To thoroughly enjoy the glory that is season seven of Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay, please welcome Alison Leiby, who will be here every week to take us through the season.
This episode of Divorce Court sure had an awfully big focus on a restaurant for some reason. What? Oh this wasn't that show? This was just an episode of Kitchen Nightmares except that restaurant owners are maybe in the middle of a messy divorce? Sure, whatever.
Chef Gordon Ramsay spent this week at Kati Allo, a Greek restaurant in Queens. I love when shows are really familiar to me. I'm in Queens often, so it was nice to see the city I live in on the screen. I'm also very familiar with deteriorating relationships, so this episode really made me feel right at home.
The restaurant is owned by the (kind of) husband and wife team of Manny and Christine. There's no real mystery as to how they feel about each other since in the first several minutes of the show Christine says, "Never in my wildest nightmares did I think I'd be stuck here for 13 years." It's pretty grim.
Ramsay arrives and talks to the couple about how they came to own the business and what the problems are with it today. Manny explains that one day he went out for a haircut next door and then decided to buy the restaurant. Look, I get impulse shopping. I can't tell you guys how many times I've gone to Bloomingdale's to buy a pair of jeans and walked out with those and also like three crop tops that the cashier assured me are "like totally in right now." But to buy an entire restaurant just because you were getting a haircut? That's a shopping level that even I haven't reached.
Manny and Christine explain that their kids used to all work in the restaurant but now only one daughter, Evelyn, works there. She waits tables once a week. They are severely in debt and have sold their house in order to try and save the business. And among all of this talk about the failing restaurant, they casually throw in that they are divorcing.
Ramsay sits down for lunch to see the state of the food at Kati Allo. He orders pastitisio, the gyro platter, and a Greek pork dish. Everything he tries is terrible. The gyro is frozen. The sausage is greasy and fried and so garlicky that when the waitress Irene tastes it she has a coughing fit. The pastitisio looks "like a bland pile of worms" and has clearly been microwaved based on the steam rising from the center of the dish.
After such a disappointing meal, Ramsay sits down with Manny and the kitchen staff to tell them his thoughts. He says that everything was bland and greasy. When he asks Manny if the sausage was fried he answers, "It's an old recipe." Fine, it can be an old recipe, that doesn't make it a good one. Just because you've been doing something one way for a long time doesn't mean it's right. Just ask my neighbor who still buys and listens to CDs.
Ramsay decides that to get to the bottom of the problems at this restaurant he needs to sit down with Evelyn for her opinion. They go to a park and sit on a bench in front of a fountain like this is some kind of romantic comedy where they are hatching a plot to get Manny and Christine to fall back in love through trickery. Instead, she just cries and talks about how they business has ruined her family. Also she explains that they've been so close to divorce for a very long time. I don't understand it. You have the papers, you have lawyers, just pull the trigger and be done with it.
Ramsay returns to the restaurant to observe dinner service, which is where things really go off the rails. Manny cuts into a piece of chicken on the grill to see if it's thoroughly cooked. Ramsay notes that after thirteen years of owning a restaurant, he should know how to cook a fucking chicken cube. Hell, I mostly use my stove as a drying rack for the bowls of cereal I washed and even I can tell when a piece of chicken is cooked.
At one point, a dish comes up to the kitchen via a dumbwaiter. The dish is steaming so it's obviously been cooked. Ramsay asks where that came from and finds out there is another kitchen downstairs. When he asks about it further we learn it's just one woman whose only job is to microwave dishes in the basement.
When Ramsay goes downstairs to see what's happening, aside from finding the lone woman and her microwave, he also finds the walk-in fridge and other food storage area. There are trays of moldy, old food and full jars that are almost a decade old. He brings Manny, Christine, and Evelyn down to take in the scene. He pulls out a bucket of a white liquid/sauce/who knows and makes them all smell it. "Smell that!" he yells at each of them as they dip their heads toward the mystery vat. It seemed yogurt based, and possibly curdled, and I get queasy even thinking about what it might have smelled like.
Manny looks around at the kitchen and while he's upset, he keeps saying it's not his fault, it's his staff's fault. He says they need to hire better people. What he doesn't understand, despite his daughter repeatedly yelling it at him, is that it's his job to check on all of this. It's his responsibility to notice if his employees are cleaning or not.
Ramsay knows that the restaurant itself is a problem, but not nearly as big of one as Manny and Christine's marriage. So he does his best Dr. Drew impression and heads to their home in Queens to try to provide some couple's therapy. They talk for a few minutes and voila, marriage fixed! They are both fully committed to each other and saving the business. All it took was a gruff British guy sitting in their living room. Hey, Gordon Ramsay, can you come talk to me and the guy I've been hooking up with? Because we don't even own a restaurant together and things are already falling apart. Seems like you know how to fix relationships.
Back at the restaurant, Ramsay shows Manny and Christine a sea bass dish and prepares it for them, and then asks them to prepare it together, as a couple. All of the sudden instead of screaming at each other, they are having fun and joking around and squeezing lemon on everything and it's all fixed.
Overnight, the Kitchen Nightmares team overhauls the restaurant's interior to be less "office waiting room" and more "Greek restaurant." They paint, decorate, replace furniture, all in one night. I've lived in my apartment for four years and have yet to hang one picture on the wall. In fact, the only decorating I've done is taping a piece of paper next to my door that says, "DO YOU HAVE YOUR KEYS?" It works like 80% of the time and makes the space feel real homey.
When Ramsay reveals the new restaurant dining room to Manny, Christine, and the family, Christine cannot stop screaming. Every time he points out something new or update she shrieks again. "We painted the walls white." "AAAHHHHHHH!" "We got new tablecloths." "AAAHHHHHHH!" It goes on for a while.
Then we have a brief in-show advertisement for Oneida where Ramsay discusses the merits of their sturdy yet chic plates and flatware. It's a far cry from the obscene product placement of Top Chef, but it's still pretty jarring. It did, however, make me want to get some restaurant-grade plates since almost all of mine break because I only cook when I come home drunk at 2am and NEED to make a snack.
During the relaunch, things start off pretty smoothly with Manny and daughter Evelyn running the kitchen together. But soon Manny loses track of orders and gets lots in the chaos and walks out of the kitchen screaming in Greek. Thanks to his marriage counseling from a restaurant owner turned reality star, he remembers that he is committed to making this work, and goes back in and continues to work hard throughout service.
After a tumultuous few days, it seems Kati Allo is back on track to being a successful restaurant and that the family is making things work together. I'm excited for the inevitable spin-off to come out of this show, Relationship Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay.
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