“I’m so upset inside. I’m f—ing fumigating.” – Sammy Settembre
Sabatiello’s is an Italian restaurant located “smack in the middle” of Stamford, Connecticut.
My sister lives in Mamaroneck, New York, about 15 miles away in Westchester County, and I must add that I had one of the very best Italian meals of my life in that area. Therefore, I know full well that Sabatiello’s has its work cut out for itself to thrive in such a competitive restaurant environment.
Sabatiello’s was opened three years ago by Sammy Settembre, who had previously owned a successful pizzeria. We learn that Sabatiello’s is “struggling” and could close within months unless things improve.
In classic Kitchen Nightmares fashion, business was strong “in the beginning” but has declined over time.
We also quickly learn that Sammy can be “nasty” and the quality of the food can be uneven, if not iffy.
One funny scene involves Sammy loudly complaining about how many meatballs a diner was served. We see him telling a kitchen staffer: “Was he a friend of yours? Man, you guys go bowling together?”
“Why you gotta be a bigshot with my money, bro? Be a bigshot on your day off,” he adds.
Sammy’s take on things: “My restaurant’s a nightmare because my staff doesn’t listen to me all the time.”
It’s always a “tell” when a manager complains that the problem is their employees because they don’t listen. That means the problem is on you, my guy. And by “my guy” I mean Sammy Settembre, of course.
Also: we learn that Sammy is over $1 million in debt and that his “house is on the line.”
Enter Gordon Ramsay, who reads off recent reviews about Sabatiello’s on his way to the restaurant. The themes are:
- Terrible food
- Owner is obnoxious
- Overpriced
- Everything else is wonderful
I made that fourth bullet point up. Overall, I’d say it’s not great.
When Ramsay sits down to order a sampling of dishes, Sammy is supremely confident that the British chef will do “cartwheels” over how good the food is.
Smash cut to Ramsay trying out the wedding soup: “It’s hideous,” he quickly assesses, both bland and “filled with little pieces of s—,” referring to the sausage.
On the lasagna: “There seems to be something slightly plastic or synthetic” about it. “If that’s homemade I’ll f—ing dance on my head,” he adds.
“The food is consistent… consistently poor,” he concludes.
Ramsay visits the kitchen and learns from Head Chef Jose that the soup he sampled was three days old, after which Gordon lays into Sammy and crew about how bad the food is.
Sammy is naturally combative, and he gets very defensive when Ramsay tells him that every chef he knows makes lasagna fresh daily, which is not how Sabatiello’s runs things (it’s prepped and then refrigerated).
“He’s still alive and I didn’t shoot him?” Sammy asks the universe (I guess?) after Ramsay leaves.
Later, Ramsay investigates the kitchen more closely, and surprisingly – for both Ramsay and the audience – conditions are spotless (which is super rare for Kitchen Nightmares). However, upon inspection of the food storage drawers, a huge red flag for Ramsay pops up: cooked protein being stored right next to raw protein.
“He comes along like his s— don’t stink,” Sammy complains to the camera, among other things. Quite a charmer, this Sammy, as an aside.
Ramsay also pulls Chef Jose aside and learns that they’re using imitation crab meat in that night’s seafood special. When Sammy learns of this, he melts down mostly because he feels that Jose threw him under the bus for revealing such a trade secret to cut costs to the Kitchen Nightmares host.
“You’re f—ing delusional,” Ramsay fires at Sammy after the latter insists the seafood special “isn’t bad” after a diner sends it back to the kitchen.
When another diner sends back her lamb chops because they are undercooked, Sammy hits a new level of meltdown when she soon correctly calls out that it had simply been thrown in the microwave.
When Sammy confronts her about this, he ends up aggressively asking, “What, do you work for a microwave company, you know so much about microwaves?”
So the customer isn’t always first at Sabatiello’s is what we’re quickly learning here.
Meanwhile, Sammy is busy patting himself on the back for the interaction. “I wanted to kill her, and I didn’t,” he tells the camera.
This reminds me of an iconic Chris Rock bit. If you know, you know.
Then, in one of the funniest things I’ve seen on a TV show – reality show or scripted – happens, when Sammy expresses the following sentiment: “I’m so upset inside. I’m f—ing fumigating.”
I have full confidence that Little Carmine Lupertazzi from The Sopranos would fully relate.
“I look like a f—ing a–hole in front of this jerkoff,” Sammy goes on.
On a much more serious note, it saddened me to watch Lauren, Sammy’s girlfriend and a hostess at the restaurant, go out and apologize to the diner on Sammy’s behalf. You get the feeling that this has happened many times before.
“I don’t want his reputation to be any worse than I guess people already see it,” she tells the camera.
Oh, and Sammy’s meltdown reached the point where he shuts down his own restaurant, kicking everyone out in the process.
In a one-on-one meeting, Sammy still won’t agree that he’s the problem.
“You’re the hardest f—ing person to work with, my friend,” Ramsay tells him, adding that the cheap ingredients he’s using is also a major issue.
“You’re a bulls—er,” Gordon says before adding, “Take your head out of your a—hole and get f—ing real with me.”
At this, Sammy can only quietly say, “Okay” in response.
Did I mention that Sammy is endlessly quotable. Soon we see him ranting to the effect of, “I don’t need this jerkoff telling me how to run my business.”
A lot of jerky talk with our Sammy, it seems.
This is as good a time as any to mention that I grew up on Long Island, so I dealt with a multitude of people throwing this kind of useless bluster as a kid.
Finally, we get to the love portion of Ramsay’s patented tough love approach. In another sit down with Sammy, Gordon encourages Sammy to talk about his lifelong passion for the restaurant business and how the loss of his brother seven years earlier.
Sammy tells Ramsay that he’s going to dig deep to rediscover his spark, and he promises to give Ramsay “not 100%, but 225% from now on.”
Which, if you do the math, is a lot of percent.
Next up is a revamped menu that rebrands Sabatiello’s as an Italian steakhouse, starting with a new take on the house lasagna, for which Ramsay gives the kitchen staff a cooking lesson, with an emphasis on “nothing is frozen.” Tableside filet mignon is also added to the mix.
At that night’s dinner service, the bottleneck is Chef Jose, who seems either overwhelmed by the busy crowd that night or simply refuses to communicate for “reasons.” Either way, Sammy starts out calm and enthusiastic but soon returns to his meltdown-y volatile norm.
“We’ve been here for hours,” a woman at one table says. “We’re starving.”
Yet another one-on-one takes place after service, and now Ramsay targets the kitchen is the issue. “I can’t trust him!” Sammy bellows about Chef Jose. Not Ramsay is delighted to see Sammy’s clear anger, and I’m honestly not sure how I feel about that.
In any event, Sammy declares that Jose has “one last chance” to work effectively in the kitchen or he’s out.
At that night’s service, Sammy begins by berating Chef Jose when the inevitable snag in the kitchen occurs, but then interestingly changes tact and decides to “support” his head chef by jumping behind the line to help out himself. However, this has the impact of making things even worse, as confusion reigns and customers are once again left waiting.
Finally, when customers finally do get to try the new menu, they very much enjoy it and the service ends up culminating successfully.
“Move forward and make those changes,” Ramsay tells his new bestie Sammy on the way out.
“He’s made me see that I have a purpose,” Sammy tells the camera.
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Kitchen Nightmares, “Sabatiello’s”: is it still open?
The very short answer is “no,” Sabatiello’s is no longer open.
I’m not sure how well sourced this information is, but this is what the episode’s IMDB page says what happened:
Shortly after the episode aired, Sabatiello’s closed. Sammy opened a pizzeria in Greenwich with his brother, naming it Sabatiello’s as well, which was later closed. It was reported that now Sammy works as a chef in “The Appalachian Market”- a gas station in New York that serves food- sandwiches, pizza etc.
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Sabatiello’s”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Chef Ramsay visits Sabatiello’s and finds a hot-headed owner who is deep in debt. The owner gets so angry at his employees and Ramsay’s criticism that he shuts down the eatery himself.
CAST – Gordon Ramsay