Kitchen Nightmares, Season 2, Episode 7: Jack’s on Waterfront

Welcome to the seventh episode in 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 of their problems. He leaves them with a high class menu, better cooks, and hopefully a legacy of success.

Tonight we find ourselves in St. Clair Shores in Michigan. This is a summer resort community about 40 miles north of Detroit and home to Jack’s. It is jointly-owned by three body builders from the local gym – Bill, Scott, and Tammer.

Bill tells us that Jack’s is the party place during the summer resort season and we see a nice montage of people dancing to club music. But in the wintertime the whole town shuts down and they don’t make any money.

Tammer tells us that somehow the restaurant has gotten the reputation for bad food. So they brought in AJ to run the kitchen. It turns out that AJ is Tammer’s father and it is hard to tell him what to do, being twenty or so years older than the boys.

He wasn’t doing so well so they “promoted” him away from the kitchen and made him general manager of the dining room. In the dining room, AJ spends all his time schmoozing with the ladies and generally hamming it up. In fact, on most nights he is stinking drunk by closing time. AJ thinks he is having a great life boozing it up every night and dancing with all the girls.

Meanwhile, Scott is being the muscle head of the group and tends to abuse the customers after a while. Bill and Tammer have told Scott to stay away from the restaurant and made him a silent partner. No one is happy about that. Scott says that he is the biggest investor and has over a half million dollars invested. He can’t afford to lose that.

Next they hired Aaron to replace AJ as the kitchen manager. Aaron, unfortunately, is somewhat inexperienced in the kitchen and as a result has been given very little actual authority. He is a good chef and knows exactly what needs to change to make things better, but he is not allowed to make those changes.

With things in chaos, they need a savior immediately. But who can save them from themselves? Yup. Here comes our knight in gleaming apron blasting into town on a snowmobile. It’s Chef Gordon Ramsay. I’m sure he rode that thing all the way up from the Detroit airport.

He stops at Jack’s and goes inside. AJ greets him and Ramsay asks if he is the owner. He is not. He sees Scott but mistakes him for a bouncer. Bill steps in as well.

Ramsay decides to meet with these three individually so they can be totally honest about the problems. Bill says that he puts in 65 hours a week but that Scott isn’t allowed to come in anymore because he was scaring the employees and customers. Ramsay frowns. Separately, AJ agrees.

Not surprisingly, Scott disagrees. He thinks maybe he was having a bad day and is probably too tense. Personally, that sounds to me like a little case of ‘roid rage.

Bill says the big problem is the terrible food, AJ sees no problems at all, and Scott says the problem is AJ’s drinking. He estimates that AJ drinks about $100,000 a year. Ramsay is stunned.

The next step is to taste the food. He orders a “krab” omelet (that’s fake crabmeat for those of you who have been living under a rock), honey-pecan salmon, and fish and chips.

While waiting, Ramsay feels the hot stare of Scott and it makes him uncomfortable. Ramsay calls him a muscle-head meatball (honestly, I used that phrase earlier before I heard Ramsay use it!).

Ramsay gets the omelet and is stunned – stunned I tell ya – to discover that it is artificial crabmeat. Apparently he didn’t notice that the menu spelled it with a “K.” I would think a great chef like Ramsay would have heard of that convention before.

He expresses disgust that a seafood restaurant right on the shore would serve fake crabmeat. Perhaps someone needs to remind Chef Ramsay that Lake Michigan is a fresh water lake and that the nearest source of salt water crab is a thousand miles away. Granted, the restaurant is at fault as well for even trying to serve any kind of crab since it isn’t really native to the area.

Strike one for the restaurant. Aaron says that it wasn’t his choice to use the fake crabmeat; that was the leftover inventory from when the current owners bought the place and he has been told to use it up.

The fish and chips fare no better and Ramsay identifies the fish as frozen. He calls it rubbery and it feels like he is chewing on a fried condom. Okay, I won’t ask how he knows what that tastes like. Moving on …

And finally comes the honey-pecan salmon. Ramsay tastes it and declares it to be too sweet. He says that it tastes like honey for some reason. I do have to wonder what Chef Ramsay was expecting when the word “honey” appears right in the dish’s name.

No matter, he hates all the food and goes into the kitchen to explain that to them all. Aaron agrees that the food is crap but says that he is told to use inferior ingredients and he can’t change that.

Ramsay asks who is in charge of the food and AJ points to Aaron. Ramsay knows better than that. Aaron feels betrayed by AJ. When asked again, AJ changes his story and says that it is the owners who are in charge of the menu. Bill and Scott shake their heads and say that they are not.

Tammer arrives a little bit later and tries to stick up for AJ, but he is hard pressed to give any reason to keep AJ other than he is family.

Ramsay watches that day’s dinner service. Aaron seems to have worse problems than a faulty menu. None of his assistant chefs know what they are doing. Nothing is very coordinated and orders are not being served.

Finally, progress is made and the dishes get served. Alas, twenty dishes get sent back as undercooked or overcooked. Even worse, AJ is nowhere to be found and the customers are getting annoyed that their food is not being cooked properly.