“What are you getting so pissed off for?” – Saki Kavouniaris
Spin A Yarn is located in Fremont, which is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. I lived in San Francisco’s East Bay many years ago, and had some co-workers who would commute – either by car or via BART – all the way into downtown San Franciso, which both impressed and frightened me a bit.
In any event, Spin A Yarn is described as “a landmark restaurant that was taken over by a Greek immigrant, Saki Kavouniaris” in 1995.
Jennifer, Saki’s wife and now co-owner of the restaurant, started out as a bartender there “because I was desperate,” she tells the camera. It turns out she lied about having any experience, but was hired anyway, and two years later she married Saki.
Mary, a server, notes that Jennifer is “a mess when she tries to help out in the restaurant. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“I’m not as stupid as everyone thinks,” Jennifer adds, as we see a quick scene where she doesn’t know what she’s doing as “wacky” music plays as backdrop.
That being said, it’s soon pretty clear that if the buck stops with Saki, he’s the one who should have his intelligence questioned. Putting aside everything else, we learn that he put Jennifer in charge of renovating Spin A Yarn. He estimated the project should have cost around $350,000 but instead the cost ran all the way up to $950,000.
That’s almost a million bucks, if you do the math.
Jennifer for her part claims that “there were no prices on things” when she made her selections for the renovation.
Meanwhile, things aren’t going so great for Saki and Jennifer personally either. We see a scene where Saki asks her, “What are you getting so pissed off for?” And his wife responds, “F— you, dude.”
“My parents are on the verge of divorce,” daughter Michaela notes.
And as is so often the case with Kitchen Nightmares restaurants, the food quality and consistency has slipped over time, which seems to be one of the biggest reasons why Spin A Yarn is in dire need of Gordon Ramsay’s services.
When Ramsay arrives in Fremont, he meets Jennifer at her house. As they sit down, she refers to him as the “white Oprah,” which is mildly amusing. We also learn that the age difference in age between Jennifer and Saki is 16 years, and that people think she’s a “trophy wife.”
Of the nearly million-dollar renovation, Jennifer claims that she was not given a budget, and so therefore she didn’t pay attention to costs. And in terms of their marriage, the two now are barely on speaking terms, she says.
When Ramsay visits Spin A Yarn for the first time and meets its enthusiastic staff, who are all dressed in tuxedo shirts and bowties. Ramsay addresses a server and says, “You’re like a fat little penguin.” The guy giggles in response, but I need to point out here that this is the very worst of Ramsay’s personality born out, where he’s rude and sometimes even cruel for no good reason at all.
Saki soon comes out and takes Ramsay on a tour of Spin A Yarn with an eye on the mega expensive renovation that took place recently. Ramsay quickly points out the plush adornments in the restroom, including a chandelier(!) and fancy little stool set out by the sinks.
When Ramsay sits down to order some dishes to sample, Mary, a server, tells him that she feels that Spin A Yarn’s issue is that the menu is dated. When he tastes the Greek Sampler, he coughs harshly and proclaims it “ghastly.” The Crab Louie doesn’t go much better.
And then when he learns that many of the ingredients are canned as opposed to being fresh, he quips that it’s a “Greek tragedy.”
As we’ve seen with many subpar Kitchen Nightmares owners, Saki defends his practices as being “fresh frozen out of the can.”
After eating, Ramsay tells head chef Victor and the rest of the staff that his meal was atrocious. When Ramsay asks Saki why the Crab Louie was made from canned crab, the Spin A Yarn owner lamely talked about how fresh crab is “hard to get.” Ramsay quickly counters that they are located in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“No one’s pushing for standards – you’re just going through the motions,” Ramsay also tells Saki pointedly.
Before dinner service, Ramsay talks to Michaela, whereupon we learn that the owner’s daughter is a surprisingly mature 14. She reveals to Ramsay that her parents are barely on speaking terms and that she herself is forced to attempt to hold the family together at times.
On a more practical level, Ramsay also discovers that the Spin A Yarn kitchen lacks a sous chef due to Saki wanting to hold costs and overhead down.
During dinner service, we see food getting sent back to the kitchen. One pasta dish has so much oil in it that it’s like “soup,” whereas another entrée gets sent back for being cold.
One amazing sidenote during dinner service that I must point out: we see Jennifer sitting at the bar drinking red wine out of a tall wine glass through a straw.
When Ramsay digs into the food storage situation, it’s the typical menagerie of horrors: rotting produce, cross contamination of proteins, and other slimy and gross situations going over all over the place.
One bin, containing “congealed blood,” prompts Jennifer to run off to retch repeatedly.
Next, Ramsay has a therapy-meets-coaching session with Saki and Jennifer, where he both urges Jennifer to take a more active role in operations and for the two of them to be a united force in managing their business together. Jennifer ends up tearfully saying, “Okay, I’ll be a bitch if I have to,” though it’s not entirely clear why.
Ramsay then orders the two of them to lead out getting their restaurant thoroughly cleaned.
The next day, with Spin A Yarn now cleaned up in theory, Ramsay then goes into full on therapist mode with the owners. Now Ramsay tells Saki that he’s going to have to “change rapidly” for both the business and the marriage to work out. Saki agrees and recommits to Jennifer and making things work.
For dinner service that night, Ramsay positions Saki as expediter in the kitchen, with Jennifer leading out table side prime rib service. “No way, dude!” she cries in response to this, before asking what happens if she “pukes on the table” in front of customers. The problem? She doesn’t know how to cut prime rib.
When Saki attempts to teach her, she again makes retching noises – fake this time (we think?).
“If she can’t handle serving fatty meat, she’s gonna have to deal with it,” Michaela tells the camera.
At dinner service, we see Jennifer fumbling about in front of customers, spilling meat of the floor, and so on. When Ramsay repeatedly encourages her to give it her best, she gets pretty whiny in response.
“The lights are on, but no one’s home,” Ramsay observes.
Eventually, she seems to get the hang of it.
The next day, Ramsay unveils the new menu, which in classic fashion drastically reduces the number of dishes, and includes corn chowder, carpaccio, grilled NY strip, filet mignon, prime rib, halibut, and scallops.
“That’s tight,” Jennifer says in response.
For relaunch night, Ramsay announces that “half” of the San Jose Sharks pro hockey team will be in attendance.
As dinner service begins, many customers order the prime rib special, which again puts Jennifer into heavy table side service. Ramsay is still forced to instruct her, this time telling her that her massive portions are giving the profits away. More urgently, she also runs through the available inventory that can be served.
As the San Jose Sharks table orders a bunch more of the prime rib, Ramsay melts down when he discovers there’s not nearly enough left to serve. However, Victor finds an “emergency” store of prime rib, allowing the ordered dishes to be served.
Overall, dinner service seems to have done quite well otherwise.
Ramsay encourages the owners and team to keep going in the right direction before leaving.
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Kitchen Nightmares, “Spin A Yarn”: is it still open?
Spin A Yarn is still open! Via Yelp, it has a decent if not great 3.5 out of 5 stars rating on 863 reviews as of this writing.
Joe C. wrote recently: “I come here very often, the staff is super friendly and remembers names with faces. Drinks are great, food is amazing (i usually get the clam casino, the spin a yarn pawns – the bread is excellent when you dip it with the sauce, chicken wings, rack of lamb, prime rib, ribeye bone in and seafood pasta in white sauce), they have multiple tvs inside so it nice to chat with some friends and watch a game, the chicken wings are amazing as well as the clams casino and calamari.”
Also: this Reddit thread – which I can’t confirm so take it for what it’s worth – claims that Jennifer and Saki divorced but that she is “still a part of the business.”
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Spin A Yarn”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Chef Ramsay visits a fifty-year-old steakhouse. Despite the restaurant’s rich history, it’s long overdue for a visual and culinary makeover.
CAST – Gordon Ramsay