By Scott Buckner
Some years ago, I was introduced to Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America and became kind of fascinated with it. Like the American version of the show that came later, Ramsay spent his time traipsing around the United Kingdom on a mission to whip some mom-and-pop restaurant the size of a Dairy Queen into shape within the span of a few days. If I learned anything from that show, it’s that food created on that island is basically unidentifiable slop even on its best days, so if you ever visit, you’re probably better off just drinking your three squares a day at the closest pub.
Here in the States, our mom-and-pop dining establishments have many of the same problems as those across The Pond, except without meals involving sheep innards or eels. Their kitchens are just as filthy and disorganized, their food storage practices just as abhorrent, and the food cooked by the same stressed-out, lazy and incompetent kitchen people who seem to have developed their social skills in prison. Likewise, our dining establishments are being mismanaged into the dirt by bickering family members who probably should have found something more profitable to mismanage into oblivion, like a steel mill or a record company. In many cases, it has taken entire families generations of hard work to drive their business over a cliff, so the possibility that it might be resurrected in less than a week by one guy is pretty inspiring.
That said, you’d think having Gordon Ramsay dedicate seven days to save your own personal Titanic would make you cream in your jeans. Or if you were a really hard case, at least make your nipples tingle a little. But no. That’s why another entertaining season of Kitchen Nightmares is now back on Fox.
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Posted on February 4, 2010
