Gordon Ramsay's TV empire: Kitchen Nightmares; Hotel Hell and 24 Hours to Hell & Back

 

These can all be under the same umbrella- the tried and tired formula that was pioneered by Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and other shows like it at the time. Although technically Kitchen nightmares existed in the UK before it came to America… Food Network also did their own version of a restaurant renovation show with Restaurant Impossible hosted by Robert Irvine. (I don’t care for him so I never watched it).

The other two shows never got a second season so I assume they were so poorly received nobody cared. “24 hours” is the Kitchen Nightmares formula with a deadline and “Hotel Hell” was about rundown hotels and bed and breakfasts. 
Ok, I rummaged around Wikipedia really quick. “24 Hours” had 3 seasons from 2018 to 2020. And “Hotel Hell” was 3 seasons from 2012 to 2016. No wonder my memory was so bad, but they also didn’t leave much of an impression on me.

We all kinda knew Hotel Hell was going to be lame but we still watched it cuz we love Gordon Ramsay yelling at people. Plus one of the locations was a local one. (According to Wikipedia, River Rock Inn in Milford, PA is still open but had since been sold to new owners in 2014 and also has a new name). The idea might be ok on paper, but come on… this is man who’s an expert in cooking and running kitchens. It was funny (and disturbing) to see him complain about bedspreads and checking with a black light to find they’d never been washed. He may be kitchen and business savvy but he has no authority on running hotels. Whether his opinion is valid or not, nobody’s going to take him seriously. 
It’s been years so I don’t remember much except one key thing… one of Gordon’s regular criticisms was outdated wallpaper and furniture and he promptly had the place renovated. As soon as he and the camera crew left, the stupid owner took all of the furniture out of the dumpsters and put it back in the building. I mean, what an idiot! 

I don’t watch Kitchen Nightmares as religiously as Hell’s Kitchen or Masterchef but I’ve certainly seen enough of it. 

Unfortunately, the same sad reality that plagued several of the home makeover recipients happened here. The majority of the kitchen nightmares restaurants slid back into their old habits and wound up closing. Some closed for other financial reasons that couldn’t be fixed either way but most close because of pride. Or they saw they had a shiny new restaurant and decided to sell it for a profit. 

The formula goes like this

1. Gordon shows up at the restaurant (sometimes in disguise to see people in their natural habitat, lol) and orders some food items 
2. He meets the staff and walks through the kitchen and storage 
3. He witnesses a typical dinner service 
4. He offers up a series of changes, including a revamped menu and has the place updated or renovated 
5. One final dinner service before he takes off 
6. Epilogue 

One question I’m always asking myself whenever I watch this show… where the hell are the health inspectors? Why are these kitchens so filthy? Why are the walk-ins full of expired food? Is the agency in charge of these things lazy or severely understaffed? It just doesn’t make sense for these hundreds of restaurants to be in such deplorable condition. It’s a wonder more people haven’t died from food poisoning. 
It’s funny seeing Gordon point out all these issues but it gets old quickly. A few times they even showed the camera crew hacking and coughing because they couldn’t tolerate the sights and smells.  

Back to the beginning, though, most of these places fail the first impression for a couple reasons. One of the minor ones is the menu being way too expansive. This is a matter of opinion of course but most restaurant menus, in his opinion, should typically only be a couple of pages. It definitely shouldn’t be a War and Peace sized tome.
But the most common “mistake” is that the food is not fresh or made in house. It’s frozen and reheated. Even worse if the menu or wait staff states that it’s fresh and homemade and it’s obviously not. And worse still- it’s the specialty of a restaurant and it’s of inferior quality. If you’re boasting about your signature dish to the point it’s in the name of the restaurant, it better be worthy of that honor. 

More often than not, the biggest issue impeding the success of these restaurants is the human factor. There’s been many historically bad owners who plead ignorance, put money into the wrong places or constantly butt heads with the other staff. Or the kitchen has a head chef who’s either inadequate and needs to be replaced or they’re  in over their head and clam up without asking for help. 

Then there was the infamous Amy’s Baking Company- the one restaurant Gordon couldn’t save and walked away from. Amy and her husband Sammy were some of the worst people I’d seen on any reality show and I avoid all the really bad ones like Survivor, Big Brother and the Bachelor franchise. 

Sammy’s biggest transgression was pocketing all the tips from the waitresses so they essentially get paid peanuts for working for these horrible people. My folks worked as servers in restaurants in their teens and 20s so they’re well aware that servers get paid below minimum wage and get by primarily on tips. That’s why they’ve instilled in us to always pay 20 percent, even if the job wasn’t done as well as it could’ve been. So the idea of an owner taking away tips from waitstaff was reprehensible. 

Amy was even worse for one key reason- she REFUSED to take criticism. She was convinced she was right and everyone else was wrong, even to the point she was thoroughly convinced that bloggers and Yelpers were out to get her because they only slammed her with bad reviews. If that wasn’t enough, her “antics” on the show caused her to go viral and they did a special “nightmares revisited” edition where she complained that people go to her restaurant to ogle at her and Sammy like they were on exhibit at a zoo. 

I checked back a while back and I’m pretty sure the restaurant finally closed down within the last five years. 

This should go without saying but considering it’s happened a number of times, it should be repeated.

Don’t get into the restaurant business unless you know what you’re doing. Way too many owners have done this “wouldn’t it be cool to own a restaurant?” type of thing and they wind up in mega debt because they’re completely clueless. 

And for the same reason you should never loan money to family members, don’t go into this business with family. If you do, you better be well versed in communication or conflict resolution.  

They had a season a year ago that stepped away from the typical formula and almost felt like a different show- in a good way. A lot of the conflicts in the restaurant weren’t about contamination and bad storage. It was about conflict within families or among friends. At least one where they were both young parents working at the restaurant and Gordon suggested the wife get one night a week she gets to have dinner with their kids (not sure who’d been watching them the whole time??) and unwind. Another was a couple who were either engaged or newlyweds and the stress from the restaurant was straining their relationship so much they decided in the epilogue to walk away from the business- which is perfectly acceptable. When something is that toxic, walking away is the best option.  

Some people might see this and protest that Gordon isn’t a psychiatrist or marriage counselor. But he’d been married enough years to know these pitfalls are bound to happen, especially when you dedicate so many hours a day working in these conditions.

Next Time: The franchise where home chefs vie for the chance to become Masters... or at least publish their own cookbook