Kitchen Nightmares: Self Deluded And Half Baked Commentary by Maja Seif
November 8, 2007
Gordon Ramsay loaned his talent for transforming failing restaurants to Sebastian's, a Burbank, California pizzeria, on Wednesday's episode of Kitchen Nightmares.
The owner of Sebastian's, a part-time actor with an ego like a 3-time Oscar winner, named the place after himself, of course. Apparently, acting part-time doesn't pay so well because Sebastian tells us, early in the episode, that his wife, who makes "good money," is the one who has footed the bill for his failing restaurant thus far - to the tune of about three-hundred thousand dollars. Apparently, being the owner of the only pizzeria with "twenty gourmet flavor combinations" doesn't pay so well either, because Sebastian also tells us, that on it's current track, the restaurant will likely close in the next six months.
Watching the wait staff try to explain the tri-fold front-and-back menu and the myriad of options for any order, it became easy to see why Sebastian's is on its way to oblivion. The young male customers the waitress had been instructing on ordering at Sebastian's looked back at the waitress with furrowed brows. One of them commented about how confusing the whole thing is. I wanted to help him out and tell her, "I just want a pizza, dude. You know - with cheese and pepperoni?"
On top of the confusing menu, we learn also, that nothing at Sebastian's is fresh. On his initial visit to the venue, Gordon asks Sebastian if the calamari is fresh and Sebastian tells him it is. Before the dish arrives at the table, Gordon's waitress tells him it is made from frozen. (Maybe Sebastian meant that it's freshly fried.) We see later that the dough is bought frozen, already in the shape of a disc. There is a tray of prepared-from-frozen mashed potatoes in the kitchen. The sauce is from a can, the cheese is already grated, and though we didn't see it, I would even venture to guess that maybe the customers came out of a box, as well.
Okay - not really. Honestly, though - that's the way most pizza places put their pies together. Pizza places aren't usually so much about flavor or good honest gourmet cooking as they are about throwing together a greasy mess of bulk-bought cheese and pepperoni and selling it for about twenty bucks a pop. They're about people not feeling like cooking or washing dishes. Right?
Well, if Sebastian could agree with what I just said, I would have no problem with the way he put together his pizzas. So long as we can be honest about what's really going on, all is good. It's when someone puts together crap on a plate and calls it the product of a "twenty gourmet flavor combination" concept like Sebastian does, that it starts getting a little hairy.
In one instance, we see Sebastian saying he's a great cook and can cook anything, and in the next instance, we learn virtually everything on his menu is bought frozen. In yet another instance, we see him make a simple salad, topped with cheese, and one of the hairs from his head. We hear a woman tell him that her friends watched in horror as she pulled the hair from her mouth.
Later we hear Sebastian explaining to Ramsay why his twenty flavor combination concept is so fantastic. He tells Ramsay that it is what makes his pizzeria unique and that he intends to franchise his restaurant, I guess, when the one location he owns isn't failing anymore. He also intends to market his made-from-frozen pizzas as, well... frozen pizzas. Gordon is incredulous and points out what is obvious to everyone except Sebastian.
Yup, it's all true. Half-baked pizza entrepreneur, Sebastian, is in love with an image he has built of himself as true, despite the evidence of its falsity that abounds around him. When Ramsay finally introduces the new menu - a simple two-pager, one side each - and suggests that instead of acting out this ideal he has imagined and making page-fulls of half-assed frozen crap, that they become excellent at just a few dishes, Sebastian is silent. The staff is excited, the cooks look relieved - Sebastian looks embarrassed.
It's difficult to tell exactly what happened once the changes were put in place and the interior makeover was completed. That's something I hate about the way this show is edited - they try to make it build before it all ends well, but it just doesn't flow very well.
So much time is spent, in this episode, building to the night of the relaunch and Sebastian's final temper tantrum - yet it all only actually takes place in the final ten minutes, along with whatever resolution there was between Sebastian and Ramsay, and the wrap-up of the restaurant's relaunch. They showed us Sebastian breaking a door in order to get to Ramsay and tell him off, but we don't really get to see what they finally discussed and how the confrontation actually ended. They showed us Sebastian crying into the camera about how his ego broke and he couldn't put it back together, but they never tell or show us exactly what Ramsay said to him to make Sebastian become so.
They wrap up the results of everything the first fifty minutes of the show is making you interested in knowing, in the last ten fast and dramatic minutes. I swear, every time I hear that narrator's voice-over become conclusive in tone about the changes in the restaurant - saying things like, "The cooks finally ironed out cooking the new dishes" and "the customers enjoyed the new simplified menu" - I start to get annoyed because I know they are going to cut off the freaking story without telling me what has really happened. It's like being read this fantastic bed time story, and then because it's now ten o' clock and time to sleep, the reader cuts it short and summarizes saying, "And then they all died. The end," even though how they died, why they died, and what the effects of the deaths were on other characters in the plot is very much a part of the story. It stinks.
On the other side of the pond, the new season of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, the U.K. version of the show, has begun. I missed it last week - it is played on Thursday nights on BBC America - but have been reading a bit about it. One interesting tidbit I found in the news about the show is that a chef pulls a knife on Ramsay in one of the upcoming episodes. According to the story reported here, Ramsay calmed him down and then threw him out. I can't wait to see how the U.K. production staff handled the editing of that. I'd bet ten pounds that they don't loop the scene throughout the episode as they would on Fox. Heck, on Fox, it'd probably be looped on the 5 o'clock news, too - sandwiched between the latest toy recall and an update on Brittney Spear's custody battle.
I also wanted to add that there is an excerpt of Ramsay's latest auto-biography on the Kitchen Nightmares website. Reading, I realized that Ramsay's toughness and downright meanness in the kitchen is nothing unusual among European chefs. In it, Gordon Ramsay recounts some of his early culinary experiences as the new guy in a couple of different restaurants. It seems that degrading those lower on the totem pole is normal behavior for head chefs in these restaurants. Judging from his retelling, Ramsay has taken as much abuse, if not more, as we regularly see him dish out on Hell's Kitchen. The behavior isn't a result of one man being a bully, as many of us may have thought, but of a culture in which Ramsay has learned, and became master of, his trade.
Maja Seif is a freelance writer residing in the Sacramento, California area. Holder of a B.A. in Journalism, she has published feature articles in Outword Magazine and has experience writing political news and opinion pieces, as well as marketing material. Reality television is one of her favorite diversions, so writing for Reality TV Calendar is a perfect combination of two of her hobbies. You can reach her at: maja.m.seif@gmail.com
Are You Buzz Worthy? We Want To Know What You Think
Have you got something interesting to say. We'd like to hear it. This is your chance to sound off about your favorite Reality TV show. Or the show you hate. Did somebody do something really stupid? Really smart? Is there a strategy being over looked? Is a performer for real? Or not getting the buzz they should? Here's your chance - take it.
All articles are the intellectual property of and copyrighted by the individual authors. By submitting an article to Reality TV Calendar you are granting Reality TV Calendar permission to display the article in perpetuity.
Free Hit Counter
