“You know what a guido is? That’s what she’s looking for.” – Adele on fortysomething daughter Cheryl
“Revisited” editions of Kitchen Nightmares allow the show to break up its typical formula a little bit and check back in with restaurants and owners that Chef Gordon Ramsay has terrified, cajoled, and prodded off the precipice of total failure.
It’s also a means to produce an episode on the cheap as a majority of the hour can be safely devoted to showing us footage that has already aired as we “recall” the initial nightmare that Ramsay came in to clean up. Further, the style of this episode helps to further expose some of the worst excesses of reality television editing that Kitchen Nightmares sometimes engages in.
Two of the three restaurants the Ramsay revisits seem to be doing spectacularly well one year out on their initial showcase on Kitchen Nightmares. Mojito, a Cuban restaurant in Brooklyn, New York, had suffered from your typical array of maladies, including divorced co-owners who took to screaming each other in the kitchen, rotting food, and an overall lack of passion and vision for the restaurant. Ramsay made changes that included shifting the head chef, Marcelo, to work the front of house with his ex-wife, Kata, along with his typical overhaul of the menu and décor.
Now, business is up 30% and the restaurant is six months out on paying off its heavy burden of debts. The most value I learned from Ramsay is that I recover the passion for my job, Marcelo says. Things are going so well in fact that Ramsay can move on to attempting to get Kata and Marcelo to remarry.
Ramsay’s return to The Junction – originally called Flamangos – in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, was the reason I was particularly interested in checking out this episode. First of all, Flamangos is one of the worst names for a restaurant I’ve ever heard. And Adele, mother of owner Cheryl, is a true character. But don’t ask me, ask her husband Bill:
- “I told you, she’s a pain in the ass.” – Bill
- “But you didn’t tell me on what scale she’s a pain in the ass.” – Ramsay
- “She’s 11.” – Bill
I must admit that I got quite a crack up out of Adele hating the newly redesigned and rebranded Junction, which is typically a moment for tears of joy for thankful restaurateurs. Amazingly, The Junction is thriving today with business doubled, though the fortysomething Cheryl is still living at home. Once again, because things at the restaurant are on the right path, Ramsay moves to working on personal issues. When questioning Adele about finding a nice husband for her daughter, she replies, “You know what a guido is? That’s what she’s looking for.”
The third scheduled revisited restaurant, Bazzini in Ridgewood, New Jersey, turns out to be a pretty thinly veiled put over on the audience. We were forced to sit through lengthy previews throughout the episode (along with the hefty doses of filler of flashback for the other segments), but when Ramsay arrives at the restaurant, he is “amazed” that it’s closed. Ramsay then pretends to think that Bazzini is closed for lunch, which he had aggressively advised against. The chef then decides to not call co-owners Paul or Lesley, but charismatic pastry chef Sharyn. We then find out that Bazzini has shut down, and Ramsay heads over to Sharyn’s new pastry kitchen for a quick visit.
I enjoy Kitchen Nightmares, even with its formulaic and heavily edited reality show rhythms. But Chef Ramsay and crew should have more respect for their audience then to subject them to such silly and unnecessary ruses.
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares – “Revisited, Part 1”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Food TV Shows, Trashtastic TV
STARS – Gordon Ramsay
This review was originally published on TV Geek Army.