“So sorry about the old bag.” – Gordon Ramsay
Campania is an Italian restaurant located in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. This excites me immediately because as a Long Island, New York native, I’ve long believed that Long Island and northern Jersey have a cultural kinship (and many of the macho/obnoxious attitudes that come with it).
It’s one of the many reasons why The Sopranos is my favorite TV show of all time (see: The Best 100 TV Shows Ever).
Campania was a successful business once upon a time… until Joe Cerniglia took over the place 18 months earlier. Side note here that Cerniglia looks like a young version of a college buddy of mine (from Long Island, and also named Joe!), which I find a bit distracting.
We soon learn that the scene at Campania is not a highly professional one. Joe freely admits that he has no culinary training and makes things up on the fly, while meanwhile servers Josette and Jessica talk about how a lot of their time at work involves goofing around.
“It’s like a big romper room back there,” Josette says of the kitchen.
“We’re all like little kids,” Jessica adds. “We’re all very silly.”
Meanwhile, there are broken ovens that serve as extra storage space, and the freezer space doesn’t close properly.
What’s not a joke is that Joe says that he’s in an “overwhelming” amount of debt with the restaurant, and meanwhile has a wife and kids to support and a mortgage to keep up with. When he adds that Campania is about $80,000 underwater, it actually doesn’t seem that bad compared to many other Kitchen Nightmares’ apocalyptic debt situations, but obviously that amount can be crippling when things continue to fall apart month after month.
When Ramsay meets Joe, the latter is very friendly and welcoming. In response, Gordon cooly asks him why he points around while he speaks, as though he’s perhaps offended. This is the side of Ramsay and Kitchen Nightmares that I don’t care for, when Ramsay acts like kind of an ass for no reason. There’s typically plenty of things for him to get legitimately worked up about at each restaurant he visits, so this kind of move just seems petty and unnecessary to me.
Ramsay orders a selection of Italian dishes such as tortellini to sample but is forced to wait a long time while hearing loud laughing and banter going on back in this kitchen. When he eventually is served the soup, his impression is that it’s bland. As for the grilled sausage, it’s “garlic everywhere,” and as for the zucchini chicken: “It looks like a bison’s tongue.” Also, super dry.
After his meal, Ramsay heads for the kitchen and doesn’t mince words: “I was pissed off waiting,” he says, while also chastising the staff for being forced to listen to the “laughing and giggling” going on.
His assessment of the food – “bland and watery,” “too much garlic,” “boring” – is actually pretty mild with relation to his initial take on other restaurants, so Joe should kind of see that part as nearly a compliment, really.
Day 2 kicks off with an investigation of the kitchen, which is usually when things get ugly. However, in this case, Ramsay focused on how there’s way too much food in the kitchen versus how much business Campania is doing these days.
This is where Kitchen Nightmares gets really interesting in terms of understanding that just because someone is a good cook or managing the front of house doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good at generating a profit in the business of running a restaurant.
Meanwhile, the staff continues to goof around, with server Ariana saying, “it’s like high school,” and Jessica saying, “I’m probably like the biggest flirt here.”
Ramsay cuts the tomfoolery off by assembling the staff, counting that there are 11 people assembled, and asks, “Okay, who’s going home?”
It’s kind of hilarious when this shaggy haired young guy named Trucks get sent off and Ramsay calls out to him while he leaves, “Get yourself a haircut.” Less funny is when Katie, a server, gets emotional when she’s sent home, telling the camera that she canceled her plans, and that Joe thinks that “I’m good enough when he needs me.”
Meanwhile, at dinner service tables are left waiting an eternity to get food, and at one point we see this very Jersey Shore-looking dude take out his mobile phone to order a pizza. When the food finally does start going out, one diner says of his dinner, “This is like dog food.”
And for the people who do manage to eat at Campania, they most typically take away with them an enormous doggy bag as the portion sizes are so large. Ramsay focuses on this with Joe after service and explains how much profit is being “thrown down the drain” this way. Joe counters that this is what his customers are accustomed to and what they expect.
“Why did you decide to go into business if you haven’t got a clue how to run a business?” Ramsay asked him, which is a question that’s core to many of the restaurants he visits on Kitchen Nightmares.
The next day, Ramsay visits Joe’s wife Melissa at their house, where their three kids also live.
She talks about how they’ve put everything on the line for the dream of owning of a restaurant, and that if it fails “we could lose everything.” She also agrees that Joe must see things in “black and white” in order to turn things around.
Later, he gives Joe and the kitchen chef a cooking lesson, and Joe lights up at the British chef’s expertise. Ramsay also introduces a new recipe that can help Campania stand out from the pack for its meatballs. And in fact, t-shirts and hats are soon passed out that proclaim that Campania has “New Jersey’s Best Meatballs,” and a promotion outside the restaurant soon follows.
The next day, the renovation of Campania is revealed, and the outdoor signage and exterior work alone is a big improvement. And the interior looks far more elegant, with massive candles on each table adding an intimate, upscale touch. And just as importantly, there’s a brand-new stove installed in the kitchen.
What’s nice about Campania is that you can tell the staff genuinely likes Joe, so they seem just as thrilled that their working conditions and business are poised to improve along with the owner’s business outlook.
As for the menu, it’s much smaller, as are the plates and portion sizes. “We have to start making money,” Ramsay explains to Joe and Chef Gene. The meatballs form a centerpiece of Campania’s cuisine.
In the kitchen, Ramsay introduces an interesting gimmick to motivate the staff to sell out the restaurant’s inventory of food, which is a Super Bowl betting board-style grid for each server, with every menu item written in a box. There’s a $100 prize, he explains, for the first server to sell “the whole menu.”
Dinner service seems to be going well, until one table complains about everything they’ve been served – “worst food they’ve ever eaten,” etc. In a super rare Kitchen Nightmares move, Ramsay heads out to the table and tells a woman that “unfortunately you’re talking out of rear.” I say “super rare” of course because Ramsay nearly always sides with customer complaints, presumably because he agrees with them the vast majority of the time.
And then, because Ramsay’s Ramsay, he ends up telling other diners, “So sorry about the old bag.”
Later, another complaining customer starts telling people the food tastes like “Ragu” (which I guess is bad?), prompting other fellow diners to get into it with her in the parking lot. It gets weirdly heated with accusations of complaining to get “free food” and “why did keep eating if it was that f—ing bad” and “go have another bottle of wine, you f—ing alcoholic b—-” thrown around.
Eventually, the cops show up. Ah, the delights of northern Jersey abound!
Back in the kitchen, the goofing around has finally toned down and everyone works hard and together to complete dinner service.
Oh, and Josette wins the $100 prize for selling all of the entrees on her board.
After dinner service, Ramsay announces that Campania made three times the money that they made the previous night. Everyone applauds, and Joe’s mom Pat gets emotional.
A final celebration ensues where the old, enormous plates are smashed on the kitchen floor.
“The breaking of the plates, how symbolic is that?” Joe says. “Out with the old, in with the new.”
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Campania”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
CAST – Gordon Ramsay