Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

Thanks to a very slow holiday weekend I've taken some time to get caught up on a show I'd never watched before: Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

While "Diamonds on my fish, diamonds diamonds on my fish" from the American version of the show has entered my casual reference lexicon, I haven't become a fan of the Fox version in my limited viewing because it really does focus on anger, incompetence, and Ramsay berating mental midgets. That's uninteresting. I can watch VH1 for that.

I was rather pleasantly surprised to discover that the original BBC show is everything great about a restaurant program.

The restaurants on the show are failing, to be sure. But they're failing primarily as a result of ignorance, ego, and overambition, not inherent incompetence. As a result Ramsay's presence is actually (usually) beneficial. Sure he plays his mean shouting chef character but he honestly seems to care about the restaurant. And it's mostly in instances where the owners themselves don't care about their business' success that the restaurants go on to fail. If the staff commits to what Ramsay proposes they're usually able to staunch the bleeding and move forward.

It's a testament to Ramsay's intuitive understanding of restaurants as well as the magic of BBC's editing.

The Fox version, in the grand tradition of American television misunderstanding the intent of BBC programming, doesn't seem to care whether the restaurant succeeds or not, instead hoping for shouting, screaming, and fights.

Some basic rules about restaurants gleaned from Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares:

1. The customer comes first. You have to make a restaurant that people want to go to. Most of the problems come from a chef and owner who put their own egos ahead of what people want. They stubbornly stick to their concept, menu, or "master plan," even when they face empty restaurants and mounting debts.

2. Customers want value. That's not to say they want cheap, but they want a sense of quality for their money. People will pay more for a quality product but will not come back if they feel they've been ripped off, abused, or treated like idiots.

3. Know your audience. If you're a pub, don't try to be a hotel dining room. If you're in the Midlands, don't pretend that you're in the City. If you're in Brighton, serve food that tourists and homosexuals love.

4. Keep it simple. Flourish, grandeur, and pretentious ingredients will lead to failure if the fundamentals are flawed. It's better to serve fresh, local fish, meat, game, and produce simply, inexpensively and well then to fuck up or freeze expensive imported ingredients.

In my own experience these rules hold true. I worked at a neighborhood restaurant with an outstanding chef that went bust after one year because, despite a nice dining room and warm service, we served old frozen food garnished with spirals of bean sprouts and plantain spirals.

Where some of the even most esteemed California Cuisine restaurants fail is that they treat their customers like they're children, being rewarded with exquisitely fresh produce because they drive a Prius and live in Berkeley. Fresh quality ingredients are a given! It's not magic, it's what should be served. Let's move on from there. That's why, despite some wonderful meals, I don't really want to go back to Chez Panisse Cafe. I don't like being treated like I'm blessed to pay $25 for undercooked mackerel and treated like I'm retarded for suggesting that perhaps it needed to be cooked through.

The Oceanic Dinner at Oliveto pissed me off because I had had better meals with better prepared and better quality ingredients for a third the price.

Conversely, Redd was awesome because despite a similar price tag I felt I had tasted simple, fresh, and innovative food, enough of it, and smartly-paired wines.

Seeing the unpretentious, warm, and home-y British pubs serving fresh, exquisitely cooked game at strikingly reasonable prices (for Britain) was inspiring. So far the gastropub movement in the United States has meant either over-priced bar food or over-elaborate Cal cuisine served in an under-elaborate dining room.

Next on my agenda? Hitting up the somewhat critically maligned Gordon Ramsay's at the London West Hollywood to see if his restaurant practices what he preaches, even when the chef is thousands of miles away.