The kitchen in Bonapartes, a restaurant in West Yorkshire, is run by 21-year-old Head Chef Tim. He truly believes that he specialises in 'fine dining' and has ambitions to be a TV chef and own restaurants in London, Paris, and New York. Unfortunately, as Gordon discovers, Tim has no customers and doesn't even know the basics of cooking.
Britain's famous Lake District is where tourists are plentiful and money is flowing. However, the Glass House Restaurant in Ambleside seems to have missed both points.
In a previous life, The Walnut Tree Inn in South Wales was a Michelin-starred restaurant known throughout Britain. Under its new owners, Italian Francesco Mattioli, Gordon arrives to find the kitchen in chaos with no Head Chef and no customers.
In the final episode, Gordon tries to save Moore Place, a restaurant adjacent to a busy golf course in Surrey, in the south of England. There's plenty of money in the area with golfers, 'ladies who lunch,' and American business executives, but this place is deserted.
The venue for the first programme is La Lanterna in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. Twenty-eight-year-old owner and head chef Alex offers modern Italian cuisine, a taste of Little Italy in England's first garden city, and the restaurant is run by his best mate, maitre d' Gavin, helped by Alex's ex-air hostess girlfriend Emily. Alex has no customers, cookers that don't work and an expensive menu that's about as authentically Italian as a Hawaiian Pizza. He re-mortgaged his house to buy the business, it's losing £1,000 a week, he hasn't slept for months but still runs round town in a flash car (number plate: A1CHEF) that's worth more than the restaurant. Running out of money, inspiration and energy, Alex is on the verge of losing EVERYTHING. It's a prime restaurant for a dose of TOUGH LOVE - Ramsay-style. But can a strict diet of brutal honesty, radical food surgery and undiluted energy turn things round, or is it only a matter of time before the lights go out at La Lanterna for good?
Mexican-born Israel and his English partner Tara have sunk a cool £150,000 of their own money into their trendy cafe bar D-Place, which offers a vast selection of fusion cuisine. They believed they had found the WINNING FORMULA: great place, great music, great service, great food... and all at the right price. Sounds promising... but from there on it's all DOWNHILL. For the first two years, it all went swimmingly as Israel built up a mini-empire of five businesses... but the success didn't last long. Just three years later and they are all GONE - only D-Place remains and it's hanging by a thread. It's a 24-carat NIGHTMARE. The staff are at WAR, the plastic food is DIRE, the customers have evaporated, the restaurant is losing MONEY and the owners are at their WITS END. Something simply has to give or everyone is out of a job. Faced with dysfunctional staff and a disastrous menu, Gordon is about to face the LONGEST WEEK of his professional life. Can he quell the panic, banish the deep fa
Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack has hit ROCK BOTTOM. It's sounds SO GOOD: an intimate 40-seater a stone's throw from Brighton's sea front with loads of hungry locals and a steady stream of tourists. Big soul momma, owner Charita Jones produces a menu of irresistibly unique classics from the Deep South. Should be a surefire MONEYSPINNER, right? Wrong... the shack is in a hole... a very deep FINANCIAL HOLE. Despite three and a half years of hard graft it's a SPLITTING HEADACHE of a cafe. The food's hard to fault but the punters are nowhere to be seen, Head Chef Brian and a rag-tag collection of part-timers are taking the mickey - and despite working a seven-day week Charita's got an empty restaurant and owes the bank £65,000. If ever there was a case of too many cooks, this is it. Charita's a natural, but she's never made a profit on the restaurant and is now facing financial disaster. It's time to get SERIOUS... else the Soul Food Shack is finished. Can Gordon successfully shut her out o
What's the BEST RECIPE for a successful restaurant? Top French chefs, the finest ingredients, food fit for a king... Fine dining restaurant La Riviera in Inverness has it all and more. All except one teeny weeny thing... CUSTOMERS. Without them, you don't stand a CHANCE. And La Riviera is running out of TIME and MONEY. La Riviera is on a MISSION: to bring sophisticated French cuisine to the home of haggis, tatties and deep-fried Mars bars. So it's the BEST of everything. It boasts a real DREAM COOKING TEAM: top French chef Loic Lefebvre who's worked in some of the best restaurants in the world and an impeccably-trained kitchen staff with Michelin star-studded backgrounds. The produce is ultra-fresh and top quality - the veg is flown in from France. Even the equipment is top of the league. So far, so good. But delivering the very best costs... BIG TIME. Multi-millionaire owner Barry Larson is tearing his hair out as La Riviera is costing him a cool £8,000 a week to run - and that's on t
Have things gotten any better since Gordon left?
What's happened since the last time Gordon was here?
Gordon Ramsey returns to Moore Place.
Gordon Ramsey returns to Bonaparte's Restaurant.
Gordon pays a visit to Oscars in Nantwich. On the surface this place seems idyllic - an Irish family-run restaurant in the heart of beautiful countryside. Owner Maura runs the front of house and her son Lenin is head chef, but it's not happy families. With her life savings on the line Maura is in big trouble. She constantly bickers with her son whilst the customers are forced to wait hours for their fluorescent crab stick paellas, and stodgy carbonaras from Oscar's 'bit of everything' menu. The place is losing £2,000 per week, but that isn't the worst of their problems - Lenin has got a serious drink problem and during service collapses and has to be rushed off to hospital. It's Gordon's toughest challenge yet. Can he bring the Irish heart back to Oscars, stop mother and son fighting, and get Lenin to face up to his problems?
Gordon travels to the seaside in aid of hotel and restaurant the Sandgate. This is happily married couple Lois and Peters' first venture into the catering industry. They used to enjoy eating in restaurants, so thought it might be fun to own one. A year and a half later their dream has turned into a nightmare - they're losing £4,000 a month. In the kitchen, their head chef Stuart is on the brink of a nervous breakdown. He's forced to cook for four restaurants, including fine dining upstairs and Japanese fare in the basement. But it's when he loses his coveted AA award that he really hits rock bottom. Eccentric, overstaffed and on the point of collapse, can Gordon bring this real life Fawlty Towers back from the edge?
Despite being voted Restaurant of the Year by Blackpool's tourist board, Clubway 41 is in dire straits. Owners David and Dawn are breaking every rule in the book, and Gordon has his work cut out getting a demoralised team back on track.
La Gondola - a hotel and restaurant in Derby - strikes Gordon as being stuck in the past, and indeed its glory days were back in the 1970s. The challenge is to haul the staff, decor and cuisine into the 21st century and once again fill the dining room with happy customers.
Gordon takes on a nightmare restaurant abroad - La Parra de Burriana in Nerja on the Spanish Costa del Sol. Nestling among the cafes lining the seafront offering all-day English breakfast and chipsEx-nightclub manager Laurence set himself up in business 18 months ago with a loan from his dad and, although he's not an experienced chef he mans the kitchen on his own determined to offer something better than chips.Laurence's menu has 72 dishes including his signature dish: prawns in garlic with chocolate sauce. Running front-of-house is Laurence's mate, Alex and sous-chef, Norman, is on the barbecue serving kebabs and steaks cooked by torchlight. The kebabs are raw, the dining room is a mess and anyone who does turn up for diner faces a interminable wait. Laurence lost £22k last year but still resists Gordon's attempts to introduce a simple menu that will bring customers back.
Gordon tackles a pub for the first time time - The Fenwick Arms in rural Lancashire. Landlord Brian who has been running the business for over 30 years but despite his best efforts Brian and his partner Elaine are £250k in debt, losing £1,500 a week and facing bankruptcy in three months.
In this third helping, Gordon finds a chef caught in a time warp when he tackles a picturesque but largely unfrequented upmarket restaurant in King's Lynn, a traditional market town on the Norfolk coast. For the last eighteen months, ex-Michelin-starred chef, Nick, has owned and run Rococo but his past success is now eluding him. The menu is past its sell-by date, the service is stuffy, the food is over-priced and the only thing being fed is his ego. Yet, despite debts of £100k and the prospect of putting his home at risk and his young family on the streets, Nick continues to cook comatose in a 1990s fantasy land of his own making. Gordon forces him to face his failures, strips down the menu and dismantles the claustrophobic dining room. But when he discovers the depths of Nick's stubbornness - and that he's locked him out of the restaurant (a Kitchen Nightmares' first), even Gordon is forced to face the prospect of failure. Will Nick ever get up to speed and recapture his glory days, or will he carry on sleep-walking his way to disaster?
In this fourth helping, Gordon grapples with girl power when he takes on an intimate family-run restaurant in the heart of WAG territory near Liverpool. For the last three years Morgan's has been run by antiques dealer-turned-restaurateur, Sandy and her two daughters, Helen and Laura. The beautifully-designed dining room has a prime high street location and should be the perfect eatery for the trendy local clientele. But head chef Phil is grappling with an eclectic menu that includes mashed potato with apricots and his cooking's just not up to it. Meanwhile owner Sandy can't keep the books straight, the all-female front-of-house team lacks any clear line of command and they're £100k in debt. At this rate of loss they are facing the prospect of no punters and closure within six months. It's handbags at dawn as Gordon imposes some drastic changes, only to discover that when he turns up for the launch of a Sunday lunch menu, he's the only one who's bothered to get out of bed. Will the ladies that lunch carry on treating their business as an expensive hobby, or can they lure the WAG glitterati of Woolton through the door for a make-or-break celebrity relaunch?
In the penultimate programme, Gordon returns to La Riviera - now renamed Abstract - a fine dining restaurant in Inverness. Owned by multi-millionaire Barry Larson and costing £8,000 a week to run, the place boasted top French chef Loic LeFebvre and an impeccably-trained kitchen staff, all of them on a mission to bring sophisticated French cooking to the home of the haggis.
In the final programme, Gordon returns to Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack, an intimate 40-seater in Brighton where he oversaw one of the most spectacular changes of fortune at a single venue. Owner Charita Jones was producing a menu of irresistible unique classics from the Deep South, but at the same facing financial disaster. The punters were missing, and so was her business acumen. But Gordon succeeded in shutting her out of the kitchen, getting the chef back on the boil and putting the soul back into the business. Today Charita is fully-booked round the clock and bursting out of the Soul Shack to take on the 110-seater Momma Cherri's Big House. But expansion brings a different set of challenges, and she's still struggling to control her staff and manage her success. Has she got what it takes to make the next step up, or will she be forced to rethink her grand plans?
The new series of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares hits the ground running as Gordon comes to the aid of resting actor Allan Love. Despite an aversion to fish Allan opened Ruby Tates, a high end seafood restaurant in Brighton. But it hasn’t been a success. Thanks to a pair of lazy chefs producing badly cooked, poor quality food at premium prices Ruby Tates is losing £1500 a week. And it’s not just the food that’s off-putting. The restaurant’s name is instantly forgettable, even to locals and the décor, featuring a paint splattered pair of knickers, is keeping potential punters far from the door. Allan is in denial. He has mortgaged his house to the hilt in an attempt to keep the restaurant out of hot water but he’s failing fast. If Gordon can’t get the team to pull together and re-inject some passion back into the kitchen, the restaurant will fold in a matter of months and Allan will lose everything. So it's out with farmed sea bass and Canadian lobster and in with sustainable, locally sourced fish as Allan Love gets the Kitchen Nightmares treatment.
This week Gordon takes a sentimental journey back to Paris, the place where he spent his formative years as a chef. But in the city that is a gourmet's dream, he's about to encounter one of his worst ever Kitchen Nightmares. Three years ago, feisty Scot Rachel made the jump from waitress to restaurateur and, together with best friend Stephanie, bought Piccolo Teatro, a bijou vegetarian restaurant in Paris, on a mission to convert the carnivorous French into a nation of vegetarians. But handicapped by her total lack of experience she is struggling to keep the restaurant afloat. She can't motivate her staff, she doesn't bother opening for lunch and the punters are totally turned off by the awful rabbit food she's dishing up. As a result Piccolo Teatro is losing £5,500 a month. Gordon's on hand with a radical plan for an emergency wake-up call. But the combination of Rachel's stubbornness and an eccentric Brazilian chef, incapable of preparing edible food, could prove too much even for the Ramsay remedy. Will Gordon be able to perform an eleventh-hour miracle, or is he about to admit defeat?
When Gordon first arrived at the Fenwick Arms, in 2006, he found the pub run by landlord Brian who, after thirty years in the business and a quadruple heart-bypass, was still determined to run his kitchen his way. But despite Brian and his partner Elaine working 120 hour weeks the pub was sinking fast. Already £250,000 in debt they were losing £1500 a week and bankruptcy was mere months away. Money management was part of Brian's problem. He had spent a fortune on unnecessary kitchen equipment and an extensive collection of novelty plates. In the kitchen, he insisted on cooking his menu of over-ambitious dishes, all coated in ostentatious and cloying sauces, while his head chef was only allowed to garnish the food. Gordon stepped in to remove Brian from the kitchen and turn him into a punter to get back to basics on the appeal of a traditional British pub. Taking to the streets, they launched a Campaign for Real Gravy, and put classic pub fare back on the menu. Finally things were starting to look up for the team at the Fenwick Arms. Now, one year on, Gordon’s back only to find that morale is at an all-time low, and Brian is ready to chuck in the towel. Can Gordon save the Fenwick Arms, again?
Gordon returns to La Parra in Spain, to see how ex-nightclub manager Laurence is getting on. Has he sank or swam since Gordon's last visit? This week, Gordon is back in Spain to see how Laurence is faring at La Parra de Burriana, an ex-pat restaurant in Nerja on the Costa del Sol, one year on. When he first arrived he found 26-year-old ex-nightclub manager Laurence who set himself up in business 18 months earlier with a loan from his dad. Although he wasn't an experienced chef, Laurence manned the kitchen on his own, determined to offer something better than chips to his largely British clientele. Laurence's menu boasted 72 options including his unforgettable signature dish: prawns in garlic with chocolate sauce. Running front-of-house was Laurence's mate Alex, while sous chef Norman was on the barbecue serving up a haphazard combination of kebabs and steaks cooked by torchlight. The Mediterranean menu had a special twist: no-one wanted to eat it. The kebabs were raw, Alex had over-booked the place (and failed to clear up the dog mess that littered the dining room) and the punters that were still turning up faced an interminable wait for their food. Unsurprisingly Laurence lost £22,000 in one year but still resisted Gordon's attempts to introduce a simple menu that will bring customers back. Could Laurence survive the summer and Gordon's efforts to get him to learn bullfighting? Now, one year on, Gordon is back to find that the good news is they've survived the winter, but the bad news is that Laurence still has ideas above his station and is planning to run before he can walk with another, second La Parra. But with cremated desserts and wine gums on the menu, Gordon's about to apply the brakes, Ramsay style.
Gordon's off to The Priory, but not to rub shoulders with wayward actors and musicians. This priory is a huge, 100 seater carvery in Haywards Heath, Sussex. This unusual venue was once a place of meditation and tranquillity as the chapel of a nineteenth-century convent. It's in a beautiful location and has been offering bargain roast dinners to its regulars for twenty years. But under its current management, things are in need of divine intervention. Owner Scott, an ex IT consultant, bought the place for £300k but with an ageing clientele eating for half-price, he’s now losing a massive £5,000 a week. And despite the heavenly setting, the food is straight from hell: recycled meat, soup in a bucket, synthetic sauces and to make matters worse, a lazy head chef content to preside over food-encrusted ovens and a disaffected staff. In one of his toughest tasks ever, Gordon’s got to move mountains to turn a time warp into a trend-setter. He'll be dishing out penance, making Scott repent for his business sins, get the staff to confess their faults and above all transform The Priory’s turgid food into ambrosia. Will he inspire a miracle, or witness a disaster?
Gordon takes on an ex-boxer and his feisty wife whose barroom brawls are scaring away customers Gordon might be famed for his aggression in the kitchen but he meets his match this week as Kitchen Nightmares heads to rural Wales The Fish & Anchor restaurant and bar near Lampeter is run by a couple of bruisers, ex-boxer Mike and his mouthy wife Caron. A self taught cook, Mike is a one-man pressure cooker in the kitchen as he struggles to cope with a menu too vast and wide ranging for his skills. While Mike gets steamed up in the kitchen, Carol's getting hot under the collar in the restaurant. Her unique front-of-house management style includes abusing the customers and her husband in equal measure. Every night they go twelve rounds with the local clientele who are fast deserting them to the tune of a £1,000 per week loss. Enter Gordon, who finds himself cast as marriage counsellor in a culinary battlefield. It’s a last-ditch attempt to reverse the restaurant’s disastrous reputation and put some love back into the kitchen as well as on plates. Will Mike take on board a last-minute reality check in the fight of his life, or stay on the ropes and sink?
The 120-seater Curry Lounge in Nottingham cost its owner, Raz, £500,000. But, six months after opening, it's haemorrhaging £3,000 a week. Maybe customers are put off by the decor, unkindly but accurately described by Gordon Ramsay as looking like the interior of a lap-dancing club. Raz has made a rod for his restaurant's back, thanks to the barmy idea of letting customers choose the make-up of their own curries. Yes, that's right, if you want a chicken and prawn korma, that's what you shall have. But such nonsense is draining and demoralising for the excellent kitchen staff, so Ramsay brings the Curry Lounge back to basics in one of the most satisfying Kitchen Nightmares of recent memory. Everyone is charming, so Ramsay doesn't need to bluster too much: he can get on with bringing his skill and common sense to bear on a restaurant that's about to run out of luck.
Gordon attempts to help Nigel Nieddu turn around his restaurant in Hampshire. He opened it four years ago but despite having the place refurbished it is still running at a loss.
Preview of the American Kitchen Nightmares series.
As part of the Great British Food Fight season, tough talking, inspirational chef Gordon Ramsay takes on two struggling ventures at once; one in Sheffield, the other in Devon.
The venue is The Runaway Girl, a tapas bar-cum-nightclub in Sheffield city centre on the brink of collapse. The restaurant is losing money by the bucket-load and the two best friends who run it are at war with each other. The owner Justin Rowntree won't listen to reason, and his head chef and best friend Ritchie has had enough. To make matters worse the credit crunch has hit and there is fierce competition from corporate chains.
The Dovecote is a bistro in the heart of rural Devon run by a family at breaking point. The restaurant is on its last legs - they've run out of customers, money and hope. Enter Gordon, who on his first visit to the bistro is confronted with hideous wallpaper, vacuum packed lamb and a pig-headed head chef and owner who can't face up to his mistakes. Gordon has a torrid time putting them on the road to recovery, but come the autumn, they are sticking to his rules and business is looking brighter.
While previously successful, the Mayfair has fallen on hard times, which Ramsay attributes to owner Jack's refusal to fire head chef Juan, awful hygiene standards (which results in Ramsay closing the restaurant down for the first day for an extensive cleaning), and insistence on filling much of the restaurant with useless junk. Ramsay initially sees Jack's son John as the right man to take over, but quickly loses faith on finding out that not only has the car hire business that John runs separately been a huge failure, he's invested €40,000 of his parents' money into it too. After forcing John to promise to shut down his hire business and eventually repay his parents, and getting Jack to get rid of his hoard, Ramsay renames the restaurant Jack's Chicken Shack and creates a new menu focused around fried chicken. The service that follows initially goes poorly thanks to John's poor handling of the order system, but he eventually gets the hang of it, and service is successfully completed. In his revisit, Ramsay is encouraged to find that the restaurant is still busy, Juan has been moved to barkeeping duties and replaced by a younger chef (also called Juan), and cleanliness standards have been maintained. However, he makes John write an IOU to his parents when he reveals that he hasn't paid them back any money yet.
As soon as he arrives at the restaurant, Ramsay is outraged by head chef Steve and the staff cooking themselves a sirloin dinner, and accuses them of taking advantage of owners Tim and Debbie. However, Tim is discovered to be a big part of the problem due to his interference in service, refusal to allow Steve to set his own menu, and careless handling of the business side of the restaurant. While Ramsay has further criticism for Steve's lack of local product knowledge and not even being able to speak French, he and the kitchen staff prove their skill by cooking good dishes after Ramsay takes them to a local seafood market, only for Tim to berate the staff when he sees the results, accusing them of holding back and even threatening to fire them. Despite this, the reopening night goes well, and Ramsay tells Tim that so long as he doesn't interfere with the running of the kitchen, he can make Le Deck a success. No revisit is shown in the episode, though an epilogue caption reveals that the restaurant is still doing well, while Steve has left and returned to the mountain resort where he previously worked, leaving sous chef Stuey to take over as head chef.
In a Kitchen Nightmares first, Ramsay works with a restaurant that has opened only 8 weeks prior to his arrival. Owners Milan and Gina are new to the restaurant industry and their inexperience leads them to lean on head chef Neal to manage the restaurant as well as run the kitchen, putting heavy pressure on Neal. Ramsay notes that the restaurant’s menu is too complicated for a small brigade and discovers Neal fails to delegate to his assistant chefs, which heavily slows down service and causes Neal to be extremely stressed while cooking. In order to demonstrate the difficulty that Neal and the servers are under, Ramsay has Milan and Gina work a service with only six guests, which forces them to see the negative impact of decisions they had made, like the broken dumbwaiter and the complicated menu. He also implements a new menu around sharing plates, which takes pressure off the kitchen. During the relaunch, the service initially starts off very strong. However, when the sharing plates run out, Neal buckles under pressure and reverts to his bad habits. Fortunately, Ramsay is able to get Neal back on track, saving the service and impressing a local food critic. No revisit is shown in the episode, but it is said that the restaurant is taking in 5,000 pounds a week, Neal and Emily are managing the restaurant, and the owners have taken a step back.
Initially, Ramsay is put off by the fact that siblings Joe and Terry Quelcutti seem more interested in running the establishment as a bar rather than a restaurant, which has caused chef Terry’s food to be abysmal. However, he identifies a bigger problem: server Joe’s inability to keep cool during service leads him to regularly confront guests he’s meant to be serving. In order to improve the siblings’ abilities in the front and back of house, Ramsay has them work a lunch service at Quique De Costa, a Michelin-starred restaurant in the area. Ramsay relaunches the restaurant as Quelcutti’s Tapas with a menu focused on Spanish tapas and quality wine. During service, Joe’s panicky nature initially causes him to take too many food orders and get short with Ramsay; fortunately, Joe is able to regain his rhythm and the service ends well. Upon revisit, Ramsay returns to find the restaurant is making money and the siblings are finally able to pay themselves a wage.
