“We’ve kind of lurched between catastrophe and disaster.” – Andrew
I love New York City, and I love eating in NYC. I love Indian food, and I’ve eaten fabulous Indian food in Manhattan and Queens in my day.
Therefore, I was delighted to learn that this edition of Kitchen Nightmares focuses on Dillon’s, an Indian eatery located in midtown Manhattan.
Well, it’s sort of an Indian restaurant as it turns out.
“This is an American-Irish restaurant with an Indian-ness connected to it,” Martin, the General Manager, says, drawing out the Indiannnnn-ness. Quite the sales pitch there.
“It’s hard for me to believe that Dillon’s has lasted this long,” Andrew, the Operations Manager, says. “We’ve kind of lurched between catastrophe and disaster.”
Adding to the confusion, Jenna the server says, “I don’t know what each manager does specifically.”
On that score, we’ve got Andrew and Martin, but then add in Khan, who also serves as “floor manager.”
Of Khan, a server says, “He doesn’t do anything here.”
“I don’t like to work here because everything’s so messed up,” Khan says.
Meanwhile, there are flies buzzing around everywhere throughout this intro segment.
And on top of all of that, Mohammad the owner tells us that Dillon’s is losing between $20,000 to $30,000 every month. Manhattan leases ain’t cheap.
When Gordon Ramsay shows up, he immediately questions the name of the joint, saying, “Dillon’s… it doesn’t sound like an Indian, does it?” And just after that he notes the “flies everywhere.”
When Ramsay sits down to order, he also takes in how empty the place is, and then quite accurately and hilariously zings the décor, describing the white sheets-like material hanging on the walls as “ghastly… looks like it’s been plastered with hospital linen.”
He follows this with: “That’s where the customers go after eating at this restaurant.”
Of the vegetable appetizers: “It looks like a fried turd.”
Also, the kitchen screwed up and incorrectly served him lamb. Jenna rightly notes that that could’ve been the makings of a lawsuit. After that, Ramsay is served lamb instead of a beef dish that he ordered.
“It that was beef, then I was born in Bangladesh,” Ramsay says.
Soon we learn that it was the “old lamb,” that tastes predictably awful.
How it’s possible for the kitchen to screw up this badly when Ramsay is literally the only diner in the restaurant – while being filmed, of course – is just completely baffling.
After eating, Ramsay digs into the strange managerial set up with Martin, Khan, and Andrew with overlapping and ill-defined roles.
Or, as our British chef puts it: “Three f—ing managers and they’re all s—.”
As dinner service starts, Ramsay rightly calls out a kitchen staffer for placing a massive tray of cooked food on the kitchen floor. While the three managers are nowhere in sight, the other employees stare at Ramsay as if he has three heads.
This leads to Ramsay digs into Martin, a fellow Brit, for being shiftless and lazy. “General Manager? General Tosspot,” Gordon tosses at him.
It’s important to also note that the flies buzzing around Dillon’s are everywhere throughout the episode, making the already fairly claustrophobic confines of the restaurant even less comfortable.
And this is all before what we knew was coming: Ramsay investigating the cleanliness (or lack thereof) and food storage conditions at Dillon’s.
Quickly, Ramsay uncovers moldy hamburger and rotting potatoes, the latter of which were served to him with lunch. Then, it gets worse.
Much worse. In the basement.
Rat traps. “Rats are all over the place,” Mohammad calmly explains.
But the worst are the cockroaches, which are everywhere. As Ramsay peels back an insulation panel and bugs scurry everywhere, it’s not that far off an episode of Hoarders-level, condemnable conditions.
Gordon really freaks out when he discovers rotting lettuce that was also served to him, and takes it out on Martin.
Even for Kitchen Nightmares standards, things get tense and uncomfortable as Ramsay melts down when he discovers that part of a rotten tomato had just gotten served to a customer.
That leads to Ramsay to immediately shutting down the kitchen and sending the dining customers home.
“This is so horrible, I should close down this place,” the mild-mannered Mohammad tells the camera.
This leads to a classic gimmick: we hear vaguely funky music that the show producers must have licensed under the guidelines of “cheap stock music that sounds like the Ghostbusters theme song,” as we see Ramsay in a head-to-toe protective suit, mask, and bug spraying weapon at his side.
“I need to let these guys know I mean business. A clean is a proper clean,” Ramsay says.
A professional cleaning crew accompanies Ramsay into the restaurant to clear out all of the contaminated food before steam cleaning the place.
What’s interesting here is that typically, Ramsay will order the actual staff to perform this task, but instead he takes Mohammad and the managers to Ramsay’s own nearby restaurant, London. And we can quickly see how spotless and well run the kitchen there is.
With the Dillon’s kitchen back to working order, Ramsay takes the staff through a lesson in cooking “clean, modern Indian food.” After this he brings in Vikas Khanna, “one of the top Indian chefs in New York City,” to help overhaul the menu. “Classic Indian dishes with a modern twist” will be on tap, made very “simply” to appeal to the American palette.
A full renovation of the joint is next and comes with a brand-new name: Dillon’s is now Purnima, which means “full moon.” He interior looks about as good as any reno that I’ve seen on Kitchen Nightmares. The “material,” as Jenna puts it, is gone and that alone is a massive upgrade. And overall, it now looks like a classy midtown eatery that can actually compete in one of the most competitive markets on the entire planet.
Usually, before launch night Ramsay gives the staff a pep talk, and he sort of does so here before really taking relish into bashing Martin yet again, asking him to act like a real General Manager “for the first time” and the like. When Jenna says that he is making her angry with this kind of talk, Ramsay not so politely tells her to mind her own business.
Maybe our guy just really has it in for his fellow countrymen that he thinks don’t have what it takes? For what it’s worth, Martin does seem lazy and aloof, but we’ve seen far worse on Kitchen Nightmares that didn’t earn quite the ire from the show’s star.
Relaunch night starts off well, but Ramsay still has it out for Martin, grumbling that “he’s still here” after making sure that his cell phone is shut off at one point.
Service eventually gets held up due to lack of communication and coordination, which falls on our guy Martin’s shoulders. As Martin is called in to clean up a spilled bowl of rice in the kitchen, Ramsay nearly takes glee in telling him that he now “finally has something to do” to be useful.
Gordon even goes so far as to pull Khan aside to encourage him to step up to run things, implying that he’s essentially shoving Martin aside in the process. That Mohammad isn’t involved in this conversation seems manipulative in a way that Ramsay – for all his faults – rarely behaves.
As Khan takes the lead out front and Vikas running in the kitchen, dinner service completes successfully… at least, I guess it does. I use “I guess” as Jenna seems jubilant that she made $100 that night, which seems to be an awfully mediocre some of money to be overjoyed about making as a server at a theoretically busy (the place is crowded, at least for relaunch night) midtown Manhattan restaurant.
The next day, Ramsay sits down with Mohammad and lays out that in order to have Vikas in the kitchen ongoing, “one of the managers has to go.” And when he adds that “you can’t keep driftwood,” it doesn’t take a genius to understand what Gordon is angling for.
As Ramsay tells the owner that he thinks that Martin is incompetent and manipulative himself, it’s completely wild that we can see Martin overhearing the conversation.
It’s an all-time cringe moment in reality television history and I am absolutely here for it.
When Martin storms over and proclaims that he has always been loyal and not manipulative, Ramsay winds him up some more, and eventually bullies/goads him into quitting. It’s hard to tell how much this little scene was stage managed by the show’s producers, but I’ll admit that it’s entertaining.
“I think Gordon Ramsay is full of s—,” Martin tells the camera later.
We then segue to a more upbeat epilogue, ending with Ramsay expressing his pride in the new direction that Purnima is poised to continue pursuing.
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Dillon’s”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Chef Ramsay is in the Big Apple to revamp Dillon’s, an Indian restaurant just blocks away from his own thriving eatery. Stubborn owner Mohammed loses approximately $25,000-$50,000 a month.
CAST – Gordon Ramsay