“This is real life, this is people’s jobs.” – Jocelyn Goeden
Whereas Kitchen Nightmares tends to focus many episodes on restaurants in and around New York City and Los Angeles, it’s fun to see Gordon Ramsay and crew go further afield with Hotel Hell. Here we find ourselves in far flung Pipestone, Minnesota – a solid 200 miles southwest of Minneapolis – for the purpose of rescuing the beleaguered Calumet Inn.
The Calumet Inn, which dates back to 1887 (and looks like an old timey prison from its exterior), is owned by sisters Rina and Vanda Smrkovski. As with many Kitchen Nightmares origin stories, the Original Sin here is that a familial investor – their dad Jim in this case – purchased the Calumet for his daughters nine months earlier.
The first thing that Jim Smrkovski tells us via interview is that his children are “definitely a little bit spoiled.”
Ramsay frames Rina as a “cry baby,” whereupon we see her crying, talking about how there’s “just too much trash talking around here.”
We also learn that after just six weeks of helping to run the inn, Rina unexpectedly bolted for Minneapolis for three months.
Vanda, meanwhile, stuck around, though we learn that she doesn’t get out of bed until 3p each day, “leaving the hotel understaffed.”
Jocelyn Goeden, who is a server and works at the front desk, thinks that the sisters “should not be running a hotel at all because they don’t know what they’re doing and they don’t care about anybody.”
Bonus: Rina and Vanda have “zero hospitality experience,” and yet still strip Mandy Thompson, the General Manager, of “all her duties.”
Conditions at the Calumet Inn are clearly dirty and dingy, and meanwhile with a dearth of guests and money coming in, the entire family has moved into the inn to help cut costs.
“This is real life, this is people’s jobs,” Joselyn says, a good reminder that while Hotel Hell can be a good and fun trashtastic reality TV watch, it does cover the lives of real people struggling to make ends meet in less than ideal circumstances.
As Ramsay rolls into Pipestone, he observes that this part of the U.S. is like Holland, due to its flatness and windmills, except “no f—ing tulips.”
After Ramsay finds the front desk empty while attempting to check in, the more insane thing is when Mandy eventually tells him that Jim “likes to take the bulbs out of things, so people can’t turn lights on.”
The sisters soon tell Ramsay that he’s staying in the best room, which is called Melody of Love (and has a cheesy sign on its door which heralds the same). When they show him the cramped, strangely organized room, Gordon quickly points out that there’s mold in the mini refrigerator.
More importantly, Ramsay sorts out that Rina has no idea what she’s doing while Vanda isn’t much better. They’re also deluded in their diagnosing of what the problems with the Calumet are, siting the “rudeness and unprofessionalism” of the staff as the main problem.
“There is a chronic disease here of complaining and bitching,” Vanda says.
In the restaurant, Ramsay sorts out that there’s a tiny staff with a menu that promotes 35-40 dishes. Joslyn readily admits that this math equation equals that that means that everything the kitchen produces is terrible. Example: when Ramsay tastes the broccoli soup, it’s so burnt that he can’t even manage to swallow it. The fish and chips meanwhile are merely “disgusting.”
Ramsay also soon learns that Mandy has been essentially demoted by Rina and Vanda because, she’s told, “everyone is incompetent.”
Mandy is refreshingly direct, and tells Ramsay that “Vanda is borderline sociopath” and also a “cynical micromanager” while Rina is “I don’t know… I can’t describe her, she’s never here.”
When Ramsay asks Mandy point blank what Rina is good at doing, she responds, “Cry?”
When Ramsay assembles the staff, we see Rina snap at Chef Jen and then complain about how she and Vanda aren’t paying themselves. Ramsay quickly steps in and reminds her that “their daddy’s not paying for everything!”
It’s clear by this point that the sisters truly believe that they’ve been placed in a deeply unfair situation, and that at any moment someone is going to Descend From the Heavens, let them know how right they’ve been all along, and solve all of their problems for them.
In other words: they’re extremely immature co-owners of a historic hotel.
As hotel business picks up due to people having heard that Gordon Ramsay is in town, the British chef discovers that Rina has been off crying in her room about how she really “just wants to help people.”
When Ramsay asks her if she’s capable of “taking the reins,” it’s honestly unclear whether Rina would be best served getting some therapy versus taking on the role of owning a hotel. She tells him that she “needs space for me to take charge.”
“You need to get a grip,” he tells her.
At a staff meeting that Ramsay assembles, he learns that it’s the first staff meeting since the sisters Smrkovski took over the Calumet Inn nine months earlier. Further, the meeting quickly turns into a nasty squabble between the sisters and their employees.
“Here’s the problem, if you all got to f—ing work, I wouldn’t be so f—ing mad all the time,” a staffer named Kristi yells at her bosses.
When Rina accuses Mandy of not being “committed” to the inn, the nominal general manager blows up and storms out of the room, cursing up a storm all the while.
It’s easy to empathize with her when she tells the camera that she has been working 65-70 hours a week on top of being a single mom.
“I’m done,” she adds.
I must add here that in watching and recapping dozens of Kitchen Nightmares and Hotel Hell episodes, I’ve never seen a staff this level of furious at the owners of a business.
Next up: Ramsay has a group of the inn’s guests confront the sisters with how terrible and “neglected” the rooms are, and how dingy, dark, and “prison-like” the hotel feels overall.
Immediately, the owners attempt to blame the conditions on how bad things were when they received the place from their dad.
Needless to say, but: zero guests said they would ever return to stay at the Calumet Inn.
In one of the more bizarre scenes I’ve ever seen on a reality TV show, Ramsay reasonably asks Rina and Vanda if they feel they are actually capable of running a successful hotel. Vanda eventually admits that “my heart says yes but my head says no,” followed immediately by Rina breaking down in tears.
“You have to be honest with yourself,” Ramsay says. And then he adds: “I would s— myself asking you to run my dog up the hill, let alone a hotel.”
Ramsay concludes that the only path at this point is a Rescue Mission to convince Mandy to take her job back as general manager. In Mandy’s backyard, she tells Gordon that she’s “bitter, but okay.”
Ramsay tells her that she’s good at her job and asks if she’d come back if she was able to take full control of the Calumet Inn.
“I don’t like them,” she responds… “I don’t know.”
Mandy alone makes this a compelling episode of Hotel Hell – I found myself hoping that she lands in a job that respects and values her talents.
Later, Ramsay assembles the sisters and their parents, Jim and Rita. He asks each point blank if they want to continue as they are at the hotel, and each admits in turn that they don’t.
“I’m not happy here,” Rina says.
She then breaks down and cries (again) when Ramsay encourages her to go back to Minneapolis. “Thank you, that’s all I want,” she says, bawling.
“Each one of you is actually trapped inside this hotel,” he tells them all.
We then cut to a full staff meeting, where Vanda announces that as part of a plan to turn things around, she and Rina will be “stepping out of the picture.” Further, Ramsay relays that “a new general manager” will be joining, who will have the “authority from the owners” to run the place.
He then of course trots Mandy out, who is received with cheers by the staff.
So the idea is basically addition by massive subtraction.
On top of this, the Calumet Inn gets the standard full renovation, which makes the guest rooms far brighter and more vibrant (and cleaner too, presumably). The kitchen menu is also improved and consolidated and includes specialty dishes from Rita (whose cooking Ramsay greatly approved of when he tasted a dish she made earlier in the episode).
When a taxi arrives for the sisters, Ramsay seems relieved and pleased to get rid of them.
Hotel Hell, “Calumet Inn”: is it still open?
No! Rina and Vanda sold the Calumet Inn in 2015. There’s something of a saga that takes place after that, but it eventually closed in 2022.
Some stats and info about Hotel Hell, “Calumet Inn”
TV SHOW – Hotel Hell
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 2, Episode 8
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Gordon Ramsay checks in to the Historic Calumet Inn, in Pipestone, Minnesota. Joint owners, Vanda and Rina Smrkovski were given the inn as a gift by their father (who they still call “daddy”), and they treat it with less respect than a dolls house.
GENRE – Docuseries, Office Culture, Trashtastic TV, Reality TV
CAST – Gordon Ramsay