S03.E08: Landoll's Mohican Castle

[OnceSane]

Gordon encourages the son of a Loudonville, Ohio, hotel owner to learn the business and take the reins from his mother; the hotel hosts a fairytale wedding.

[LittleIggy]

They should have left the 80s decor since the bride's headband was so 80s! :-p

The rooms on the website look amazing. I was disappointed that the total focus was on the food services aspect.

[placate]

...but Gordon!  I lookup your recipes on the internet.  Usually through youtube and not google but am I suppose to divorce my experience from cooking your chicken fried egg noodle recipe last week to you not taking credibility towards google chefs?  How did this lady make a buncha millions from running a coloring book empire?  So many questions and so little hotel hell.

[NowVoyager]

I personally didn't like the way the bride was made up & styled for her wedding, but she looked soo happy & her beauty shown from within ... so who cares!?! Good for her! 

One theme these shows seem to have in common is a lazy, uneducated, unqualified son who inherited the business. It's hard to root for someone under those circumstances. I certainly felt underwhelmed by this one. It made me think about the dimwitted beachfront son a few episodes back; the one Gordon gave up on. I still don't get it. He was a hot mess, but he agreed with everything Gordon said & did his best.

[The Crazed Spruce]

4 hours ago, placate said:

...but Gordon!  I lookup your recipes on the internet.  Usually through youtube and not google but am I suppose to divorce my experience from cooking your chicken fried egg noodle recipe last week to you not taking credibility towards google chefs?  How did this lady make a buncha millions from running a coloring book empire?  So many questions and so little hotel hell.

Hey, I do the same thing. But there's a difference between googling recipes for your own personal use, and doing it while passing yourself off as a head chef and charging restaurant prices for something you've never cooked before.

[Jersey Guy 87]

Even more disturbing than the idea that the "head chef" would look up recipes on Google (or that he didn't know how to cook filet) is the fact that filet mignon had been on the menu for at least a year and no one had ordered it.  Did they order a few filets a year ago and keep them in the freezer in case someone orders it?  Was someone going to run out to the local supermarket and buy a filet if it was ordered?  Did the previous chef cook a few and leave them behind, to be heated up if ordered?  Or was the plan to just say "sorry, we're out" if someone ordered it?

Son was a complete waste of space.  Ex-husband sounds like a jerk - lets the insurance lapse, restaurant burns down, he divorces his wife and leaves her with the hotel she didn't want to begin with.  Beautiful setting, though, and if they get competent people to run things they can make it into a real hot spot to hold weddings.

[tomorrowgirl]

The focus on this makeover was just for the wedding or event room.  In order for this place to be a success, they need to pay attention to the every day aspects too.  The kitchen seemed like it needed a new layout, since the food warming area was off the beaten path and awkwardly placed; the cooks aren't very knowledgeable about basic menu items, the staff doesn't know how to correctly write up the tickets.  Maybe those problems were taken care of off camera, along with the need to thoroughly clean the lobby and the tower, but they should have mentioned that these problems had been resolved too.  Since we only got a glimpse of the room belonging to the couple, I wondered if the rooms themselves were in need of cleaning or updating.  I don't see how this place can be a money maker if they only concentrate on the events package without also making needed improvements in the restaurant and hotel.

[BusyOctober]

Does anyone believe that doofus son is going to take over for his mother?  He was given small simple tasks to do and he screwed them up.  There is no way spending a day with Gordon and his "tough love" motivational speeches is turning that lazy blob (or any of this season's lazy blobs o' sons) into a restaurateur/hotelier. I'm sure she'd never recuperate her investment, but I wish this woman could sell the place and get out from under the crushing weight of her stress.

Did I hear correctly?  That "special" in-room breakfast service cost $79??? It looked like two defrosted, untoasted, generic frozen waffles and some sad-ass sides. And it's delivered by a doofus lazy blob in an untucked lumber jack shirt?  Refund please!

I hope this doesn't get picked up for another season.  It's too unrealistic as a viewer to believe some of this shit is really happening and the "management" can't figure out why their business is failing.  It's depressing to hear these sob stories or see people with obvious mental health issues and know nothing will change for the better once the show pulls up stakes and leaves town.

[Wings]

Terrible episode.  The production team who chose this hotel probably got an ear full from Gordon.  He had no energy for this and just did not care.  No rants, no pep talks to the staff and owner, nothing.  There was no purpose for examining the never used room with the dead flies.  He was directed to go up there to find them for footage.  Very disjointed and pointless episode. 

A kitchen and lousy chef usually gets him going more than anything else.  it was clear that no one ever ate at that restaurant so why bother.  The owner of the hotel appeared disinterested, too.  Everyone was going through the paces to get something taped and be done. 

[spiderpig]

I was so disappointed.  This property was so weird and funky.  I wanted to see the guestrooms, which from the exterior didn't seem to be standard cookie-cutter bedrooms.  Guess I'll have to go to their website for a peek.

Sorry Gordon.  This was an epic fail for HH.

[Canada]

Wow, that was... boring.  There was no energy, no organisation.  No one seemed to give a crap about anything.  Is Jimmy actually a trained chef?  Because I've never seen Beef Stroganoff that looks like that.  His go-to move as a 'chef' seemed to be to cover everything in cheese.  I don't think anyone knew what they were doing there.

[seacliffsal]

I thought the setting and the architecture were....dare I say it?....stunning.  They really needed event help from Gordon as there is so much potential in that hotel.  Unfortunately, they kept the carpeting in the event hall which really didn't blend with the renovation.  The food that Gordon's team came up with really looked delicious.  I felt like this was more like earlier seasons as we watched the event hall renovation and saw the new menu items.

[islandgal140]

I thought the exterior of the hotel was just stunning as was the setting. Put yes the interior definitely had a dated 90s feel. The sponge painted walls, which was all the rage and featured on damn near every HGTV back then, are just rife in that place.

The rooms most be in somewhat decent shape since they didn't really show them or Gordon with his filth-o-meter. 

The room where flies go to die was just disgusting.

I don't think this show is a fit for Gordon. He isn't a hotelier and should really stick with restaurants. There is just way too much psycho analyzing, talking and sensationalizing of all the things wrong with the hotel but we never really see how the problems get solved, if at all. I just don't buy I hotel with a myriad of problems being fixed by a few room makeovers and a newly designed menu that I am not really sure the staff knows how to prepare. 

[Christina]

A former co-worker attended a wedding there several years ago, 2011 or 2012 I think. She raved about the food. Before the wedding, she had been complaining about having to room with someone she didn't know. The room was $160 a night, or so, and could hold up to 4 people. It was a regular hotel-type room not the castle-tower type shown on the episode. Because it was so expensive and there were only so many rooms, a bunch of people decided to room together, and she knew one but not the others. The closest hotel to that location was about 30 miles, I think, so there is nothing around and she wanted to drink and have a good time and not have to worry about driving.

After the wedding she said that the hotel room walls were paper thin, and after heading to their room late one night, another room called the front desk and complained about them making noise and even though they had been drinking, she didn't think they were that loud. The next morning they were awakened by the other room just getting up and getting ready. The only other complaint she had was that there were spiders in the cabin someone had rented. They didn't show them on this episode, but there are cabins on the property, and she claimed it was covered in spiders. It is in the woods and she once had me come to her office and kill a spider that was smaller then a pencil eraser and I couldn't even see until it moved so "covered" could have been two to a person with a fear of spiders.

There were breakfast and lunch brunches included, and she said the food was excellent. There were fresh eggs from a local farm and the vegetables also came from a local farm or were grown there. Dinner was in the banquet hall after the wedding, and it was a baked boneless Cornish game hen. The bride decided on that dinner. The person who was the party planner for the Castle also did an excellent job according to my co-worker. The bride had family members who were discussing having a family reunion there during the winter because it was cheaper, and the party planner for the Castle had given them some info on costs for non-wedding parties in the off-season. We discussed why anyone would want to drive up there during winter just to stay in a hotel and drink, but clearly some people like their extended family more than we do, where alcohol would be a requirement if we were stuck in one location with them for a weekend. : ) During the spring, summer, and winter you can go hiking, etc. That place is packed every weekend several months of the year for weddings, but isn't really near anything to attract people for dinner through the week.

I suspect this episode was boring because Ramsay didn't really need to fix much. The location that was full of dead flies and cigarette butts obviously wasn't used for customers. The son wasn't the person who would typically work with the bride and groom, who seemed to be overly critical for production purposes. I doubt the son was even the chef since the woman from the front desk said he didn't do much. Ramsay got to film in a castle and the castle got advertising. The show couldn't fix things like the thin walls, so they painted the reception hall, which looked like it needed it, and redid the menu even though the kitchen only operated primarily to cook for the functions, serving a buffet for the guests when it was full for weddings, etc. The episode had someone say something about the food typically being a buffet, much to Ramsay's horror.

I did question Ramsay telling the son that he shouldn't have removed the empty plate from the husband while the wife was still eating. It was something about it making her self-conscious? I didn't get it. I wouldn't want to sit there with an empty plate in front of me and wouldn't expect anyone else to just because I was still eating. Should I feel self-conscious because I eat slower? It sounded like he was bitching just to bitch, but maybe it is an etiquette I don't know. He didn't seem to feel the need to dress for a wedding reception.

[BogoGog24]

This episode was pretty boring and I kept thinking the wedding was a set up just for filming purposes (though would they have bothered taking photos of the wedding party if it was fake?) I mean the "couple" had to have known what they were walking into and that nothing was going to be "perfect" for their big day and who would ever agree to have a wedding in that situation? And they didn't seem to have any real chemistry at all either. Fake.

I was hoping the "castle" was going to look more like a real castle. I wasn't wowed by the structure, honestly. I'm sure it's nice but I couldn't get past that part of it. It's not that it looks tacky, but... it's kind of like when Burger King built one of their restaurants to look like a "castle." I love castles but I hate clearly synthetic ones. 

[TV Glotzer]

On July 28, 2016 at 7:01 PM, Christina said:

I did question Ramsay telling the son that he shouldn't have removed the empty plate from the husband while the wife was still eating. It was something about it making her self-conscious? I didn't get it. I wouldn't want to sit there with an empty plate in front of me and wouldn't expect anyone else to just because I was still eating. Should I feel self-conscious because I eat slower? It sounded like he was bitching just to bitch, but maybe it is an etiquette I don't know.

It's standard restaurant etiquette to wait for all diners at a table to finish eating before clearing plates. 

On the flip side, diners shouldn't begin eating until everyone at the table has been served. 

Edited July 30, 2016 by TV Glotzer

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

On 7/26/2016 at 9:37 PM, LittleIggy said:

They should have left the 80s decor since the bride's headband was so 80s! :-p

The rooms on the website look amazing. I was disappointed that the total focus was on the food services aspect.

Thank you! I watched the episode slightly sloshed and wondered what was "off" about it; of course, it was the lack of room footage. Methinks Gordon didn't even stay at the hotel.

On 7/27/2016 at 5:50 AM, Jersey Guy 87 said:

Did they order a few filets a year ago and keep them in the freezer in case someone orders it?  Was someone going to run out to the local supermarket and buy a filet if it was ordered?  Did the previous chef cook a few and leave them behind, to be heated up if ordered?  Or was the plan to just say "sorry, we're out" if someone ordered it?

Son was a complete waste of space.  Ex-husband sounds like a jerk - lets the insurance lapse, restaurant burns down, he divorces his wife and leaves her with the hotel she didn't want to begin with.  Beautiful setting, though, and if they get competent people to run things they can make it into a real hot spot to hold weddings.

I was wondering about the filets also. My guess is they have frozen steaks they just throw on the grill if need be.

And ITA about the idiot husband who let the fire insurance lapse. You NEVER, EVER, EVER let fire insurance lapse. If it's too expensive, then sell the house/restaurant/whatever and you'll at least have the money. Decades ago, I worked in an insurance office where an older couple let their policy lapse because they thought they couldn't afford it anymore. A month later, their house burned to the ground and they had to live out their remaining time in a camper on their driveway.

On 7/27/2016 at 7:12 AM, BusyOctober said:

Did I hear correctly?  That "special" in-room breakfast service cost $79??? It looked like two defrosted, untoasted, generic frozen waffles and some sad-ass sides. And it's delivered by a doofus lazy blob in an untucked lumber jack shirt?  Refund please!

I don't understand how anyone could keep a straight face whilst charging $7.90 for that crap, let alone $79. And this just reinforces that Gordon didn't even stay there; otherwise, HE would have ordered it and then raged at the kitchen staff.

On 7/28/2016 at 6:48 AM, islandgal140 said:

The rooms most be in somewhat decent shape since they didn't really show them or Gordon with his filth-o-meter. 

The room where flies go to die was just disgusting.

I agree that the rooms must have been OK.

How the hell do that many flies die in a room? If it were a lot of moths, I'd think the owners kept the lights on at night, and the moths got in through a hole and starved to death. But flies??? WTF?

Edited August 4, 2016 by Sir RaiderDuck OMS

[Canada]

This is another episode that made me shake my head and think that baby boomers have a lot to answer for in raising a generation of idiots.  Idiots with no ambition and no ability to do anything for themselves.  They need their baby boomer parents to hold their hands and give them everything.  Sad.

[Eater of Worlds]

They can soundproof the room by using sound dampening sheetrock.  http://www.acousticalsurfaces.com/soundbreak/soundbreak.htm?d=14   They could just put this over the existing sheetrock, paint it, and have quieter rooms.

I looked at the rooms, and they looked absolutely fine.  I didn't even mind the painting on the walls.  While it's not in style, it doesn't look bad given the style of the rooms.