By Michelle Lerner

What is it that is so fascinating about restaurants? In KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL Anthony Bourdain writes about how he has seen tons of people get in to the restaurant business who have absolutely no business being there. On the show RAMSAY’S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES, Gordon Ramsay sets out to try to help those sad fools, before it’s too late.

On tonight’s episode he went to Liverpool to help rescue Morgan’s a bistro-type place run by a flakey mother and her blond daughters. They are one hundred thousand pounds in debt. The place was beautifully decorated; as well it should be, since Sandy, the owner was an antiques dealer before randomly deciding she wanted to be a restaurateur. The place, though beautiful, is, as Ramsay so aptly, and repeatedly describes it, shambolic.

The food sounds and looks terrible. The guy in the kitchen looks like Alfred E. Newman, and is completely unintelligible. One daughter is so status conscious she becomes offended when Ramsay delegates her the assistant manager. Then, as if to prove his point, she barely shows up for work the next day. And Sandy, who owns the place, buys all the food at four o’clock, just before the restaurant opens, from the local supermarket. The whole thing made me so anxious! I could barely stand it!
KITCHEN NIGHTMARES is such a better outlet for Gordon Ramsay’s talents the horrific HELL’S KITCHEN.

On NIGHTMARES he is so relatable, and sympathetic, because you can see how much he cares about helping these people who, much of the time, can’t seem to get it through their heads that he’s absolutely right. When Gordon confronts the doofus chef about putting apricots in the mashed potatoes, the kid gets beyond upset, which in turn, infuriated Gordon further. I was reminded of bad fights with my parents when I was a teenager. My skin crawled. Ramsay was right- do apricot laden mashed potatoes sound tasty to you?

Lauren, the sister he delegates assistant manager, is so relentlessly stupid it hurt my head. She would not stop for one moment to consider what was best for the restaurant. She had no desire to work as a team. It was clear that her ego was the most important thing. I am sure when this aired in the U.K. she hid in her room for a week. She acted like a petulant child. I was embarrassed for her.
Luckily, there was Helen, the responsible sister. I was worried that she was going to gain responsibility purely because she cursed a lot, and said stuff was stupid, agreeing with Gordon. I was wrong. She came in on her day off, to make sure things went well, and she proved that she cared a lot about the business her mother had so whimsically and haphazardly begun.

I don’t know why I find myself rooting for these restaurant people time and time again. I guess it’s because the struggle is so clear, and the end goal is so easy to see. Maybe it’s because I love to cook. But the formula is obvious; Good food + nice place= successful eatery. It seems so easy, but in reality is so hard to pull off.

The big payoff of tonight’s episode was seeing the sous chef, Emma, made head chef. At the beginning of the show the idiotic head chef was mocking her beautiful sticky toffee pudding, declaring that Ramsay would hate it the most. Boy was he wrong! Gordon loved it. He told her she had talent. Then, after his reign of terror,  when he came back to check on the place a month later, the restaurant was under Emma’s control, and doing well. She seemed so thrilled that some one had taken a chance on her, and rose to the occasion. It was so nice, for once, to see a place seem succeed. Hopefully, it’s not just the usual reality television fakery.