“Taste of Greece? Taste of greasy.” – Gordon Ramsay
Greek at the Harbor is located near the Ventura harbor in southern California. I lived in Pasadena for many years, and found Ventura Beach to be just about the very best beach that California has to offer. Also helpful is that it’s just far enough away from greater Los Angeles so as to not get quite as crowded as LA beaches.
Anyway, in 1994 Makis Mikelatos chose a location right near the water to launch Greek at the Harbor with the idea of attracting the “throngs of tourists” that Ventura draws.
Lynn Mikelatos, Makis’ wife, notes that business boomed during the restaurant’s early years of operation, and son and manager Aris adds that Makis’ old school Greek work ethic helped the business to thrive.
However, Aris feels that Makis’ “standards have dropped” as grinding away in the kitchen for 17 years without taking a break has taken a toll. Others also corroborate that Makis has let things “slip through the cracks” and that has led to a drastic decline in business and revenue over time.
Aris also feels that his dad is stubborn and resistant to change.
While Aris feels he’s ready to run Greek at the Harbor himself, Makis feels that his lack of kitchen experience makes handing the business to his son impossible.
Enter Gordon Ramsay, who observes that Greek at the Harbor’s ideal location on the harbor should make it impossible to not have a thriving restaurant business.
When Ramsay sits down with the family, Makis admits that while he works 14 hours a day and six days a week, he insists that he’s not burned out.
“Where’s the succession?” Ramsay says, pressing Makis on what his plans for the future is.
Makis is strangely unresponsive but eventually reveals that he doesn’t think his son has advanced as fast as he would have liked in his readiness to take over.
Aris counters that he’s passionate about running the business and very much wants to take on more responsibilities.
Ramsay then takes a table and orders up some dishes to sample, including the calamari, a few different platters (one is called “hot mezze”), and the moussaka. When his food arrives, the calamari is “greasy,” the hummus “strange.”
“It looks like strange plates of Greek dogs—,” Ramsay adds, colorfully.
It doesn’t get better from there.
“Taste of Greece? Taste of greasy,” our guy quips.
When Ramsay heads to the kitchen, he confronts Makis and staff with how awful his meal was.
Panos, the prep cook, immediately throws Makis under the bus, readily agreeing with awful the food is. He then tells Ramsay that he’s “not allowed” to cook things properly by way of the edicts proclaimed by Makis.
“I’m following Makis’ way, and he’s tired,” Panos tells the camera.
Makis counters that people tell him all the time how great the food is. Ramsay predictably replies that Makis is delusional.
“He has no clue about the food here,” Makis tells the camera, waving his hand dismissively.
At dinner service that night, Ramsay is appalled that much of the food is pre-cooked and sits out in trays in the kitchen, “cafeteria-style.”
“It’s all cooked to s—,” Ramsay notes.
While dishes fire out of the kitchen quickly, a ton of dishes get sent back through a combination of being either under- or overcooked. Part of the background is that Greek at the Harbor is “more crowded than usual” because people know that Gordon Ramsay and a camera crew are there.
Meanwhile, Aris and a belly dancer take over the middle of the restaurant and do a series of dances, one of which involves Aris picking up a table with his teeth and prancing about with it.
“Finally, something that’s edible,” Ramsay quips.
“I’m deeply hurt,” Makis tells the camera about Ramsay’s overall assessments.
Ramsay next goes into Family Therapist mode, encouraging father and son to sit down and talk to each other. While the two clearly care about each other, Makis is unable or unwilling to let go of control over the restaurant he founded.
Lynn later offers an insight into why things are the way they are. After Aris graduated from college, Greek at the Harbor hosted a party for 100 people. Lynn relays that Aris gave a speech at the party, announcing to attendees that he was going to “make something of his life,” and that included not working at his family’s restaurant.
When Aris and Makis join the table, Ramsay tells everyone that Aris that he doesn’t fully comprehend the impact of what happened that day. After deflecting a bit at first, Aris soon tearfully apologizes, and it’s a touching scene.
“I’ve changed, I just need their support,” Aris tells the camera about his family.
Which leads to a gimmick: Ramsay puts kind of a loose handcuffs* on between father and son so they are forced to be next to each other in the kitchen as they work on cooking together.
* I think it’s best that we don’t know where these “special handcuffs” came from!
Aris is thrilled to get the opportunity to cook with his father and learn from him.
“It was a lot of fun for us to be this way,” Makis tells the camera, and also relays that he can see his son’s passion to be part of the family business.
Ramsay is delighted by the food that father and son prepared and says that it’s better than anything he saw come out of the kitchen at Greek at the Harbor to date.
The next day, the overnight renovation of Greek at the Harbor is revealed, and its one of the best that I’ve ever seen on Kitchen Nightmares. Tacky Disney World-ish décor is replaced by a really cool blue Grecian theme, with shutters that face the water displaying the Greek national flag.
The menu overhaul is classic Ramsay: fresh and modernized dishes, Greek in this case, that will be relatively easy for the kitchen to make to order. The moussaka looks particularly delicious.
For relaunch night, Aris is installed as the expediter in the back of the house, a major change from his typical role out front (plus doing his table-biting dances). Service starts off great, with diners loving the new menu.
However, a bottleneck develops in the kitchen when undercooked dishes start getting sent out and the inexperienced Aris unable to manage things. Ramsay steps in, yelling, “Stop, stop!” And then other things too like, “Mush!” and “Standards!”
No word on whether Ramsay was having flashbacks to participating in the Iditarod dogsled race.
Eventually, things get back on track, and Makis expresses that he’s proud of the work that his son is doing. Lynn chimes in that Aris has “stepped up.”
That night, Ramsay proclaims that relaunch night was a huge success and calls out Aris for doing a “phenomenal job.”
“That was your first time and it felt like you’ve been doing it for 10 years,” Ramsay adds.
Upon leaving, Ramsay advises the family to stay together and work together to achieve success.
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Kitchen Nightmares, “Greek at the Harbor”: is it still open?
There are some restaurants that I “pull more for” than others based on how I feel about the owners, staff, and the episode. This was one where I felt personally invested in that I enjoyed the dynamic of the Mikelatos – and perhaps I was reminded of the many hours I spent hanging out at Greek-owned diners growing up on Long Island, New York (particularly the Candlelight Diner in Commack).
With that being said, I’m happy to report that Greek at the Harbor, now rebranded as The Greek Mediterranean Steak & Seafood is still open and still owned by the Mikelatos family as of this writing.
Via Yelp, it has 3.5 out of 5 stars on 715 reviews, which isn’t great but more like “not bad.” A recent reviewer notes:
The martini was delicious. I loved the pasta too, but it was a bit too salty for me. It had lobster soup mixed with it. I think that’s what made it saltier. I did tell the waitress; I was very honest with them. It wasn’t bad but they need to cut it on the saltiness.
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Greek at the Harbor”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Greek at the Harbor is on the verge of closing. It’s up to Chef Ramsay to save the waterfront venue by improving the menu, the dated d_cor and the relationship between its owners.
CAST – Gordon Ramsay