Kitchen Nightmares, Episode 5: The Olde Stone Mill

Welcome to another episode of Kitchen Nightmares, the show where, each week, Chef Gordon Ramsay descends upon a restaurant that has fallen on hard times and helps the owners restore the place to its former glory and beyond in less than one week. You can read my recap of last week’s episode, but it is not necessary, since each episode is its own complete story.

We start this week in Tuckahoe, NY, about 45 minutes north of Manhattan. We visit The Olde Stone Mill restaurant and bar. Six years ago, Dean bought an old mill and converted it into a restaurant. Barbara, Dean’s wife, says that they did all this themselves. They took a risk and built the place from scratch, literally. Dean did all the carpentry and plumbing himself. The only thing he contracted out was the electrical work. Smart man.

Dean believes that he is the best restaurateur around, but the problem is that he has no customers. He is not sure why that is.

Perhaps it is the food. We meet Chef Mike. He is currently upset that Dean keeps coming in and screaming at him for not getting the food out on time or done right. We see the obligatory montage of Dean yelling and screaming at Mike.

But in a confession to the camera, Mike admits that he has lost his passion for cooking food. He admits that his food doesn’t look good or taste good anymore.

So Chef Ramsay arrives, challenges him to a cook off, and Mike is happy again. Problem solved; end of show. Goodnight folks!

I mean, we all know that it is going to turn out that way (that’s the way a previous episode went), but there are still 51 minutes left in this episode, so we will just have to pretend that we don’t see it coming.

Tom, the general manager, echoes Mike’s comments and says that he doesn’t eat the restaurant’s food very often himself. We see a montage of customers eating food and frowning. Dean says that there is nothing wrong and that he and his family eat here all the time.

Mike notes that there is an assisted-living facility right next to the restaurant and that the majority of the customers are “blue heads” (i.e., elderly folks). I’m not sure that I have ever actually seen an elderly woman with blue-tinted hair, except in movie parodies. It is mostly the younger crowd that dyes their hair blue.

Unfortunately, the younger crowd doesn’t eat here. Nor does the younger crowd work there. Tom tells us that it is hard to find decent young people to staff the place, apparently because it seems like it is a depressing place to work.

Dean tells us that his worst nightmare is to open the restaurant once day, fully staffed and ready to go, and then have no customers at all show up. He admits that this nightmare did come true earlier this year.

Of course, this is New York we are talking about, so I imagine that they get pretty bad snowstorms a few times a year that would keep people away like that. I recall this last winter in Colorado where my roommate and I walked to the local Chinese restaurant through a blizzard and three-foot drifts. They looked at us as if we were crazy. They fed us anyway, even though we were the only ones in the place.

But I digress. Jeanie, the hostess, tells us that it is really depressing on a slow night. Everyone has a long, sad face. We see a few more scenes of Dean and Barbara wringing his hands over their money problems and the lack of customers. Dean looks wistfully out the window. Who will ever save them now?

Who indeed. On cue, our Chef in gleaming apron comes screaming down the street on his classic motorcycle. Yes, it is Chef Gordon Ramsay to the rescue.

Ramsay skids to a stop, hops off the hog, and steps inside. He meets all the main players and then wants to start looking around. He is all business.

As usual, Gordon sits down and orders from the menu. Also as usual, he starts with the crab cakes. Note to any future restaurant owners: Be sure to make top-notch crab cakes if you think there is any slight chance that you will ever meet Gordon Ramsay. He seems to judge every restaurant by how well they make crab cakes.

He also orders shrimp, salad, and risotto. Mike is nervous about cooking for Ramsay. He thinks that Ramsay is just going to reject it no matter what. Well, I think Mike is right that Ramsay will reject the food, but we have seen Ramsay compliment food when he likes it, so if he doesn’t like it, it really is because the food is bad.

The crab cakes arrive after 30 minutes and Ramsay does not like it. It has some kind of odd flavor he can’t figure out. It is like sour mayonnaise or something. The shrimp cocktail is some odd wrapped thing that is maybe fried. Ramsay says, “Bloody hell!”

The chopped salad arrives and it seems to have been squashed into a funnel and then mashed onto a plate. It looks like a teepee or something. Ramsay is not impressed. He then finishes with the tilapia stuffed with lobster. Ramsay calls it “gross.” The risotto fares no better.