“If you eat these cookies, take one to your next job interview.” – Ken’s nasty-gram
Chef and restauranteur Ken Pisciotta bought the River Rock Inn in Milford, Pennsylvania two years ago. Milford is right on the border of the New Jersey state line and also butts up against the Delaware River.
Milford is described as being in the Poconos Mountains, which are rather small as mountains go. I know this because I went skiing in that region when I was a kid, and all of the runs are quite short as compared to other skiing areas around the U.S.
Anyway, the River Rock Inn hit hard times pretty quickly, with the staff and guests describing a poorly run, dirty, and ultimately empty hotel. Ken, 48, is single and now living in his inn while debts continue to pile up.
Meanwhile, Ken is “controlling” and “miserable” as described by his employees. Head Chef Seth Van Benschoten tells the camera how “everyone walks on eggshells” around Ken because they don’t want to get yelled at.
Another staffer frames it as “a hot flipping mess.”
When Gordon Ramsay arrives at the River Rock Inn, the entranceway is a weird little hallway that doesn’t have anyone staffing its tiny reception desk. Eventually, Karen Loeschorn, the assistant manager, takes him to his room, where Ramsay observes that the décor looks like it hasn’t been updated since the inn was built in the 1880s.
He also quickly finds dead bugs all over the windowsill and other parts of the room. “It’s like an insect funeral home,” he quips.
There’s an ancient television that gets zero reception – it would be an upgrade to simply remove them from the rooms.
“This is embarrassing. $110 for this s—hole,” Ramsay says to an empty room. “The general hygiene cleanliness is just shocking,” he adds.
When Ramsay meets Ken, the British chef tells the inn’s owner that he’s “s—ing himself” with fear ahead of sampling the restaurant’s food after inspecting the rooms. Ken is a self-professed chef by trade and assures Ramsay that the food is freshly made and outstanding.
However, Ramsay quickly uncovers that the menu offers dishes from “around the world” which is “frozen crap” that’s “reheated.”
“I wouldn’t give that experience to my f—ing dog,” he adds.
When Ramsay starts talking about dogs, by the way, it’s never a good thing.
Ramsay next confers with Annmarie, a server, who readily tells Gordon that Ken’s management style “deflates you, strips your confidence, won’t let you make any decisions – executive or otherwise.”
I laughed out loud when the next entrée, some kind of Italian-ish fried meat monstrosity (which turns out to be chicken valdostano) lands on Ramsay’s table. “It’s like a f—ing T-Rex foot on my plate,” Ramsay says of this.
Ramsay concludes of the River Rock Inn’s restaurant: “It’s worse than a f—ing roadside diner.”
At a staff meeting later that night, Ken tells Ramsay that the inn is losing $7,000-$8,000 per month. Ramsay next asks why the rooms are so filthy if the inn is empty.
The overall point – a typical one for Hotel Hell – is to shake Ken up and make him realize how most of its problems start with him.
Next up: Ramsay breaks out the black light in his room, which is never ever a good thing on this show.
“Oh god, that’s got to be semen,” he says at the many blotches he sees all over the bedspread. This is followed by Ramsay busting out his sleeping bag.
The next morning, a “wake up call” is in order, with Ramsay declaring that he doesn’t think the River Rock Inn’s staff has any idea what it’s like to be a guest in the inn that they help manage. This leads to Ramsay providing a large group of guests to collectively tell Ken and his team how awful their experience was in staying at the hotel.
Predictably, not a single person said that they would stay at the River Rock Inn again.
We as the audience are then forced to sit through another black light sequence, with Ramsay taking Ken and Karen through the fluid-splattered bedspreads in his hotel room.
“Looks like a f—ing galaxy,” Ramsay says in what might be one of the most hilariously disgusting sentences ever uttered on television.
“This is truly disgusting,” Ken is forced to admit.
The entire team then gets to work in (actually) getting the inn clean while Ramsay himself takes the linens to a nearby dry-cleaning store. He requests an “extra strong” cleaning.
One of the reasons why Hotel Hell is entertaining is seeing the weird little quirks of how each hotel is run. Along those lines, Ramsay discovers a ton of “little notes” that Ken leaves all over the hotel’s offices and backrooms that say things like don’t take my pens, buy your own or if you unplug this drill you better put it back.
On a jar of cookies: If you eat these cookies, take one to your next job interview.
An employee tells Ramsay that the staff calls these “Kenny’s nasty-grams.”
“He’s just a spirit sucker, honestly,” Annmarie says.
“You’ve got to stand up to him,” Ramsay advises the staff if they have any chance to turn things with the business and their working conditions around.
Ken was set up to secretly view the staff talking about his awful and controlling managerial style, and soon he comes out and tells everyone that he’s truly sorry and wants to do better by them and the River Rock Inn.
Ramsay uses this moment to announce that Karen’s role must be elevated to that of a general manager with true responsibilities and ability to run the hotel properly.
Next, Ramsay slides from the “tough” to “love” part of his modus operandi, sitting down privately with Ken to discuss the owner’s motivations and the inn’s terrible financial straits. In essence, if the River Rock Inn fails, it will also ruin family members who have dumped money into the business. It’s implied that this is partly why Ken has been so maniacally controlling with the staff.
Ramsay next brings in Ramesh Sebwany, VP of hotel operations at Caesar’s Palace, to help train the staff. Sebwany emphasizes a big smile upon greeting guests, though he notes that it must be genuine. He also says that nailing the basics will go a long way toward making a difference.
While this might seem exceedingly obvious, we then see an extended training sequence in which Ken does a terrible job in greeting a new pretend guest over and over again. Karen meanwhile nails it immediately and is lovely in her manner, so it seems some people are just much, much better at this stuff than others.
We then get a weird segment where Ramsay sets Ken up with a stylist and then takes him out to a local bar with the goal of “finding Kenny a girlfriend.” Ken does loosen up quite a bit and tells the camera that the evening was quite an ego boost.
The next morning, the overnight renovation is revealed to Ken and team. The guest rooms look transformed, and most importantly they’re clean and bug free. They even include flat screen televisions that actually work.
“Gone are the spunk stains,” Gordon adds… though we wish he didn’t.
And the hotel lobby has been transformed to have a sitting area where guests can check themselves in via digital tablets.
It’s at this point in the episode where I noticed that the restaurant was completely ignored after Ramsay’s initial downbeat assessment. If this was Kitchen Nightmares, the entire episode would solely focus there.
Instead, we just get a quick note that Ramsay now has “more time to spend on the floor” before we quickly segue to seeing how some of the ladies that Ramsay and Ken met at the nearby bar stopped by the River Rock Inn’s restaurant to eat.
Hotel Hell, “River Rock Inn”: is it still open?
It’s a little complicated but the short answer is no, the River Rock Inn is no longer open.
Ken Pisciotta’s LinkedIn profile notes that his stint as president of the River Rock Inn ended in early 2015.
And meanwhile, Yelp has a listing for La Posada and Felix’s Cantina, with a decent if not great 3.5 out of 5 star rating on 43 reviews as of this writing.
Some stats and info about Hotel Hell, “River Rock Inn”
TV SHOW – Hotel Hell
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 1, Episode 3
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Gordon Ramsay checks in to The River Rock Inn in Milford Pennsylvania, where owner Ken Pisciotta is over his head and drowning in debt. Unable to get any guests to stay in his neglected inn, Ken has all but given up.
GENRE – Docuseries, Office Culture, Trashtastic TV, Reality TV
CAST – Gordon Ramsay