Kitchen Nightmares: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"I'm forty years of age, and I've gone to a lot of restaurants, but I've never, ever, ever, '''ever''' met someone I believe in as little as you."''}}

 

{{tropelist}}

* [[Analogy Backfire]]: In the Curry Lounge episode of the British version, Gordon makes a stubborn owner bat at cricket while being partially bound, to demonstrate what his stubbornness is doing to his restaurant. The owner still manages to hit the ball, on his first try.

{{quote|"So what do you do?"

"I'm an actress."

(''[[Beat]]'')

"...cause he's an actor." }}

* [[Cordon Bleugh Chef]]: Quite a few of the chefs when Gordon first arrives.

* [[Didn't Think This Through]]: One of the recurring themes in both versions is the restaurant was recently bought by an owner or owners with little to no previous food service experience, with retirement or life savings. Ramsay is constantly exasperated that people think running a restaurant is easy and is something you do in retirement to pass the time.

* [[Downer Ending]]: Several. Originally, the biggest difference between the UK and US versions of the show was that the UK series is unafraid to admit when a ''Nightmares'' reboot hasn't succeeded in turning around a restaurant's fortunes.

** Two restaurants in the UK version, D-Place and Piccolo Teatro, ended up closing even before the episode ended — the former because the financial damage had been done long before Ramsay arrived, the latter due to the laziness of its owner.

** Bonaparte's at least lasted until the end of the episode, but Ramsay's attempt at a revamp proved a total failure, in no small part due to the useless head chef.

** The Walnut Tree Inn survived until a "revisited" episode, but that episode ended with Ramsay storming out of the inn once it became obvious that the owner's stupidity and high prices had rendered his attempted changes irrelevant, and that the inn was hurtling towards bankruptcy.

** The Cafe Tavolini episode had perhaps the biggest downer ending of any ''Kitchen Nightmares'' episode, with the possible exception of the UK pilot. At first it had the usual ending, with Ramsay telling the owners that they now had everything they needed to make the restaurant a success, and the owners appearing optimistic about the future. Immediately afterward, the epilogue revealed that the owners never got behind Ramsay's changes or tried to do a better job of managing the place — consequently, the restaurant closed, everyone lost their jobs, the owners lost their house, and their marriage collapsed.

** The viewer can do this to him/herself.

* [[Drowning My Sorrows]]: Mike, the chef at Mike & Nellie's, in order to cope with the death of his father. Not surprisingly, it was affecting the quality of the restaurant.

* [[Dysfunctional Family]]: Oy.

** The UK series has the family running The Dovecot. The father more or less spends the family's dwindling cash on things they do not need without his wife knowing, and has his adopted daughter take the fall for his inability to cook. When Ramsay gets there, they are on the razor's edge of breaking up completely.

** Spike TV's ''Bar Rescue'', where an expert bar manager comes to the aid of failing bars and does not hesitate to chew the owners or employees out. The only real differences between that show and ''Kitchen Nightmares'' is that he goes to bars rather than restaurants and that he's American, not British.

* [[Genre Blindness]]: You would think that the owners of these restaurants would take Gordon's advice considering that they're in the red. Every episode, however, at least one person will think that Gordon is over exaggerating and/or trying to sabotage him/her.

** Also, how these people literally ''ask'' Gordon for help, and even though they know he's coming, don't even make any modicum of effort to try and clean up their restaurants. They don't even organize their freezers, even though in every episode that is the ''first'' place Gordon checks.

** It's staggering the number of owners/chefs who insist that the food being served is not the problem, and become shocked that Gordon would offer criticism against it. It makes one wonder how many people actually ''watch'' the show before they request that Gordon come to visit.

* [[Gone Horribly Right]]: Gordon taught Dean, the owner of the Sante La Brea, who was initially being treated as a [[Butt Monkey]] by his own staff to have more self-confidence. It worked a little too well, and he ended up firing his head chef ''in the middle of dinner service''. Even Gordon was initially [[My God, What Have I Done?|shocked]] by the severity of Dean's transformation.

** Jake from El Greco. Originally, he was incredibly lazy, turned up to work late and used the microwave to cook everything. Ramsay managed to bring his passion for cooking back, but it worked too well - he turned into a [[Control Freak]] and ended up trying to do everything in the dinner service himself, to the point where one of his chefs threatened to walk out if he wasn't given something to do.

* [[Head Desk]]: Ramsay has only this reaction when the cooks of Fiesta Sunrise manage to set flame to a plate of nachos.

* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: Scott, who is Gordon's sous chef on ''Hell's Kitchen'', occasionally shows up as an extra adviser on this show.

* [[Heel Realization]]: Many of the chefs eventually realize that their behavior is the cause of their restaurant's failure. They almost always change themselves for the better, or at least until the end of the episode, anyways.

* [[Hypocritical Humor]]: In the episode ''The Burger Kitchen'' the owner criticizes the chef's burger, saying that it was cooked medium rather than medium-rare. However, the amount of blood seen leaking from the burger that the owner made shows that his burger was rare, at best.

* [[It Came From the Fridge]]

* [[It Tastes Like Feet]]: This is a ''very'' common way in which Ramsay insults food he doesn't like, possibly to the point of at least [[Once an Episode]]. In one episode, for instance, he described certain food as tasting like "flypaper" and later on "It tastes like a leather belt." Knowing Ramsay and his hatred of lying, he's probably eaten some nasty stuff in his days for the sake of knowing.

* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Gordon initially comes off as brash and loud, but shows genuine concern for the well-being of the restaurant and its staff.

** Some owners/chefs have initially been abrasive towards Gordon and their own staff, but typically they come around and change their ways, becoming more polite/reliable/cooperative. Several have shown that it was a personal matter affecting their behavior, not an inherent personality trait.

* [[Lethal Chef]]: Gordon runs into a few of these, and got food poisoning at least once. The first incident of this was in the ''pilot'', where he flat-out said that Bonaparte's scallops could've killed him.

** Some, such as Erick from Casa Roma, Damon from Oceana, and Casimiro from Charlie's, even had to be fired during the episode because Gordon and the owners could see the restaurant couldn't move on with them. Pinto from Cafe 36 at least managed to stay until the end of the episode, but never improved as a chef even under Gordon's tuition, and quit the day after the final dinner service anyway.

* [[Loads and Loads of Loading]]: Many of the failing restaurants have very slow service. On the flipside, attempting to push food out too quickly can create just as bad of a problem.

* [[The Mean Brit|The Mean Scot]]: What part of "Gordon Ramsay" don't you understand?

* [[Missing Episode]]: The US episode with Campania was removed from rotation following the owner's suicide.

## The staff struggles a bit with the new changes, but ultimately pulls through.

## The grateful staff waves goodbye as Gordon [[Riding Into the Sunset|rides into the sunset]].

*** As sure as Gordon is Scottish, at least one staff member will be rude and antagonistic, not wanting the help and thinking everything is fine.

*** Step 5 has been subverted several times, as Ramsay will frequently return to the restaurants he's helped after a month (or longer in ''Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited''). In some cases he can't, because the restaurant has shut down due to A) returning to their appalling service, B) simply not getting the point behind Ramsay's changes, or C) circumstances beyond their control (see [[Downer Ending]], above).

* [[Small Name, Big Ego]]: Oy.

** The eponymous owner of Sebastian's pizza parlor went on local culinary websites and posted anonymously to badmouth Ramsay after his restaurant failed. The other posters immediately realized it was him and called him on it. Lesson: When trashing somebody and trying to stay anonymous, don't mention bad breath.

** Allan Love, sub-Z-list actor, from the episode "Ruby Tate's" (renamed to "Love's Fish Restaurant"). Slightly less obscure to a British audience, but nobody was exactly clamoring to find out whatever happened to Steve from Pop Pirates.

** Chef Michel of The Secret Garden. He was frustrated with just about everything Ramsay did and challenged him on all of the attempted changes. At several points, he and Ramsay engaged in shouting matches with each other. At one point, Gordon was so angry at Michel that he seriously considered just walking away from saving the restaurant.

** From Sabatiello's, the owner Sammy is rude to his employees, insists on freezing food up to a week after cooking it, stores food improperly, lies to Gordon's face, and at one point ridicules a lady for saying that her food was microwaved when it was just microwaved in front of her. All the while Sammy tells Gordon that he is the best chef in town and that Gordon has no idea what he's talking about.

* [[Serial Escalation]]: In nearly every episode, Gordon will denounce a restaurant's food, kitchen, owner, chef, decor, etc. as the worst he's ever seen. He must be visiting restaurants in order of increasing badness.

** Everything about The Burger Kitchen. A place so messed up that it couldn't be dealt with in one 40-minute episode, but made into a two-parter. One of the few times "The most <adjective> episode of ''Kitchen Nightmares'' ever" hasn't been any kind of hyperbole.

* [[Stealth Insult]]: When Gordon decides to train the staff of Sebastian's in making and tossing fresh pizza dough, you get the feeling that he's enjoying calling all of them "great [[A Date with Rosie Palms|tossers]]".

* [[Tempting Fate]]: When talking about the pretentious food served at La Riviera, Ramsay said "I suppose next they'll be telling me how to eat it." Cut to a waitress giving instructions on the order and way to eat the desserts in the dessert sampler.

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Many, many times.

** Many of the owners in the American version are clueless, but Moe from Oceana is truly something special. One example among many: After Moe reveals that he refuses to write down his recipes because he's afraid of other restaurants stealing them, Gordon calls him a "busy idiot" -- somebody who spends all his time worrying about the wrong things. Moe is so upset by this that he basically refuses to do anything. To get things back on track, his brother [[Blatant Lies|claims]] that in England, "busy idiot" is actually a [[Separated by a Common Language|compliment]]. Moe [[Crowning Moment of Funny|believes him]].

** On the UK version, both Piccolo Teatro and Bonaparte's closed within a short time after Ramsay's visit. The owner of the latter threatened to sue Ramsay, claiming she had been "set up".

** When Ramsay revisited the Walnut Tree Inn, he found the business still failing due to the sky-high prices the owner was charging, and stormed out after the owner bluntly told him that he'd rather see the inn go out of business than look like a cheap restaurant. Guess what happened? Then, for an encore, some more sensible businessmen bought the inn shortly afterwards, set up a menu that was more along Ramsay's guidelines, and made it into a success once more.

* [[Viewers are Morons]]: The American version seems to think that the audience needs to be reminded of what's going to happen before the ad break, and what has just happened ''after'' the ad break. In microscopic detail.

* [[Violent Glaswegian]]: Of the "Angry Scotsman" variety. Gordon was born in Renfrewshire. The viewers are reminded of this in the revisit section of the Ruby Tate's/Love's Fish Restaurant episode, as he puts on his original Glaswegian accent to disguise the fact that he's ordering some food from them.

* [[Vomit Discretion Shot]]: If Gordon rushes to the men's room and you hear retching, you '''know''' the place is in trouble.

** In another episode, Gordon threw up before he could even get up from the table. How bad is '''that?!'''

[[Category:American Series]]

[[Category:Kitchen Nightmares]]