Kitchen Nightmares

For years, I saw Gordon Ramsay as a villain. On Hell’s Kitchen, a reality cooking show competition, he was and still is portrayed as a passionate, perfectionist chef with a fiery temper, directing expletive after expletive at some donkey (GR code for ignoramus). I remember watching the Hell’s Kitchen commercials and hearing all the bleeped out swearing thinking, “Oh, what a terrible man. Ugh! He’s so angry and foul.” He’d explode at these actual professional chefs he considered inadequate, often incompetent (who may not have been that bad, but he certainly reacted to them and their cooking that way). I just couldn’t see GR’s appeal, like who enjoys watching some volatile British man slandering and demeaning people who are earnestly trying their best.

And then I saw him on Kitchen Nightmares.

It wasn’t intentional. At this point, I found GR distinctly unappealing and rude because of his incessant yelling on Hell’s Kitchen. I have no idea how or when I ended up watching an episode of Kitchen Nightmares; I somehow meandered onto it while looking for some home or kitchen rehab-type reality show. When I realized I had stumbled onto a GR show, I was immediately turned off. It felt like if I lingered too long on the episode preview, he’d start yelling at me.

Perhaps watching the preview was fated and out of my mere human control, as I have no recollection of meaning to press play to watch it. In a few minutes, the general plot of Kitchen Nightmares was presented to me: GR going to failing restaurants and...without exaggeration...doing his best to save them.

After the first episode, a second followed, and then another. Pretty soon, I lost some days to Kitchen Nightmares. There was minimal yelling, at least compared to Hell’s Kitchen antics. When there was yelling, it was when GR was rightfully angry at lazy, apathetic, or desensitized restaurant owners; it was at appalling kitchen conditions where spoiled, mislabeled, unlabeled, raw-next-to-cooked food sat (somehow) completely unseen by all who worked there. GR’s voice of rage would strike the heavens when he encountered anything particularly disgusting, like dead rats; dozens upon dozens of roaches in a refrigerator; unidentifiable, slimy, stinky meat; anything growing mold or seeming petrified.

“What is that?!?!” he’d cry in outrage to everyone around him. And if people responded at all, instead of just looking at him with shame or fatigue in their eyes, it’d provoke even more yelling or questioning from him.

In Kitchen Nightmares, GR’s anger felt justified. And not only that, his anger was like the wrath of God of the Old Testament: thunderous, omnipotent, omnipresent, but not without mercy.

I was converted into a fan by his mercy, by his compassion for the restaurant owners and staff. He didn’t only do all he could to address the problems affecting the restaurants, he’d talk with the owners and staff, like a counselor, and ask how their lives were affected, how their relationships were affected. Marriages were on the line; families were fractured and strained by the work, especially when families were working together; astronomical debt in the 6 figures weighed so heavily on the shoulders of men and women, particularly those in their later years. With these folks especially, there was a gentler GR.

I hadn’t thought Gordon Ramsey could be so gentle with people. Nor did I realize he had such a keen awareness of who deserved it. He remained fiery and abrasive with those who were ignorant or arrogant, but he stilled for those who demonstrated need or vulnerability. He lowered his volume; he never slouched, but he’d make his body language less intimidating. He wanted to help. And he had the energy and willingness to do so.

After a week of GR doing things like help staff clean, re-do menus, entirely transform the restaurant with new and updated decor, making the food better by making it fresh and as local as possible, the restaurant would be relaunched and often, that one dinner would be barely pulled off, but pulled off successfully. These revitalizations and revamps didn’t always last, but there are some Kitchen Nightmares’ restaurants that truly took heed to GR’s words and interventions and are still around.

I am a bit sad that there is no longer a Kitchen Nightmares series (there is a similar one called Gordon Ramsay's 24 Hours to Hell and Back that’s like if Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares had a reality show baby...it’s way too rushed for my liking). I’d probably continue binging new episodes/series of Kitchen Nightmares, if they existed. The formula of restaurant owner hopelessness to feeling empowerment and hope due to kind, compassionate Gordon Ramsay worked on me every time.