Kitchen Nightmares, Season 2, Episode 1: Handlebar

Welcome to the actual start of 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.

Tonight we start off in Mount Sinai, New York, an upper-middle class town on Long Island which is home to many trendy restaurants. But then there is Handlebar. Bill and Carolyn are a working-class couple and they bought this restaurant a year ago. At the time, it was a nice place that had gotten run down over the years. Bill was pretty handy with tools and so they thought it would be pretty straightforward to fix up the place and restore it to its classic glory.

But that was not the case. It seems that 70% of their business came from the bar and they could not even fill up eighteen dinner tables on a Saturday night.

Mary Jane, a server, says that Bill is just an “okay” manager. Beth agrees and says that on most nights Bill hangs out at the bar, drinks, and does nothing to help out. Both servers say that the place is very dirty from 20 years of build-up and the décor is dated (we see pictures of video poker games).

Bill disagrees. He says that everything is going fine. He specifically praises the chef Melissa for being a great cook. Humorously, we then get an insert of Melissa saying that she is not a chef at all. She says that she doesn’t intend to be a chef for very long and that he made a mistake hiring her.

Carolyn tells us that they are running out of money and are at the end of their line of credit. If Chef Ramsay doesn’t arrive soon, all will be lost. Whatever will they do?

Just in the nick of time, our knight is gleaming apron does arrive. He is driving a gas-guzzling black Hummer. Unfortunately, despite him using a GPS navigation system, he gets lost.

Ah yes, celebrities and their problems. You know, since I’ve gotten my GPS system, I’ve never gotten lost. Occasionally it takes me the long way to get there, but I am never lost.

Anyway, he arrives and enters the restaurant. Amanda, another server, greets him and sits him down. She notes that Gordon has a great-looking body, you know, for an old guy. She gives him all four menus.

Now, I have a suspicion that this was just for show. She calls one of the menus “The Early Bird” menu. Obviously when you give someone the early bird menu, you don’t give them the regular dinner menu and the lunch menu as well. Ramsay was given all of the menus so that he could make a big deal about how many different menus they have and how it is so confusing for regular people, not to mention celebrities, to figure out.

Ramsay finally does order and he starts with the soup of the day and then moves onto the seafood crepe. Then he finishes with the filet mignon fondue.

He notes that the restaurant is empty, despite the fact that the home audience can clearly hear the other diners eating. We are treated to stock footage of an empty restaurant. We can tell that it is stock footage because Ramsay is not shown sitting at a table plus there are no servers or bartenders behind the bar. Plus, it is probably only 1:00 in the afternoon. Those editors are just being tricky.

Back in the kitchen, Melissa tells us that somehow Chef Ramsay managed to select the worst possible dishes from the menu. Hmm. Do you think that maybe the producers scouted the place ahead of time and told him which were the worst dishes?

Gordon tastes the New England clam chowder and summons Bill over to tell him that it tastes very good. Something’s not right here. Chef Ramsay never likes any of the initial food and we know that he is just setting Bill up for the kill.

Bill pats Ramsay on the shoulder and thanks him for the compliment. Ramsay gets a disgusted look on his face and looks at the spot on his shoulder where Bill just touched him. How disgusting! A commoner just touched a celebrity and probably left visible slime on his shirt or something.

We get a quick shot of the kitchen and we see what the problem is. Melissa really isn’t cooking much of anything. She is just opening up cans and packages of pre-cooked food and tossing it into the microwave.

The seafood crepe is the first torpedo. Ramsay opens it up and finds that the scallops are undercooked, the shrimp is overcooked, and the crab is “plastic.” Mary Jane notes that it is actually imitation crab meat. Ramsay calls it “Seafood Crap” and eats none of it.

The next dish is the Filet Mignon fondue. He wonders why it takes so long to bring out a plate of raw beef and a pot of boiling oil. It finally arrives.

He skewers a bit and starts to fry it. He pulls it out and declares that it now looks like dog food. Whoa now, let’s not quite blame that on Bill or Melissa, Chef. You were the one who cooked your own piece of beef.

But Ramsay points out that it is a crime to deep fry a good cut of meat like that. He spits it out and says that he is done with the food tasting. He gathers Bill, Carolyn, and Melissa to explain the problems.

He tells them that the food is bad. Bill disagrees and notes that he has never had a complaint about the food. Melissa, however, agrees and says that she hates many of the items on the menu.

Ramsay asks her why she hasn’t changed the menu. She shrugs. He asks her if she has lost her passion for cooking and she says that she never had one in the first place. She says that she doesn’t want to be a chef.

This surprises everyone at the table. Bill wonders why she asked for the job if she didn’t want it. She says, “Because the other guy left.” Hmm.

A little while later we find Ramsay watching the day’s dinner service. The first dish to go out is stuffed mushrooms. When served, they are just two lumps on a plate. Ramsay calls it sad. Bill is not pleased because that is his own personal recipe.

On an interesting note, at one point we see a long shot of the restaurant and we do see that every one of the eighteen tables has customers at it, so maybe the tales of woe aren’t so bad after all.

The next dish that Ramsay questions is the mashed potatoes. Bill explains that it is a mixture of instant potato flakes and the leftover baked potatoes from the night before. It is a cost saving move.

An hour into the dinner service, the restaurant has run out of their regular vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower. Instead they are serving boiled radishes. Ramsay looks disgusted. The customer is not pleased either.

Ramsay asks Melissa if there isn’t something better she can try and she produces a plate of steamed vegetables. Ramsay looks at it and notes that it is mostly stalks and not the flowers. Melissa shrugs her shoulders and says that they are bags of chopped frozen vegetables so they are bound to be crap.