“The biggest problem with this restaurant is you. Congratulations. – Gordon Ramsay
Sante Le Brea is a health food restaurant located in Los Angeles. In the quick opening montage that shows us the restaurant for the first time, it’s fun to hear one diner – who sounds slightly like Jane’s Addiction and Porno For Pyros frontman Perry Farrell – say, “It’s like meat but not.”
Sante Le Brea is owned by Dean, who has run the place with his two sons, Arthur and Sammy, for a decade. However, in typical Kitchen Nightmares fashion, it’s now in dire straits and is in need of a miracle to turn the business around.
Dean says that he’s exhausted from taking on all manner of tasks himself, ranging from cooking to cleaning to maintenance. “With a very thin thread, I’m holding this place alive,” he says.
Sammy frames it that Sante Le Brea is “running without a captain,” and thinks his father is not a very good manager. Sammy is also a super bro-y guy, which we learn quickly when we see him telling a group of people, “We just gotta sack up and do this s— bro.”
“Sack up” talk is a huge tell that a guy is a bro, if you’re not familiar.
Mark, the manager, feels that his job is “undefined,” while Dean says, “I don’t really know what he does.”
Now Dean is at least $200,000 underwater and time is running out to turn things around.
“We don’t know what the f— we’re doing,” Bro Sammy says.
Meanwhile, on the day that Gordon Ramsay is scheduled to arrive at Sante Le Brea, the head chef, Aurelio, failed to show up to work and is unable to be contacted.
Sammy is endlessly quotable, so I must quote him again when he talks about how he’s “intimidated” to meet Ramsay, though by the tone of his voice he sounds more impressed and excited. “I heard he’s built like a f—ing monster,” he adds, pumping his own muscles to exhibit the monstrousness of the British chef, one assumes.
When Ramsay arrives, we learn that Sante Le Brea is located on La Brea Avenue, a long north-south artery through LA that runs for 21 miles. What’s bizarre here of course is why the restaurant isn’t called Sante La Brea, but it seems that that’s pretty low on the problems that this business is facing at the moment.
Dean tells Ramsay that every dish at Sante Le Brea can be prepared vegan or with protein such as chicken or fish. Later, Mark the manager tells Ramsay that he wants to make the restaurant more “hip and modern.”
Meanwhile, Mark lets the camera know that Ramsay is “H.O.T. hot,” and then follows this up with, “Hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot.”
Ramsay orders a patty melt, and quickly observes, “That is dry, that is disgusting.” He then took the opportunity to give some of it to Tubbs, the bulldog owned by a nearby diner. Mark’s take was that he was grateful that Tubbs chose to take a few bites, because it would indicate that “we’re f—ed.”
The salmon that’s served next is no better: too “fishy,” with a taste that makes the British chef believe it wasn’t stored properly. Soon after, Ramsay now feeling physically ill, he investigates the food storage situation (never a good sign) along with Dean.
Here we get a classic, “It’s rotten!” regarding moldy produce.
In one of the lamer statements ever uttered on Kitchen Nightmares, Dean tells the camera, “I didn’t realize that nobody looks in the refrigerator.”
“The biggest problem with this restaurant is you,” Ramsay tells him. “Congratulations.”
Head chef Aurelio eventually shows up, and after a meeting with him, Dean, and the sons, Dean is unable to pull the trigger on firing him. This causes Sammy to accuse his dad of having “no balls.”
Aurelio fashions himself as a slippery sort, I guess, in that he also refuses to take any responsibility for the awful food storage conditions. “I am just a cook, I am not in charge,” he tells Ramsay pointedly.
At a meeting after dinner service, Ramsay terms the filthy conditions in the kitchen “Lord of the Flies in there,” and demands that a full cleaning take place overnight.
The next morning, Ramsay takes Dean to a hiking trail overlooking LA and tells him, “You have to know how to talk to these staff.” He then leads Dean into a primal scream session of sorts, leading him to scream things on the theme of taking control of his staffers and business.”
Eventually, Dean works himself up to the point where he metaphorically screams to Aurelio, “Who the f— is in charge of this motherf—ing kitchen?”
Back at Sante Le Brea, Sammy ends up loving getting screamed at himself by his dad, telling the camera that “it was like a f—ing dragon out there, man!”
Next up is a cooking lesson from Ramsay, which Mark frames as getting “ghetto Gordon” for some reason.
This is followed by something genuinely surprising: a cop shows up out of nowhere and puts Dean in handcuffs. However, it’s a gimmick set up by Ramsay – the handcuffs are to be a device that will help Dean to be hands off and manage and delegate effectively during dinner service.
“Thanks Bob,” Ramsay says to the fake cop.
It actually ends up being a helpful exercise as we see Dean constantly tempted to want to jump in and take care of all manner of details himself during that night’s dinner service.
Between the primal scream session and the handcuffs, Dean may have swung to the other side of the spectrum as we see him flipping out on Mark, yelling loudly at him for sweating too much on the job and later begging Ramsay to “send the motherf—er home.”
“You’re the owner,” Ramsay responds.
Ramsay also sprints down the block to buy deodorant for Mark, who we learn doesn’t like to use deodorant normally.
While this is going on, we see diners sending food back for having hair in their food or being served cold dishes.
The next morning, the overnight renovation makes Sante Le Brea look much airier and more inviting. An emotional Dean calls it “a dream realized.” The menu overhaul is classic Ramsay: “no more 150 bits of crap,” instead replaced by a much smaller selection of fresh, healthy dishes, including chilled tomato soup, sea bass, salads, and tofu.
During relaunch night, an unhandcuffed Dean has a serious meltdown early on that’s borderline scary this time. He had already yelled at Mark earlier in the episode for taking orders from customers (because the restaurant manager is assessed at not being good at that, I guess?), and when he’s “caught in the act” again, Dean grabs him by the collar as though Mark is a naughty preschooler and bullies/drags him into the back of the restaurant.
I’m being completely serious in stating that workplace harassment charges have been filed for lesser acts.
Dean has also evolved (devolved?) in developing a somewhat freaky quiet-loud thing going, as though he’s the demonic boss version of a Pixies song. For example, he tells Aurelio that if the kitchen counters aren’t spotlight, well then he’s going to get REALLY PISSED OFF.
Smash cut to Aurelio storming out and driving down an alley away from Sante Le Brea.
“What have I created? A monster,” Ramsay says in a super rare statement of humility.
Somehow (read = the Kitchen Nightmares producers surely got involved here), Aurelio is lured back and Ramsay gives Dean a quick talk with the theme of chill out.
“You have to motivate the team,” Ramsay tells him soon after. “Get a grip.”
The evening stumbles along to a conclusion, after which Ramsay tells the staff that “at least we didn’t give up.”
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Sante Le Brea”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Chef Ramsay travels to LA to inspect Sante La Brea. He discovers a financially strapped owner who isn’t respected by his staff. And an incident that occurs in the eatery leads to a police visit.
CAST – Gordon Ramsay