Kitchen Nightmares, Season 2, Episode 0: The Review Episode of Last Season

Welcome to the second season of Kitchen Nightmares. This is the show where professional chef and entertainer Gordon Ramsay drops in on various failing restaurants across the United States and shows them how to shape up and fix all their problems. He leaves them with a high class menu, better cooks, and hopefully a legacy of success.

We start off this season with a review show that revisits some of Ramsay’s antics from last season and tells us who make a go of it and who still failed. The restaurants under review tonight are The Mixing Bowl, The Olde Stone Mill, Finn McCool’s, Campania, Purnima Dillon’s, and Peter’s.

Of course, right off the bat I see a problem. Last season we watched Ramsay try to fix ten restaurants. I have heard from readers of my recap and from other sources on the internet that many of the restaurants failed anyway, despite Ramsay’s help. On the shows, the editors went very far out of their way to show us that Ramsay was the ultimate God of restauranting and that he was incapable of doing anything other than a perfect job. So I already suspect that they will not be showing us his failures.

Anyway, let’s start with Finn McCool’s. That was Episode 7 last season and you can read my review of it here. This a classic Irish pub run by Buddy and his sons. Buddy had lost his will to cook and his sons were fighting all the time. The restaurant was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. As a result, the food was terrible and the only patrons were the old folks from the retirement home next door who, presumably, had lost their taste buds.

Ramsay concentrated on patching up the family with his ultimate brotherly wisdom. He gave them a better menu, new furniture, and a better family structure. This strategy paid off and the restaurant started making money. But was it enough to save the restaurant? Let’s find out.

A year later, Ramsay returns to visit the family. Buddy greets Chef Ramsay and assures him that his advice did not fall on deaf ears. Brian, the executive chef at the center of the tornado a year ago, is proud to announce that he has become a changed man. He is now happy to be working there.

How are the finances? Buddy tells us that sales are up 35%. I’m not sure that that is all that impressive, however, since we heard earlier that the place was losing $5,000 a week. I can’t imagine that 35% is enough to change a loss into a profit.

Offhand, if they had 100 customers a night they would now get 135. If the average customer spends $20, that’s only $3,500 extra gross income a week. They claimed to be $5,000 a week in the hole.

But Buddy says that they are making money and have cleared all of their debt. As you recall, they were “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in debt. To clear off $200,000 in debt in 12 months, they must have been making about $20,000 a month profit. That is a huge turnaround indeed.

How is the family doing? Well it seems that Buddy had a heart attack in the last year from all the stress. The family pulled together and ran the restaurant as a cohesive unit while Buddy was in the hospital. Melissa, the daughter-in-law, is positive that had this happened before Chef Ramsay’s visit, the restaurant would have fallen apart and closed.

The new menu has been readily accepted by the locals, except that they demanded that spring rolls be brought back to the menu. Brian is trying a new recipe for the rolls. Ramsay orders a batch and declares them to be delicious.

And they lived happily ever after.

And then we move onto The Olde Stone Mill. That was Episode 5 last season and you can read my review of it here.

This owner of this restaurant, Dean, was in severe denial last time we met him. He thought that this was the best run restaurant in town, despite the constant losses and the constant bickering with his chef head Mike. As a result, Mike had lost his will to be a good chef and business dropped to zero.

When Ramsay showed up to help, he discovered that the food was awful and that Dean had been hiding the finances from his wife Barbara. They were half a million dollars in debt.

But even when they had customers in the restaurant, Dean was not being a good manager. He schmoozed too much with the customers and encouraged the staff to serve food quickly even if it wasn’t up to standards.

Ramsay confronted Dean about his management style and they almost came to blows. Ramsay pressed on and suggested that the place convert into a steak house. He gave them a whole new menu and new furniture. He also ignited a fire under chef Mike by teaching him the new menu items. Then he worked on Dean and in a fatherly way taught him to be a better manager.

Let’s check in on them a year later. Dean is looking well rested and has a tan. He says that business doubled and they were featured in The New York Times. But when he mentions it again he says that business is only up 25% - 40%.

Overall, he says that the business breaks even now instead of losing money. Everybody gets paid on time and he can cover his mortgage. No mention is made of that half million in debt that he was carrying last year.