“Hope you brought your magic wand!” – Kathy Borgia
Giuseppe’s Trattoria is located 30 miles north of Detroit, Michigan in “the township of Macomb County,” Narrator Guy tells us.
Because I’m a politics nerd, the name of the county rang a bell as it’s in the swing state of Michigan, so I looked up how things went in the 2024 election: Trump walloped Harris there by about 70,000 votes, versus in 2020 when Trump beat Biden – in a state he ultimately lost statewide that year – by a relatively slimmer 40,000 vote tally or so.
So if you want to look at it like Macomb County got “Trump-ier” in recent years, I think that’s fair.
Anyway, we learn that Joe Borgia and his wife Kathy were successful restaurateurs who, upon retiring, opened Giuseppe’s with the goal to “pass it down” to their son, Sam.
When we see Joe complain that Sam, the head chef, has only been working twenty hours a week on what should be his dream opportunity, we get a clear picture of what the main problem is that Gordon Ramsay needs to solve in this edition of Kitchen Nightmares.
Kathy meanwhile talks about “the hell that goes on in the kitchen” as another problem. Sam for his part feels like he doesn’t have much of a say in the kitchen – with his dad dominating how things run – which causes him to be discouraged.
Kathy picks up Ramsay at his hotel and tells the British chef that her son is not ready to take over Giuseppe’s while additionally, “I’m in debt big time.”
Details on that note: the Borgias – who should be on the brink of retirement at their age – have their house in foreclosure and are an additional $150,000 in the hole on top of that. She emphasizes how dire things are in relaying that if the business fails, it could also mean the end of her long marriage with Joe.
“Hope you brought your magic wand!” Kathy adds, trying to be cheerful.
When Ramsay sits down at a table at Giuseppe’s, he notes that while the place has only been open for two years, that it has the vibe of a place that dates back to the 1970s – and not in a good way.
When Ramsay orders the eggplant rollatini, the “house specialty,” and the octopus salad, you just know that things are not going to go well. The octopus is quickly noted as being “rubbery,” and the server, Dawn, agrees that it’s “tough” when she’s offered a taste.
The cheese on the potato skins? “Hideous.” And then the eggplant is a hot, tasteless mash that Ramsay rightly points out has been overly nuked in the microwave.
After eating, Ramsay gathers the Borgia family and the kitchen staff and tells them bluntly that “the food is crap, guys.” I chuckled a bit at how aggrieved Ramsay seems about the fact that potato skins are on the menu at an Italian place (especially one that includes “plastic cheese”).
At dinner service, Ramsay discovers the unusual situation that dishes fire out of the kitchen too fast due to meals being slapped together thanks to heavy use of microwaving. Sam calls this “fast food Italian,” and notes that he’s forced to work this way based on his father Joe’s direction.
Also: dishes come out fast… and they get sent back too, with multiple diners sending food back to the kitchen for all kinds of different reasons.
At some point, Joe gets so upset at what he perceives as his son’s incompetence that he kicks him out of the kitchen and takes over himself.
It’s important to note here that while his parents threw him under the bus for not working hard enough, he does come across as a very earnest guy who is trying to make things work with both the business and in his relationship with his parents. It’s really easy to empathize with him, for example, when he repeatedly talks about how he wants to make his father proud.
Ramsay frames the dynamic like this: Joe treats his son (and the kitchen staff) like dirt, and it’s sad.
After dinner service, Ramsay tells the staff that Giuseppe’s is in “a horrible rut,” due in part to never having seen “so much food go into a microwave in my life.”
Ramsay eventually prompts Sam to confront his father to the effect of, “Dad, I wanna cook fresh.”
The root issue from Joe’s standpoint is that he feels Sam doesn’t work hard enough, and Sam feels like he doesn’t get any appreciation from his father.
Ramsay sits Joe down and lays out that he “can’t be a f—ing martyr,” that at his age he can’t continue to work 70 hours a week, and that he must find a path to stepping back.
Next up: Ramsay leads both father and son in coming up with new specials to put on offer at Giuseppe’s. Once completed, he has the staff try dishes whipped up by both Joe and Sam. Poppa Joe’s porkchop bests Sam’s salmon by team vote, but Ramsay compliments them both in saying that both dishes are worthy to be put on the menu for customers.
With the food going in the right direction, Ramsay pulls Kathy aside to urge her to write a letter to both her husband and son to address their relationship issues. He then separately tells Sam and Joe to do the same.
The specials are a hit at dinner service, but Joe still can’t help taking over cooking and running the kitchen instead of taking on an expediting role that everyone had agreed upon earlier. Eventually, Joe is persuaded to leave the kitchen entirely, leaving things to Sam and his sous chef, Brian.
The overnight renovation removes the “claustrophobic” vibe, replacing it with a modern contemporary feel. It’s clear that there’s a much warmer feeling between Ramsay and the restaurant’s owners in this episode versus many others, and this can be seen when Gordon tells a tearful Joe, “You deserve it, my man.”
The menu overhaul is classic Ramsay: condensed, fresher, quicker, with soups such as minestrone and an updated chicken parmesan.
Miscommunication and “goofing around” in the kitchen continue to cause massive issues in the kitchen on relaunch night. With diners waiting over an hour to eat, Brian flips the [redacted] out when Ramsay tells the team to “stop f—ing around” and storms out of Giuseppe’s. The best part here is where we see him literally peel out of the parking lot.
Like something out of a movie (or… a reality TV show that may or may not have manipulated editing), poppa Joe steps back into the kitchen to help Sam to pull out a successful dinner service.
Later that night, Ramsay has Joe, Kathy, and Sam read their letters out loud to each other. As you might expect, the parents want to see their son continue to step up, while Sam expresses that he wants to make his mom and dad proud while allowing them to be able to step back from working so hard.
“I came to realize that you are ready – I want you to take charge,” Joe’s letter concludes.
“You are an American dream,” Ramsay adds.
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Kitchen Nightmares, “Giuseppe’s”: is it still open?
No! This one is a real bummer for multiple reasons, especially as it involved a family that clearly cared about one another.
Via Reality TV Updates, Giuseppi’s closed amidst the economic recession of 2009, and Kathy and Joe Borgia did lose up losing their home.
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Giuseppe’s”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Chef Ramsay makes his way to Macomb Township, Michigan to inspect Giuseppe’s, a family-run Italian restaurant afflicted with a bickering father-son duo and a shortage of customers.
CAST – Gordon Ramsay