Kitchen Nightmares (US) - General Discussion

[KeithJ]

13 hours ago, jcbrown said:

This was the first episode of the season where there was no one I despised. This was just incompetence and it seemed they were teachable, maybe. I agree they need to hire a GM--ideally one with actual restaurant experience! I have never understood the people on this show who think they can just open a restaurant without knowing a single thing about how.

I agree.  I actually liked the head chef.  He wasn't full of himself and seemed to really want to learn and get better compared to some of the other chefs we have seen.

[Shrek]

Haven't watched the latest episode but so far you have to wonder why some of them even manage to get out of bed & get dressed. Someone with zero restaurant experience but an actual back bone would do a better job than some of these spineless idiots.

[seacliffsal]

I used to enjoy the renovation and reteaching how to cook segments.  It seems like the production has changed to be more centered on problems and personalities.  This British pub episode was enjoyable in that the personalities weren't at war with each other, but there really wasn't a focus on reteaching the menu.

It seems to me that the mom wanted to open a restaurant to give her son something to do.  Does nobody read the statistics on how many restaurants fail?  However, it did look like they were in a good location so that's a huge advantage.  Hopefully they will continue to do well.  But, a million in debt?  How does that happen?

[KeithJ]

1 hour ago, seacliffsal said:

Hopefully they will continue to do well.  But, a million in debt?  How does that happen?

I don't think they were a million in debt yet.  Gordon said that if they continued on the course they were on, they would be a million in debt in six months (or something like that).

[Yeah No]

On 2/26/2025 at 2:21 PM, NJRadioGuy said:

All in all an easy short-term fix but their cash situation I think will ultimately catch up to them and will force them out of business. I certainly would love to go there if I were in Austin, and not already stuffed full of brisket from Aaron Franklin's place and LA Barbecue.

Yeah, re: the British Gastropub. This one was especially frustrating because you want them to succeed and they should after all that, but the show got there too late re: the debt to really save it. Why are they doing that this season? It's even worse than I remember it in previous seasons. Why set them and us up for failure with these restaurants? It's gut wrenching and awful to watch knowing they're being brought to a point of being able to succeed only to have it ripped out from under them in the near future anyway.

[jcbrown]

I am guessing the lack of posts on last night's episode meant others found it as boring as I did. I had to watch it on Hulu today after it started late and my DVR cut it off--guessing in Eastern time it might have been preempted. You did not miss much.

[NJRadioGuy]

Yeah, the Italian place in suburban Austin. I have my doubts that it's going to survive more than a year unless the therapy really takes hold and he's able to push past the tragedy. I feel for the guy, I really do. Maybe if the jump in business due to the show can generate sufficient revenue they could hire a head chef to run the kitchen and let him step back and focus on himself for a while. Because with that kind of personality he's liable to backslide and get into trouble again.

[KeithJ]

These owners that have Gordon come in and then just sit there and argue with him and think they know better just kill me.  You know who Gordon is and that he’s going to tell it how it is.

If I was Gordon I would have left as soon as Blake purposely sent me an unseasoned dish.  Why did she think creating her own line of pots and an air fryer was a good idea?  

[Tango64]

The woman serving Gordon in the beginning was great.

I noticed the debt-ridden owner zoomed off in a late model Range Rover. 

[Shrek]

As a measure of how bad this show has got Fiona & I made the decision last night to remove it from our recording list. Shows have to get bad for us to even consider removing them never mind actually go through with it as we both have to have given up.

[Yeah No]

22 minutes ago, Shrek said:

As a measure of how bad this show has got Fiona & I made the decision last night to remove it from our recording list. Shows have to get bad for us to even consider removing them never mind actually go through with it as we both have to have given up.

I don't blame you. We've been thinking about doing that too. We drag our feet watching the episodes and fast forward a lot. And it has to be really bad for us to cancel our DVR recordings, especially where a Gordon show is concerned. Then again I couldn't get into "Next Level Chef" and "Gordon Ramsay Uncharted" and canceled them from the DVR a while ago. The only Gordon shows we still watch besides this are "Hell's Kitchen" and "MasterChef".

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

On 2/19/2025 at 11:16 AM, Colorado David said:

a sit down restaurant with plastic utensils. amazing. i'm suprised there werent red cups for the drinks.

short of her son making it in the nfl, i dont see bouncing back from a mill in debt. he was so polite tho i truly hope he pulls it off.

Just a guess: That dining room was tiny. Maybe it's small enough that it's technically a Take-Out place with a seating area, and is therefore legally required to use plastic utensils, Styrofoam take-out containers, etc. Even though those are huge money sinks, there was zero discussion of using metal utensils and proper plates. Maybe it's because they weren't allowed to?

 

19 hours ago, KeithJ said:

These owners that have Gordon come in and then just sit there and argue with him and think they know better just kill me.  You know who Gordon is and that he’s going to tell it how it is.

If I was Gordon I would have left as soon as Blake purposely sent me an unseasoned dish.  Why did she think creating her own line of pots and an air fryer was a good idea?  

Blake was as full of herself as we've ever seen anyone on this show. I legit thought we were getting another Amy's Baking Company until her change of heart near the end (which according to the online reviews, seems to have been genuine -- her food got a lot better post-Gordon).

IIRC, in the entire history of KN (both British and American), there's been exactly 1 1/2 restaurants where Gordon actually liked the food. One was on the British show where Gordon cleaned his plate because he liked the food so much, and the owner jokingly said she was going to take a picture of the empty plate (the renovation ultimately failed because the restaurant was so small that the rush time crowds were simply not big enough to make the place profitable, and that area of London wasn't big on take-out food).

The other would be a restaurant from the American version where Gordon hated all of the food except for the cakes custom-made by the owner's mother. He actually hugged the mother and told her how much he'd enjoyed the cake (that was the one where Gordon found a dead mouse in the front entryway and the owner accused him of planting it, which led to Gordon threatening to walk out until she apologized).

 

6 hours ago, Tango64 said:

The woman serving Gordon in the beginning was great.

I noticed the debt-ridden owner zoomed off in a late model Range Rover. 

Money is no object when your husband is bankrolling everything including $300/month storage fees for your cookware and air fryers that no one's buying ("I would say the sales range from $0.00 to.... $0.00").

[seacliffsal]

Blake really represented a desire to be a celebrity influencer.  Everything was a short-cut to becoming a 'celebrity.'  Canned sauces (and then berating her staff for letting them be seen on t.v.), repackaged seasoning mixes, pans and air fryers...  Yep, all looks, no substance.  I really felt for her husband and wanted the changes to be successful for his sake not hers.  She wants to be like Gordon but, without, you know, having to work for it.  I liked Cece the chef and the waitress.

[DoctorK]

I just watched the Simmer Down episode. Same people, same problems, same miraculous happy ending, just different names and different dates. The only modestly interesting thing I noticed (I am easily amused) was when they showed the owner two months later, his beard apparently over the two month period grew out white resulting in an unusual two tone look.

[Colorado David]

2 minutes ago, DoctorK said:

I just watched the Simmer Down episode. Same people, same problems, same miraculous happy ending, just different names and different dates. The only modestly interesting thing I noticed (I am easily amused) was when they showed the owner two months later, his beard apparently over the two month period grew out white resulting in an unusual two tone look.

all i noticed was that no one seemed to ever change their clothes. it's not like they were in uniform either.

[seacliffsal]

Just watched the Simmer Down episode and it really touched me.  The owner and brother seemed so real compared to other participants on this show.  When Chris admitted that he just really went through the motions I really felt for him.  Hopefully they continue to do well and Chris and his wife can reconnect.  There are so many episodes (like last week with the wanna be celebrity chef) where I am so not invested in the restaurant nor really care if they make it or not, but this episode just hit me differently.

[KeithJ]

Two weeks in a row “Cameras out!” “Staff out!” And then the whole conversation is filmed anyway.

Putting pictures of him and his wife on the walls when they’re separated was a bit weird.

Cierra needs to go. Even though she says she loves the owner and restaurant, she has a terrible attitude.

Edited March 20 by KeithJ