Every episode
Hello Gordon, we're the petite bourgeois restaurant owners. We're deluded and running our company into the ground by our denial and constant alienation of our employees.
Hi Gordon, we're the employees. Here's an annotated list of all the things wrong with the restaurant and how to fix it.
Gordon: "Ok owners, get out of the way of your employees."
Owners: "No. You're stupid and we, the small business owner, are right."
Gordon implements fixes that the employees have been clamoring for.
The restaurant immediately succeeds.
Owners: "Well dang, I guess Gordon had a point. What employees?"
The restaurant then either succeeds or fails due to market conditions, or the owners immediately revert back to their old ways and the restaurant instantly nosedives again
Every episode is the same story. Gordon asks the employees what's wrong with the business and they always go "The owner is a fucking moron and is running it into the ground and getting in the way of everyone doing actual good work." and then Gordon forces through the changes that the employees say need doing.
Why do the employees, the larger class, not simply devour the business owners?
OWNER: hi, my name is Jonathan Blumpo and I'm the owner of Grease Pit BBQ. for some reason the city is close to shutting us down
cut to a charcoal grill in a completely enclosed kitchen
EMPLOYEE: we keep telling John to take the grill out and invest in a smoker and some general ventilation in the kitchen area but he keeps screaming at us and throwing wood chips at our eyes
GORDON: so this restaurant has no windows, no vents, and you're cooking with charcoal indoors?
OWNER: yes, but- but Gordon, my father started this business 5 years ago as a way to get me out of his house, I literally cannot afford to ventilate this place and pay my rent
cut to owner dumping a golden wheelbarrow of cash tips into the back of a Ferrari
EMPLOYEE: Joyce has been trapped under the floorboards since John told her to feed the rats down there 6 months ago. none of us get paid to take care of her
GORDON: what the fuck? she's still down there? can I speak to her alone for a second?
JOYCE, MUFFLED: it's an honor to meet you, chef
I swear every episode has a scene of Gordon retching because the fridge is full of rotting meat. I know this because the editors like to ham it up and play the same retch noise four or five times to really hammer the drama.
And of course the fridge is full of rotting meat because the owners buy way more supplies than their 3 customers / day turnaround can use, and they refuse to throw it out despite the chefs going "Hey uh if it weren't 2009 and I need this job I'd call the health inspector on your ass"
my favorite part is the sound they play when shit sucks. it's like a violin played by someone who is full of dread
I love how often the restaurant owners get so fucking defensive of their obviously shitty practices too and absolutely refuse to do anything that the professional, famous chef tells them what's wrong.
Gordon: "This food tastes like shit"
Owner: "No, the food is great. What does he know, anyway?"
Cut to Owner making food by dumping shit straight from the can onto a plate
Gordon: "Your 18 page menu is too big and is making it difficult to make food quickly"
Owner: "No it isn't, fuck off"
Adds 2 more pages of bullshit out of spite
You forgot the bit where they imply that Gordon is secretly gay because he's from Britain and that's why he doesn't like the food
There's an episode where they accuse him of finding a dead mouse and bringing it into the restaurant to stir up drama for the show and he hits them with the :cat-confused:
this show is so idiosyncratic because of how it's just a bigger bourg coming in and viciously bullying dumber, smaller and less succesful boug
coincidentally, a lot of people don't like it
(probably because hilariously, now that I think of it, it pretty accurately elucidates class relations)
The UK one is much the same but Kitchen Nightmares US is really a landmark in over-the-top editing, which is where I think a lot of the dislike comes in.
Owner says that their food is good. Smash cut to the food not being good. eeeee-whaaaaa waterphone sound plays for the 50th time this episode
I typically only watch the first half of each episode, precisely for the bullying.
I don’t need the wholesomeness of class reconciliation in the second halves. (“CANT YOU SEE, BOSS, THAT WE CAAARRRRREEEE ABOUT YOUUU?!”).
“CANT YOU SEE, BOSS, THAT WE CAAARRRRREEEE ABOUT YOUUU?!”
That always grossed me out, the minute the cameras disappear the bosses return to their bullshit
Almost all of these restaurants fail within a year after Ramsey leaves anyways. It turns out it takes more than a few weeks of bullying to cure a lead-poisoned small business tyrant.
Gives me the same feeling as the boss in disguise show that had bosses fake being part of the proles
Now I'm imagining a show called Workplace Nightmares, where the hosts are a couple IWW representatives.
I watch the second half because I can usually see the cracks starting to come back before the credits roll.
That show is some quality slop. It reaffirms how delusional business owners really are and can be.
I need Gordon to come bully my boss. Unionizing is hard :soviet-huff:
It's pretty weird when he tries to play family counselor because the owner's family won't stop bickering.
In the AMA he did he said it started as a way to make drama and then it became such a common thing they just kept it in.
As a guy who works in a brewery, I wish someone would make a kitchen nightmares for breweries.
“Oh my gawd! Your cellar has awful drainage and the fermenters are spaced way too close together, look at all this mold! No wonder you get so many viral hits!”
“Well look man rent is killing me and I gotta pack as many FVs into this space as I can.”
“Why are you making so many fruited sours? Do you know how expensive barrels of purée are? Also your diaphragm pump is from the 80s, so you’re losing like half a barrel of purée every batch!”
“That pump was a steal”
Cut to brewery employee: “yeah our sours are dog shit but the owner says that’s ‘what’s hot’. Idk man we could make like a decent American IPA and just market it well and make bank. Aw fuck the Lauter tun rakes broke again!”
Yeah what is with all the sours these days? I like a good dry cider now and then, but every beer sour I’ve ever had was just awful.
I love Kitchen Nightmares soley because it's the only content I've found where a core part of the entertainment is small business owners who normally act like they're God's gift to the world being forced to just take it while someone just screams in their faces about what incompetent fools they are while their long suffering employees smugly watch.
The Capitalists will sell us the pot with which we will roast them. :lenin-laugh:
Its funny seeing the ineptitude of tge owners,but i cant fucking stand ramsay
Frequently the restaurants are staffed by family members who are far past giving a shit because of the abuse they receive. And you're right that the incompetent employees are almost always people who stopped giving a fuck or are being trampled on. The Burger Kitchen episode is really emblematic. The chef is able to make a burger Gordon is in love with, and then later in the episode he threatens the owner physically and is fired/quits, and it turns out that the owners owed him money because he'd been doing groceries for the business with his own money and was forced to cook unseasoned slop burgers.
Jon Taffer is a piece of shit but sometimes he really gives it to the owners and I love to watch it
https://twitter.com/hasanthehun/status/1493759673006051328 Hasan seems to be stalkin us ?
He's doing Hell's Kitchen and I'm going to beat his analysis right now. Hell's Kitchen is an abuse gauntlet where proletariat compete for the opportunity to acquire what is, to the owners of the gauntlet, paltry change, and a job doing the same shit as the gauntlet but with you in charge. Hell's Kitchen is Squid Game.
