Kitchen Nightmares, Episode 8: Lela’s

Welcome to another episode of Kitchen Nightmares! 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 maybe beyond. Yes, he will do that in less than one week. You can read my recap of last week’s episode here, but it is not necessary, since each episode is its own complete story.

This week finds us at Lela’s in Pomona, California. This is a small college town populated by artists and car collectors. Lela’s is a fine-dining restaurant that is only eight months old. Unfortunately, it has so many problems that it is just days away from closing its doors for good.

We meet Lela the restaurant’s owner and namesake. She looks like a nice lady. Tabitha, one of the waitresses, tells us that Lela should not have opened the restaurant in the downtown area because it is surrounded by homeless people. She says that the restaurant just doesn’t fit.

We then meet Ricky, the head chef. Right away we can see that he is loud and abrasive. He clowns around much of the time and just doesn’t take the job seriously. We see a montage of him hamming it up with the other chefs and staff. There is no footage of him actually cooking anything. Along those lines we meet Daniel “Buzzard” who is the prep chef. He looks like one of the homeless people and says that this job is all about having fun. We see a montage of him eating food off of other people’s plates and then stealing food from the cooler.

We find out that Ricky and Tabitha do not get along very well. It seems that the normal interaction is for Tabitha to turn the order in to Ricky and then he screws around for a while. Maybe the order is cooked properly or maybe it is lost or maybe it is screwed up. Ricky doesn’t really care. And then Tabitha takes the blame when the customers complain. She then tells Ricky what went wrong and he just throws his hands up in the air. He says that it is not his fault and that the girl is just too uptight.

Lela takes Ricky’s side and says that Tabitha just doesn’t have good people skills. Jessica, another waitress, says that everyone can hear it when Ricky and Tabitha start arguing. Carolyn, another waitress, says that it is embarrassing to hear all that arguing and the customers must wonder what is going on.

The women tell the camera that this tense atmosphere is causing the restaurant to lose customers and money. Lela confirms this and says that she has invested everything she owns into the place and she is almost out of money. She will have to close very soon. She already owes her sister Emma $60,000 and is thinking of borrowing more. She also owes $64,000 to various banks.

Whatever can she do? Who will come and save her? Will it be the cavalry or a knight in shining armor? No. But it is our knight in gleaming apron, Chef Gordon Ramsay.

He arrives just in the nick of time and walks up to the restaurant. The first thing he notices is that the place is deserted. And not only the restaurant is deserted, but the whole landscape around it is too. He says that this area of downtown Pomona is like a ghost town. We get a quick montage of abandoned buildings just to make sure we understand the problem.

Ramsay steps inside and meets the staff. As normal, he sits down and orders a few items from the menu. He immediately notes many typos on the menu. He starts with the tomato-basil soup. He orders the shrimp nachos, but Tabitha explains that they are out of shrimp. He orders salmon instead and they are out of that as well. He then asks for tuna and Tabitha isn’t sure whether they have it. He waves that off and just orders the rack of lamb with the chocolate-mint sauce.

Eww. What kind of food do they serve here? Shrimp nachos and lamb with chocolate? Those sound disgusting.

Tabitha turns the order in and Ricky says, “Bring it on!” After a few minutes, the bowl of soup is delivered to Chef Ramsay. He tastes it and, while it is not really bad, Ramsay summons Tabitha over and declares that this is canned soup, not homemade like it says on the menu. Tabitha confirms that it is canned. Ramsay follows up with the comment, “Well, that’s not really ‘fine dining’ then, is it?” Tabitha agrees with him.

Jessica brings out his chicken (not shrimp) nachos. We then hear lots of shouting from the kitchen and Ramsay asks what that is all about. Jessica says that it is just their executive chef, Ricky. We see a shot of Ricky dancing and singing as he cooks.

The nachos seem disgusting and Ramsay wants to know if the chips were made fresh or brought in. Tabitha says that Ricky makes them fresh each morning. Ramsay respectfully disagrees. Tabitha goes in the back and asks Ricky when he made the chips and he says, “Yesterday.” Tabitha looks mortified and threatens to quit on the spot.

Next up is the lamb with chocolate-mint sauce. We see Chef Ricky squeeze chocolate sauce on the lamb from a bottle. This is not going to go over well, I can tell already. Ramsay gets the dish and immediately complains about the portion size. He holds up a lamb shank and it is half the size of his knife. He tastes it and then asks Tabitha if the lamb has been frozen. She says that it has been. He then asks if any item on the menu is actually cooked fresh and she says that there isn’t.

Ramsay sighs and says that he will skip anything else and just get a nice dessert. He requests the brownie ala mode. Yeah, I’ll bet that will have nothing frozen on it (sarcasm!). He makes her swear that the brownie is fresh. She does swear.

But, disaster strikes. There are no brownies left. Tabitha asks the chefs where they went and Ricky just says, “They’re gone.” Tabitha says that she just saw a huge pan of them three days ago (of course, those wouldn’t really be fresh now, would they?). The chefs just stand there and shrug their shoulders. We get a shot of Buzzard quickly shoving something into his mouth.