“This is my house – he’s embarrassing me.” – Dean
The Olde Stone Mill is located in Tuckahoe, New York. I’m from Long Island and my sister has lived in Mamaroneck for decades, just north of New York City. Tuckahoe is quite close to that area, nestled in Westchester County in the middle of the land mass that sits between the Hudson River on the west and the Long Island Sound on the east.
While I’ve never been to Tuckahoe, it looks quite charming and upscale.
But as this is Kitchen Nightmares, charming is typically in low supply.
We meet Dean, the owner of The Olde Stone Mill, who tells us he bought what was literally an old mill six years prior and turned it into a restaurant and bar. Using their own money, he and his wife Barbara have been running the place for the last four years since it opened for business.
Dean also tells us that he did most of the renovations himself save for the electrical work. He styles himself an outstanding business owner, but he can’t understand why the place is empty.
Cut to Chef Mike, who tells the camera that Dean is a “pain in the ass” who yells at him all the time.
“It’s horrible,” he says, and adds that he’s lost his passion for food.
It’s not hard to see why as we see a clip of Dean yelling at him, and it’s honestly a bit scary and disturbing in its intensity. And later, we see Dean – who kind of has the vibe of a poor man’s Johnny Sack from The Sopranos – complaining to his staff, “Let everybody make money, and let Dean take it in the ass as always.”
So on top of Dean’s other failings, he refers to himself in the third person.
Tom, the general manager, is much milder mannered and says, “There were days when I just couldn’t eat the food.”
The clientele that does exist is mostly super old people who live at a nearby assisted living facility, or “the blue heads,” as Mike calls them.
Into this mix rolls in Chef Gordon Ramsay. Literally, in this case, as he pulls up on a motorcycle.
For once, Ramsay admires the restaurant’s exterior as it’s a beautiful old brick building. Ramsay meets the staff and quickly sits down to order a sampling of dishes, which include risotto and clams.
Ramsay doesn’t have a lot to find fault with prior to eating but does call out the server for chewing gum while taking his order – which, to be fair, is close to a fireable offense at an upscale restaurant.
When Ramsay does get his clams, he finds the taste to be strange but can’t put his finger on why. “It’s like a sour mayonnaise flavor,” he says. The shrimp cocktail doesn’t go much better. The chopped salad looks particularly weird, like its been smashed into a cone and then plopped on the plate (which turns out to be how its prepared).
Dean gets increasingly irked at Ramsay’s reaction to the food and says, “This is my house – he’s embarrassing me.” Later, when Dean says, “I can’t help but get defensive,” we’re starting to peel back the layers on the wildly angry guy we’ve seen glimpses of so far.
It’s downhill from there, as Gordon says of the tilapia dish, “Looks like someone’s s— in a bag and stuffed it in the oven.”
“I don’t think guy’s got a f—ing clue what his food tastes like,” Ramsay concludes of Dean.
When Ramsay invites Dean to sit down with him at his table, Ramsay asks him to eat the tilapia while noting, “It looked like it comes out of a baby’s diaper.”
“No one’s going to come back for that… honestly your food’s crap,” he adds.
When Dean tells the camera, “I wanted to take the plate and smash it on top of the chef’s head,” we absolutely believe him.
Given Dean’s volatility, it’s uncomfortable to watch as Ramsay later sits down with Dean and Barbara to ask them about the financial situation at The Olde Stone Mill. It’s especially awkward when we learn that Dean actively keeps Barbara “in the dark” about the situation so that she won’t worry.
When pressed, Dean admits that the business is half a million dollars underwater, with the couple’s mortgage and other assets tied up.
“What do you want me to say, I’m in hell right now,” Dean eventually says.
At dinner service, we see that another part of the problem is the elaborate plating and presentation of the subpar-tasting food, which causes diners to wait a long time to get served. Example: the tilapia that’s served in a paper bag, which really does look bizarre.
After dinner service, a “miffed” Ramsay accuses Dean at a full staff meeting of “living in a dream world” for not taking seriously how terrible the food is at his restaurant.
Things quickly get heated when Ramsay calls Dean a fake and Dean shoots back, “F— you, you’re a fake.”
Update on my take on Dean as he relates to pop culture at this point in the episode: I realized that he’s less poor man’s Johnny Sack and much more of the general vibe of talented character Morgan Spector (star of shows including The Plot Against America and The Gilded Age), especially his voice.
Ramsay will often use his Tough Love Methodologies to try and shock, demean, and bully restaurant owners into waking up to change, he seemed on the verge of goading Dean into hitting here… and Dean seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t be afraid to take a swing at an interloping Brit like Gordon Ramsay.
Next up, Ramsay brings in meat from a local butcher and takes Chef Mike through a cooking lesson to whip up some new dishes. And while this is going on, Ramsay takes the opportunity to torch the little funnels used to weirdly shape salads with a crème brûlée torch. To his credit, Mike is delighted.
Ramsay’s analysis of the neighborhood tells him that The Olde Stone Mill’s opportunity is to become known as a steakhouse. When he presents the plan to Dean, they latter balks at first, sarcastically asking Ramsay, “So your plan to resurrect this place is to cook a simple prime rib?”
The next day, Ramsay unveils fancy external signage that will help customers to realize that the truly beautiful historic building houses a restaurant. The staff is thrilled, Dean admits to the camera that this is something that he should have thought of long ago. And the interior renovations makes the place look far more open, airy, and modern.
“I’m speechless,” Barbara says in reaction.
The menu overhaul includes steakhouse standards in addition to an updated Old Stone Mill chopped salad, which looks vastly better than the weird, drenched funnel-crafted thing they were serving. Dean still seems hesitant about the plan but goes along with it.
Relaunch night draws a big crowd, including the mayor of Tuckahoe. Tom, the meek general manager, freaks out with stress which causes Ramsay to sit him down and beg him with things like, “We f—ing need you.”
Dinner service starts well but things grind to a halt when the ticket printer in the kitchen breaks. Dishes stop getting sent out – including to the mayor’s table – while Chef Mike has a complete meltdown.
Eventually, Dean heads back to the kitchen to find out what’s going on, and he ends up having a thermonuclear meltdown, screaming things like, “It’s the last f—ing table, read the ticket!”
Who knows if what he was saying made sense or not, but he comes off as a complete maniac – and we can see that the restaurant’s guests can hear the maelstrom from out in the dining room.
Ramsay rallies the troops, the printer gets fixed, and entrees start firing out of the kitchen, allowing the night to end successfully.
The next day, Ramsay gives Dean a pep talk, telling him that he can’t tiptoe around problems because he’s afraid of failure. Dean now believes that Ramsay cares about his success and agrees that he needs to show the resilience and strength to change and act decisively.
We end on Ramsay telling the staff, “You now know what to do, so keep doing it.”
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “The Olde Stone Mill”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Chef Ramsay travels to The Olde Stone Mill in Tuckahoe, New York. Although the front has been renovated, the kitchen still serves less-than-stellar food.
CAST – Gordon Ramsay