a reminder, don't be a shit person

okay, done with this restaurant
ah, found this when I switched back over to my Google search tab on Laura, which confirms that Perla stayed on as head chef

also it's pretty cool that Buddy Mazzio from Finn McCool's reached out to her archive.vcstar.com/lifestyle/cafe…
I'm now up to one of the biggest success stories, Lido di Manhattan in Manhattan Beach, CA. The owner, Lisa Hammet, bought the restaurant at the ripe old age of 23 after graduating from USC's Marshall School of Business.
Originally, I wasn't sure if I wanted to comment on this episode, but between being a success story and the abundant misogyny directed at Lisa in the comments on the Reality TV Revisited blog, I decided I definitely would.
From what I can tell, she had even less experience in food service than I accumulated by working as a bookstore barista and reading the Liquor novels by Billy Martin (under his pen name Poppy Z Brite). (I'm still sad we'll never get Dead Shrimp Blues, but I totally get it.)
She just went in with a loan co-signed by her father and her degree in entrepreneurship (and, as an economist, I'm compelled to point out that Schumpeter is probably spinning in his grave over such a thing even existing) and, I guess, figured she'd learn by doing.
She's been at it for five years and has only stayed in business this long because of the prime location and the mostly competent staff she inherited when she bought the restaurant from the previous owner.
She has made one important hire: she's now paying the guy she's been dating to be the bar manager and general floating help, and he introduced himself to Gordon as also being the catering director. Indeed, she came into it trying to also be friends with her employees, apparently.
Unfortunately, her inexperience in the industry has led to her being reluctant to change anything left over from the previous owner, so the menu and decor are completely unchanged, and between her inexperience and vegetarian diet, the chefs have let the quality of the food drop.
Since she couldn't taste how underwhelming the frozen ahi was, she had no way of holding them accountable for that; and even putting that aside, she didn't have the experience to develop a palate that distinguished between frozen and freshly made tortellini.
At the point where we're rejoining the episode (I've already watched some), Gordon has already had his Lunch of Disappointment and is getting ready to observe dinner service.
Oh, while I'm thinking about it: for the first two seasons and part of the third, he'd often talk about being there for a week, but the narrative only covers three days, with him clearly departing at the end of the third. One day I hope to find out what the schedule actually is.
This is the part that commenters on the blog cited when calling her a "princess": after Gordon discovered a thick layer of dust on the top of the frame around the serving window, he ordered the kitchen to stop serving food, and then, when Lisa said that it didn't touch the food…
he brought in some customers from the dining room and showed them the dust, asking if they wanted to eat it. Of course, they said no, and Gordon continued to berate her, until she started crying and retreated to the bathroom.
She stayed in there for an hour while Gordon had the staff clean the kitchen, and then he allowed dinner service to resume, and Lisa's boy toy Damien ran things.

The thing is, what the staff says about Lisa indicates that this is not typical behavior for her at *all*.
People defending her in the blog comments suggest that it's probably a response to the intense stress of the shoot on top of the financial troubles that prompted the application to the show to begin with, and I agree.
Gordon calls her a "sulking, precious princess."

Which might be him being a dick, but it's just as likely he says it for the microphone to help with Lisa's character arc.
Which reminds me of something I forgot to mention during the last episode: for the first time I spotted Gordon's earpiece. You know, the one the director and producers talk to him through. It's very small and inconspicuous, fitting very neatly inside his ear.
Two of the servers, Bruna and Priscila, try to talk her down, but she refuses to come back out. Bruna says outright that she's never seen Lisa like that before. I'm guessing part of it is that the tears wrecked Lisa's makeup, though.
Correction: Lisa Hemmat
Gordon is now talking about the ancient POS system, which would have already been crushingly dated when I started working in retail 11 years before this episode was even filmed. They may have cleaned it, but it's still covered in metaphorical dust from 1985.
He gives them a catharsis by taking out a baseball bat and wailing on the CRT that's probably almost as old as Lisa herself. One of the staff is like, "let us do it!" but I'm guessing insurance only covered Gordon getting hurt by the potential flying glass and shit.
I was about to say, "nope, I'm wrong" because he handed over the bat to Lisa, but then I realized that in the process of swinging it he'd knocked it over so that it's resting on its face, meaning they're only hitting the back of it and much less likely to break any glass.
After introducing his specials to Lisa and the cooks, Antonio and Luis, he tells Lisa that she's going to be on the line and tosses her a chef's jacket.
Of course, he does this five minutes before they open for dinner service, so she's had zero time to learn to even operate the range, let alone learn where things are in the kitchen the way a chef or even a line cook would know…
so she looks extra foolish for the cameras and also this creates drama for the cameras as the orders start piling up.

I guarantee you when he was showing them how to cook the specials she wasn't trying to retain them to cook on the line herself.
But she learns fast, clearly, because she asks why a dish is going in the microwave instead of the overhead broiler/oven. Lisa, pointing to the broil...
Apparently she learned fast, though, because the customers really liked the specials, which Lisa cooked, but were unimpressed by the food the chefs sent out.

That's doubly impressive given that Lisa wouldn't have been tasting either special (seared ahi tuna and crab linguini).
*learned to be a line cook fast
And then she took control of the brigade, taking over hot plate in addition to cooking the specials.
correction: the chefs are Arturo and Luis
Gordon's relaunch theme: a wine bar, which, astonishingly, Manhattan Beach lacked at the time

he also got them a modern POS system
The brigade, however, is … not exactly cooperative right now. Or even communicating. Lisa is pissed.
They called her a brainless bitch in Spanish and then walked out. Gordon is chasing them down.
They did finally get them to come back, and in the meantime Gordon called in Scott Leibfried, who you may know from Hell's Kitchen, and assigned him to consult at Lido for a month and to take over the kitchen on relaunch night.
Gordon visited twice more, and each time she was doing vastly better than the last time he was there. She now sells Lido di Manhattan Beach branded wines and has opened up at least one other restaurant, and she fired Damien and presumably dumped him as well.
the next episode I'm gonna comment on is Anna Vincenzo's in Boca Raton, Florida

the owner, one CeCe Vincenzo, is basically the exact opposite of Lisa Hemmat at the beginning of the Lido episode; she grew up in kitchens because her father was a successful pizzeria owner…
and he gave her some $300,000 to start her own restaurant

she exerts an iron control of her restaurant such that her employees are terrified of provoking her rage, she mostly stays in the kitchen running the line, and keeps absolute control of the menu
and she has no formal instruction as a chef; I'm not sure if she went to college or not yet

anyway, moving along
the restaurant has been open for about eight years, and for most of that time it was gangbusters

but sometime in the past two years the business dropped off and CeCe has no idea why
also someone send me money because I really want some calamari now

venmo.com/sapphixy
cash.app/$sapphixy
ko-fi.com/sapphixy
"He wants to know if the salmon is fresh or frozen."
"Tell him it's fresh, then it's frozen."
he complains that the snapper is mushy and CeCe says, "what does he want? hard like a rock?"

the middle just called me because they're feeling excluded
her dad is 100% ride or die for her and I love that but sometimes that's not the support someone needs
she's like, "He's British, he doesn't know anything about pizza"

hon, if a white dude who grew up in the Midlands is calling your food bland, trust me, your food has the flavor of cardboard
"everybody loves that salad!"
"who's everybody? the restaurant is empty"
"don't you get defensive when someone talks about your food like that?!"
"I don't cook shit like that"

I dunno, Gordon, your grilled cheese says otherwise
the narrator is like "she reached a breaking point"

dude that's a fucking full-blown panic attack
I think Gordon knows what's going on in her at the moment but I'm also guessing that the producers wanted him to maintain that stern disciplinarian façade so he still calls her a "petulant teenager"
Gordon had the line cooks prepare one of everything on the menu, which is 181 goddamn items
two episodes in a row that Gordon has mentioned Webstaurant

I think I know who signed a deal
After Gordon left, she stuck with the changes initially, but, according to the revisit episode, she reverted to her old self and ended up selling the restaurant

to, as they say, spend more time with her family

and her husband has moved out

so … who knows what went down
I just hope she's doing well now
this next episode is about Fleming in Miami, FL

it's often said, incorrectly, that the city in Florida is named after the Great Lakes Miami people; the city is, in reality, named after the Miami River, which, in turn, was named after Lake Miami, the original name of Okeechobee
The lake was named that because the Mayaimi people who lived around it called it that, as did their linguistic kin, the Calusa and the Tequesta

All three groups, like all the Indigenous people of south Florida, are now extinct, culturally and linguistically
if there are any descendants of any of those pre-Columbian peoples alive now, they're most likely now Cubans

(The Seminoles who now live in Florida and Oklahoma arrived, and arose as a culture, during the 17th century, due to displacement by colonizers)
This episode promises to be Fun™®, because they've got a Cuban chef making Danish food while knowing nothing about Danish food, and then there's this:

“The servers read obituaries frequently to see if any of the customers are listed on there.”

oof
Gordon, commenting on the very pink decor: "Is somebody colorblind?"
Owner Andy: "Yes, I am."
so far the only thing Gordon has liked was the aluminum foil swan one of the servers makes to wrap around desserts
The chef is named Orlando, which has got to be a terrible name to have while living in Florida, and he's desperate to cook something with flavor

but Andy is afraid that if he changes anything he'll lose what customers he has
the restaurant makeover involves a welder?
well, the makeover is a pretty vast improvement, I'll say, but I'm not sure how long that brown will go before it looks dated

the lighting fixtures are a nice touch tho
I don't know if it's because this is like the 33rd episode I've watched so far or what but the audio edits are becoming increasingly obvious to me
the garde manger was putting carrots and radishes in the Caesar salad on relaunch night
wait, why the fuck didn't the production replace that malfunctioning range?

(because drama)
and we have drama: the malfunctioning burners just caught fire, and not in the way you want
and THERE'S the dramatic appeal of the replacement equipment

and the prominent display of the brand name
*reveal
the restaurant closed in October 2010, five months after the episode aired, so at least Andy didn't have to worry about the new decor looking dated in 15 years
while the original URL is now 404 and I can't find enough damns to give to find an archive copy, a Miami Herald food critic wrote that he attended one of the taping nights anonymously and saw a lot of obviously staged material, with ringer customers hired to complain
said critic was also contemptuous of Gordon's changes, saying that it went from being unique to trendy and indistinguishable from other Miami eateries, but given how many current trends in dining were popularized by Gordon Ramsay, I mean, probably
like, Gordon's tendency towards somewhat miserly portions isn't something he invented; quantities of food that could barely keep a desert turtle going have been a symptom of fine dining for decades
anyway, reality TV isn't, bears are Catholic, popes shit in the woods, water is wet, etc

and that wraps up season 3
we open season 4 (or season 3) with Spanish Pavilion in Harrison, NJ

it's a family business with a long history, opening in 1976 as the first Spanish restaurant in the state
the founder, Antonio, retired in 1996, turning the restaurant over to his daughter Balbina and her sons Michael and Jerry

Michael is nominally the head chef but doesn't really spend much time in the kitchen anymore
Jerry is on his town's council, so that eats up most of his time

when the brothers are in the restaurant they're apparently often fighting, with Balbina in the middle trying to keep the peace
the servers are required to wear tuxes, I assume because that's how Antonio did it, and it's more than a little jarring because it's not a fine dining establishment
holy fuck, Gordon found a dead lobster in the lobster tank, and it'd been dead for a bit

that's a very good way to kill someone
the more upset they get, the more Jersey they sound, especially Jerry

I'm loving this
Michael just physically shoved one of his line cooks off the line because he didn't like how frustrated the guy was over the uncoordinated kitchen
apparently this isn't the first time Michael has flipped his shit in the kitchen and gotten physical with an employee

that's, uh, LAWSUIT
when Gordon does his inspection of the food storage there's a pigeon in the kitchen

I have visions of a cloud of PAs herding a pigeon inside before Gordon arrived for filming
Gordon pulled out these MASSIVE piles of meat from the basement storage and asked Michael why he'd bought all that

Michael said he wanted to be ready, Gordon asks him what he's trying to be ready for

I'm sitting here thinking "zombie apocalypse?"
Gordon is 100% correct in his operating principle that you keep no more than two days' worth of product in inventory

you don't stockpile perishables in the hospitality industry, not even in fast food
omg Gordon uses French pronunciation when he says "sauté", although the vowel quality and stress sounds a little off to me, definitely influenced by his Midlands accent
oh thank fuck tapas and no more tuxes

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Serenity “Filtered Bee Paste” Dee

Serenity “Filtered Bee Paste” Dee Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @sapphixy

Serenity “Filtered Bee Paste” Dee Profile picture
11 Jan
your original tweet was awful, but your assertions about the neurochemistry of emotion are overripe with misogyny and toxic masculinity

estrogen doesn't make you emotional any more than testosterone makes you stoic save for anger

everything you cite is cultural, not biological
look, @evelynharlow_, I don't give a fuck what you find attractive; the only people whose attractions I care about are those who are available, attainable, and what I like; you're the correct gender and good-looking but you're terminally straight and geographically inconvenient
and frankly I find your opinions breathtakingly immature even under the assumption that you're as young as your filtered avi suggests

even your desire for a romantic partner who will be your anchor in a crisis is motivated by your acculturation
Read 7 tweets
Serenity “Filtered Bee Paste” Dee Profile picture
10 Jan
🚨🚨🚨🚨 URGENT 🚨🚨🚨🚨

#Emergency #TransCrowdFund
$275 to go!

#TransCrowdFund

venmo.com/sapphixy
cash.app/$sapphixy
ko-fi.com/sapphixy
make that $215!
Read 6 tweets
Serenity “Filtered Bee Paste” Dee Profile picture
16 Nov 20
tonight #sapphixywatches X2 (2003), the direct sequel to X-Men (2000), and the last time the franchise even bothered to try to make any timelines make sense
(the next movie made such a mess that they made a soft reboot and then built off that timeline in ways that made it even more of a mess)
The sequence introducing Kurt is one of my favorites in the franchise
Read 35 tweets
Serenity “Filtered Bee Paste” Dee Profile picture
15 Nov 20
Tonight #sapphixywatches Clue (1985), based on the murder mystery board game of the same name*

*At least, in North America; I'm given to understand in Fucking Narnia Or Some Shit it's sold under the name "Cluedo" for reasons only known to lawyers and marketing
This movie is notable for having been distributed with three different endings, so if you and a friend went to see it at different theaters you might end up arguing with each other over the ending.
Home release versions include all three, with two presented as possible endings and the third (one where each suspect was involved in one murder) presented as the true ending.
Read 41 tweets
Serenity “Filtered Bee Paste” Dee Profile picture
19 Mar 20
throwback Thursday: that time I got a (facetious) death threat over a geology pun
if you haven't seen it

This turned into a meme and spawned a whole lot of additional content
(I didn't invent the cummingtonite jokes, I just repeated one I've heard from geologists)
Read 4 tweets
Serenity “Filtered Bee Paste” Dee Profile picture
25 Jan 20
I need someone who can help with this to contact me. Someone who works at Twitter, has a contact there, or can point me and my friend in the right direction.

Transcript follows.

[Reposting because I forgot to redact email addresses]
Hi Twitter!

I am the Twitter user @fangirlsmash. I’ve found a bug that has locked me out of my account since yesterday and I really need help. Please read carefully!

I’m a disabled Twitter user. I’ve had my account since 2009 and was an early adapter before that from
LiveJournal starting in 2006 under a different Twitter handle.

I use Twitter on an iPhone 6s Plus with the latest version of iOS and also on a windows 10 PC with the latest version of windows 10 64-bit.

HERE’S THE BUG, PLEASE READ CAREFULLY:

1. Over the past few days, a
Read 12 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @sapphixy has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @sapphixy!

Read all threads by @sapphixy

:(