“When food’s crap, it’s crap.” – Gordon Ramsay
Café 36 is located in La Grange, Illinois, which is described as a “well to do commuter town” outside of Chicago. Highschool sweethearts Terry and Carol Gilmor are La Grange natives and purchased this “upscale French bistro” two years earlier.
As a lifelong coastal resident (both east and west), my initial take on Terry and Carol is that they give off super Baby Boomer Chicago/Midwest vibes.
Carol is a very mild-mannered woman, and (Midwest) nicely explains that her frustration with her husband is that he doesn’t delegate his responsibilities enough.
“You have a staff standing back there, why are you doing it?” she adds.
With this we see a montage of Terry placidly cleaning toilets and re-stocking the bar as a group of employees stand around nearby.
Pinto, the head chef, confidently asserts that the food that he serves is great. We then cut to Doug, a server, relaying that Pinto’s “sanitation skills aren’t the greatest. He tastes a lot of his food as he’s making it.”
Doug moves his hand up to his mouth in a rapid motion to convey what he’s talking about.
This information alone would make me want to run (not walk) in horror away from Café 36.
“The running joke is, ‘Do you want a side of saliva with that?’” Brian, a server, adds.
Several other staff members believe that “Pinto really can’t run a kitchen.”
In sports, there’s a term called “scoreboard,” meaning everything else that can be said is academic. “Scoreboard” for Café 36 is that the place is dead empty and on the edge of financial ruin.
When Gordon Ramsay arrives and sits down to order, he quickly notes that the decorative plastic grapes that are next to his table are covered in dust and that the dish wear looks like it could have been “picked up at the local flea market, or doll shop.”
Doug relays to Ramsay that the typical lunch “rush” involves three or four tables in part because service is super slow.
Ramsay’s instant review of the food:
- “The risotto has exploded, mush… and it just disintegrates in your mouth.” Also: “Salty.”
- On the “strawberry duck”: “What a bizarre combination.”
When Ramsay meets Pinto, he tells him that the risotto was an “insult, it was mush.”
It gets worse: Barney the sous chef fetches the vat of risotto that he just ate from and learns that it was cooked eight days earlier. “You have the nerve to serve that shit from a week ago,” Ramsay tells Pinto, witheringly.
We know Pinto is going to be a problematic figure in this episode when he tells the camera curtly, “It didn’t smell bad.”
Terry – who I must say seems like a very sweet and kind man – tells the camera how upset he was to learn that Pinto wasn’t serving fresh food. That being said, of course, the buck stops with the restaurant’s owners ultimately.
“How can my staff do this?” Terry says.
Meanwhile, Ramsay angrily accuses Chef Pinto of not being a “real chef” and “giving up.” Pinto absorbs these taunts in icy silence.
Ramsay next sits down with Terry and Carol and finds out that they had zero restaurant experience prior to purchasing Café 36 – a common fatal flaw for many Kitchen Nightmares situations. They sunk $1.1 million into the purchase using their retirement savings, and now they’re on the brink of being completely destitute.
The British chef lays out the main issue: the food. “When food’s crap, it’s crap,” he says, advising them of the importance of not ignoring the most important factor hurting Café 36’s chances.
Ramsay then heads to the kitchen to check out the food storage situation, and it’s on par as one of the more cringeworthy scenes that Kitchen Nightmares offers. Highlights include grungy oil in a barrel that Ramsay calls “motor oil,” mounds of frozen food going to waste, and a standoff between Ramsay and Pinto in which ends in the former calling the latter a “certified jerk.”
At that night’s dinner service, the argument continues, with Ramsay asking a non-responsive Chef Pinto, “What. Don’t. You. Freeze?”
Out in the dining room, restaurant guests wait more than 45 minutes to get served after a super sluggish kitchen. And when people finally do get served, one table sends back super undercooked New York steaks.
Pinto offers up deep insight into his personality when he tells the camera, “Just because food comes back, doesn’t mean I’m a bad cook.”
In her growing awareness of how much of a liability Pinto is to her and her husband’s business and livelihood, she tells the camera, “We don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground.”
Brian puts it another way: “Pinto has one speed, and it’s f— you.”
Pretty nice burn from our guy Brian, I have to say.
At a full staff meeting that night, Ramsay calls out Pinto individually and loudly, telling him, “You are leading this place into bankruptcy.”
Even the Narrator Guy lays into Pinto, citing Pinto’s “inefficient and bizarre cooking techniques.”
The next day, Ramsay leads Pinto – who is acting cordial if not friendly at this point – and the kitchen staff in a cooking lesson. He also institutes a big change in getting rid of the old school cart/trolleys that had been used to serve diners as a way to speed up getting dishes to diners. Tableside salad service is also installed.
Terry and Ramsay then sit down privately, and Ramsay advises him that “you must be strong” in leading the business as owner, particularly in dealing with Chef Pinto.
“You have got to start being firm, or they’re never going to respect you,” Ramsay advises.
At dinner service that night, while the new tableside salad service works out nicely, entrees continue to head out of the kitchen at a glacial pace.
Brian’s emotions boil over, and he tells Terry, “You’re hiding,” and then pointing to Pinto – who is standing nearby – says, “And you need to be fired.”
Terry pushes back, reminding the server that he’s not the owner.
Later that night, Ramsay illustrates the problems: slow service, inconsistent food, and the décor is not contemporary.
The third problem at least gets solved overnight, as the overnight renovation team does its work. The next day, a brighter and more modern dining room is revealed, with matching dish wear and chic booths and chandeliers to class the place up a bit.
The menu overhaul is “fresh and modern” along with more “condensed” and “seasonal.” Vintage Ramsay, in other words. Entrees include duck confit, steak tartare, and other modern upscale bistro cuisine.
Relaunch night dinner service starts out well, but an hour into service “the bad habits are back,” as Narrator Guy tells us, so then of course a massive bottleneck brings food service to a crawl.
When Pinto refuses to respond to Ramsay entirely, the British chef yells, “Executive Chef? Certified dick!”
“Nothing’s being directed, unbelievable,” Ramsay reports back to Terry.
Eventually, the orders get flowing again after Terry gets directly involved in expediting.
Later that night, Ramsay strongly implies that Pinto needs to get fired, and warns them not to make the decision “too late.” It’s also clear that Ramsay has warmer feelings for Terry and Carol than he has for most of the restaurant owners he works with.
“You’re like the most perfect mom and dad,” Ramsay says as he says goodbye.
The end of episode epilogue relays that Pinto “left” Café 36 “the very next day and that Barney was promoted to head chef.
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Kitchen Nightmares, “Café 36”: is it still open?
Sadly, Café 36 way back in 2009, “a few months after” this episode of Kitchen Nightmares aired, via IMDB. A visit to the restaurant’s Yelp profile confirms that that it closed, with the last review dating back to 2009.
Overall, Café 36 had earned a mediocre three out of five stars rating on eight total reviews.
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Café 36”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Chef Ramsay drops by Café 36, a French-American eatery in Illinois. The couple who own the place are lacking in business skills and need Ramsay’s expertise.
CAST – Gordon Ramsay