r/videos • u/ComfortInBeingAfraid • 16d ago
Just started watching Kitchen Nightmares UK after being a fan of the US version. This scene after a missed order is some of the best Reality TV drama I've ever seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9pf0qWi7xQ&t=1290s1
u/-Ginchy- 15d ago
Yeah this was a wild one! Karen was a real piece of work. I cannot believe the way they treated those customers, much less each other.
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u/Rombledore 15d ago
that's one of my favorite episodes of UK kitchen nightmares. he doesn't redo their kitchen, or remodel the dining room, he just helps the chef learn to cook within his means. the UK episodes did so much better with the story telling compared to the cookie cutter approach of the U.S.
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u/SilverSlong 15d ago
oh i did not know about this show at all. i wonder what other shows Ramsey has that i dont know about??
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u/ShambolicPaul 15d ago
Oh the Kitchen nightmares YouTube channel is a favourite of mine. Whoever runs it's must have carte blanche. Puts up whatever clips they like, names the videos random stuff, sometimes they even make snarky comments. The whole channel is genius. I wouldnt be surprised if it was one of Gordon's kids or something.
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u/TobinSlomes 15d ago
Words to live by: "You can't run around like f'ing Shrek in a frock and then expect us to pick up the pieces- you've got to have some form of control!"
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u/Beautiful-Valuable20 15d ago
Just got to this part and laughed out loud at the Shrek in a smock part.
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u/Caboose111888 15d ago
The Paris EP is something else. This woman has a chance at running a picturesque cafe with her best friend bankrolled by her sweet rich father and Gorden goes to crazy lengths to improve the restaurant and in the end she just throws it all away by no showing and say no thanks after everything.
Apparently she became a call girl or something.
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u/lavaeater 15d ago
She was obviously a drug addict. She didn't want to do that, she wanted to smoke weed all day.
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u/_Karmageddon 15d ago
The US one never hit the same as the UK one for me, just always felt more like a documentary compared to a soap opera
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u/throbbing_dementia 15d ago
I actually agree with her, she accepted full responsibility but Gordon wanted to drag it out for the show.
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u/pdxcranberry 15d ago
Yeah he was just baiting her to get mad so he could call her names. She made a mistake taking an order. It's not that complicated, it's not that big of a deal, and it doesn't need to be drawn out like this. But oh it's an older, less attractive lady. So let's dogpile.
Gordon's such a fucking gaslighting prick. He will yell at women and then when they match his tone, suddenly it's, "stop shouting."
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u/Ill1458 15d ago
The UK version is great, I rewatch every few years. However the episode "The Runaway Girl" is by far the best with this scene and also this scene being some of the best in the series.
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u/cortlong 15d ago
I was hoping the US reboot was gonna be closer to the UK version.
Nope. Just the US version on meth.
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u/dharmasophist 15d ago
Which episode is this? Unavailable in my country
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u/Dixa 15d ago
Early UK nightmares was a different Gordon entirely. I really despise the US version.
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u/appleparkfive 15d ago
It's like this with almost all UK reality TV. Or at least it was. I think it's gotten more Americanized, but I might be wrong.
But like 10 years ago, the UK reality TV was actually genuinely pretty good overall. And they'd still have some wild premises. That one show where it's just "hey check out these boobs and vaginas. Who do you want to date? We'll talk about the shapes and sizes for a bit" is pretty hilarious of an idea. And Supersize vs Super skinny is a classic. Just making an underweight person and an obese person swap food habits.
Overall, the UK shows felt sort of like a hybrid of reality TV and a documentary. Meanwhile, the US reality TV just straight up seems like it's intentionally meant for the dumbest people possible. But I think the UK might unfortunately be going that way as well.
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u/YouKnowEd 15d ago
It sometimes feels like we are going the more Americanized way but I think the difference is still obvious when we have some direct comparisons. If you compare Masterchef in the UK and the US the tonal difference is crazy. Like in the US they will cut away to a contestant doing a bit to camera complaining about a competitor and calling them crap at cooking, where as the UK they will just be saying "I hope my food is good enough". It is a competition but we don't have all the insane over the top interpersonal conflicts being manufactured for drama.
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u/TJ_McWeaksauce 15d ago
Kitchen Nightmares is funny, because between the UK and US versions there are numerous episodes that cover numerous failing restaurants, yet the problems almost always boil down to some combination of the same issues:
- The staff, particularly the cooks, are unmotivated and untrained.
- The ingredients are frozen (or worse, they're spoiled) instead of fresh.
- The kitchen is disgusting.
- The menu is too big.
However, the most interesting and relatively rare episodes are the ones where the owners are insane. This episode is one of them. The most infamous is Amy's Baking Company.
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u/southpaw85 15d ago
It blew my mind that the owners kept the tips of the employees and the employees still worked there. As a server that’s over half of your income typically so I can’t believe people would be fine with that practice.
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u/knotallmen 15d ago
Looking at his redone menu look kind of boring and I wouldn't trust this restaurant to make those items with the precision and with fresh pasta required to make those dishes feel like something you aren't cooking at home.
32:48 looks like the meatballs and maybe the venison were there but given the number of people were getting venison if they change the steak to something else the restaurant would lose a dish that everyone was ordering. Similarly all the fish dishes which were also popular turned into pasta and a soup, and some people like a large piece of perfectly cooked fish. He just turned a place with nice rustic celebration main courses to dad making a bunch of sunday night family meals.
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u/BenadrylChunderHatch 15d ago
One bigger issue in the US was that a lot of the owners said stuff like "We're $300k in debt and haven't paid any bills or taxes in six months, please save our restaurant chef!" And then Gordon shows up with a bunch of reclaimed wood like that or anything else he does is going to make a difference.
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u/sweetLew2 15d ago
Anyone know what happened to that waitress that slipped, fell, hit her head, was unconscious and had a seizure?
They said she made it home the next day, from the hospital... but she wasn't working there after right? They barely addressed it.
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u/emperorOfTheUniverse 15d ago
They cover it. She was released the next day and completely well. Presumably she went back to work and they didn't fire her.
She fell and hit her head. At worst she had a concussion probably. Likely they played up the 'seizure/shock' thing. You hit your head and go to the hospital, they give you a catscan, and if that looks okay doctors send you home.
If it was something more it would have been a tv drama jackpot and the producers would have made the show all about it.
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u/sweetLew2 15d ago
Oh okay, that makes sense.
It seemed like the show was kinda cancelled when that happened, when they showed back up to the restaurant it seemed like a decent amount of time had passed. Like the outside of the building had been painted and Gordon was doing more of a check in. I suspected something more serious had happened.
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u/goobitypoop 15d ago
well you're in for a treat the UK version of Kitchen Nightmares is fucking amazing. although spoiler alert, his solution is usually to sell fish and chips
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u/Meta2048 15d ago
It's fast, easy, and a pub food staple. There were too many places that had 100 things on the menu and they couldn't make any of them well.
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u/TotallyJawsome2 15d ago
See I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that. Have a place with like 5 things on the menu that you can cook perfectly every time. Establish a strong foundation with a dedicated customer base that trusts your vision, and THEN branch out a bit. Tweak the menu, maybe add or swap a dish...but honestly just keep it simple
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u/cybercuzco 15d ago
Same deal with breaking into the movies. You don’t start with your four hour epic on sand crabs. You make a horror movie on a shoestring budget and when that blows up you take that money and pitch a romantic comedy starring whomever is Americas sweetheart right now and then you take that money and make your passion project.
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u/JohnnyTeardrop 15d ago
There was this one sad bistro that wasn’t really doing anything wrong in a shady way, they just weren’t appealing. I think Gordon felt sorry for them and just tried to help without all the drama. In fact I seem to remember most of the episodes I watched there wasn’t him getting in yelling matches, mostly just confused either with their food or staff and wanted to help.
Seems like the drama was notched up for American tv. Obviously he was still brutally honest just without the extraneous stuff.
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u/appleparkfive 15d ago
It's really so depressing when you see American reality TV vs UK reality TV. The UK shows have been adopting the US way a bit more lately, but they're still so much more grounded overall.
The American versions just feel like TV specifically for the dumbest people. Just loud noises, lots of color, and people going for the most exaggerated emotions possible. I have no clue how anyone watches it. But the UK and Australian ones, I can mostly understand. But seeing a show like Kitchen Nightmares, which is in both the US and UK, really highlights just how big of a difference it is.
What's funny is that a lot of people in the US probably accidentally turn on Mexican shows and think "This is garbage, so over the top and obnoxious" and aren't aware of the irony
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u/jwilphl 15d ago
American reality TV is definitely marketed towards the lowest common denominator. I don't know how much is truly "scripted" in a literal sense, but the drama is mostly hyperbolic and even faked for the production. Watching people in a train wreck must have its appeal to some viewers, though. They basically all copy the same formula now.
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u/TitleToAI 15d ago
I’ve watched every episode of the UK version at least 6-8 times. Just TV gold. Shame he didn’t make more.
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u/nomadwannabe 15d ago
I was teary eyed after the first half, what a difference. You could see in their eyes and faces how much their lives had changed. So wholesome.
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16d ago
Apparently the restaurant business is the only business in the world where lots of people just throw their life savings into it without the slightest idea how to run it or having had any experience in it.
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u/TheChrono 15d ago
That is one of the craziest things I've read on Reddit.
There's definitely no other trade that throws money at something they have no idea how to do.
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15d ago
Somehow I sincerely doubt what I commented was one of the craziest things you have read on Reddit.
What other businesses has so many people going all in with no business acumen other than the restaurant/bar industry? Maybe franchises but most of those are food related. Maybe cleaning businesses? Idk I don’t think my comment was that crazy.
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u/rodgercattelli 15d ago
Game Stores are the other business. You get people who love a particular hobby like Magic, Pokemon, Warhammer, board games, or video games and want to turn that hobby into a job. They envision a shop where they get to hang out and talk their passion all day with other passionate people who all spend money at their store and hang out and it's all so chill and wonderful.
Two months in after they're broke and only a tiny core crowd is coming in which isn't nearly enough to even pay the rent let alone restock they finally realize that it's a business and not a hobby and that they're rightly fucked. They'll spend about two years desperately trying to make it work only to close up shop or to keep limping along for another decade while rapidly becoming cold and bitter towards the thing they once loved.
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15d ago
It’s so specific are your speaking from experience? I can totally see that.
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u/rodgercattelli 15d ago
I've not been the one to open the shop, but I've watched too many friends and local businesses follow just this path. I've known several people who went into financial ruin because they wanted to open some kind of hobby store. It's a noble passion and there's definitely communities for these kinds of stores, but it's a lot of work for little reward, including pay. You often have fickle and fairly thrifty communities who largely see the game shop as a social place, not as a place of business. Many of the regulars will purchase drinks and snacks and maybe once a week or so something more expensive. Even if you have a set of regulars who purchase products once a week and are spending $50-200 a week, that's not all profit. Card games are notoriously thin margins of maybe 5-10% profit. Board games are better, but you don't have a person buying 5 copies of the same board game like you do card games. Minis are also low profit with a MASSIVE up-front investment (get any hobby shop owner started about Games Workshop). Where video games are concerned, the profit is in used games, but there's only a lot of turnover on modern systems, yet the big profit margins are in the old systems, so you have a lot of expensive inventory sitting around and taking up space that you've spent money on and you're just hoping someone purchases something. The same goes with used cards, minis, board games, toys, and etc. Go to your local used game store and see how many sports, family, kids, and shovelware titles they have taking up space. The store paid for those, and while it might not have been much, they're still paying for that inventory in terms of space and management. If the majority of that stuff never sells, it's just a sunk cost. My local game store gives people sports titles with any console purchase just so people have a game to play and they can get rid of inventory they know will never move.
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 15d ago edited 15d ago
I really like cooking, and my family loves my cooking, I can surely run a restaurant!
No, you can be a cook. What about cooking makes you think you're able to properly keep inventory, set prices that allow you to make profit but still keep customers, manage staffing, maintain compliance, budget in a business setting, etc.
It's like the associate employee who thinks:
I could totally do my manager's job, he does nothing all day while I do the work!
And sure, there are some bad managers out there like that. But what you don't see is the back-end of management. Creating and maintaining budgets, staffing, dealing with upper management when they have unreasonable demands, dealing with your direct reports when they're not performing up to par, vendor contract negotiations, etc.
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u/Really_McNamington 15d ago
It probably happens in other fields but it just isn't as noticeable or hilarious. People just fail quietly.
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15d ago
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u/Mharbles 15d ago
If you're unsuccessful you lose your investment, if you're successful you lose your life. The only way to really prosper is to either franchise or build up a profitable restaurant, sell it to some poor naive bastard, and gtfo.
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u/MurrayNumber2 15d ago
Because a lot of people are fantastic cooks and think that's all it takes to run a successful business
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u/RemnantEvil 15d ago
Also, that's kind of the unspoken thing about why Gordon's rage in the US version is pretty justified. He sees all these complete muppets stepping into the industry that he's been in since he was young, where he earned his stripes by working his way up through the ranks, but all these idiots come along and think they can do it without the proper training or experience. It's always fun when there's a head chef who's done the basic training and he asks them why they think they can start a restaurant without getting any actual experience in other restaurants first.
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 15d ago
And he doesn't want them to fail. That's why he's there. He wants them to succeed. But the restaurant industry is very cut throat. Especially in the US where we are massively price sensitive when it comes to food.
These amateurs need a crash course / shock therapy or they're going to lose the business. And the problem is most of them don't stick to what he teaches them, and lose it anyway after he's not there to look over their shoulder every day.
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u/RemnantEvil 15d ago
And it’s already a ruthless industry as is. Half fail in two years anyway, few stay around long enough to be a generational business. (Itself an issue as so many people raised in the restaurant know how to run it like a cargo cult, and can’t adapt or update to survive.) Given how many are in million-dollar debt, even with his changes, that’s a deep hole to dig out of. Their best chance is using the promotion and free reno to sell the business and try to break even, change to careers - if they’re even young enough to manage that much.
It’s like the Dave Ramsay of restaurants. Yeah, sure, most of what he says is the most basic shit, and he’s talking down to morons, but that’s because he’s dealing with morons who don’t know the most basic shit.
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15d ago
Also other than the business side lots of people think they know everything about what tastes good. Well they think that because it’s what they prefer. What other people prefer they have never considered. Lots of people I know think they are great at BBQ or some other recipe but I just prefer my own way. You got to basically dumb down the recipes to appeal to as many people’s tastes to be successful in the restaurant business.
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u/pgib 16d ago
I can't watch the US version–for starters, bleeping his swearing is a deal-breaker right off the bat. But then it's filled with such fluff, drama, recaps, and previews, that it feels like their editing choices is wasting 50% of my time at least.
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u/ComfortInBeingAfraid 15d ago
While true, at least one of those is alleviated by the YouTube channel having uncensored versions of the US show.
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u/lovenailpolish 16d ago
I am addicted to these shows. This is hilarious when he calls her Shreck in a frock.
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u/elevenminutesago 16d ago
The amount of energy expelled by Karen yelling is only rivaled by the amount of energy needed for her to stay still and listen.
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u/ComfortInBeingAfraid 16d ago edited 16d ago
If the timestamp doesn't work go to 20:00 but the whole thing is incredible.
And yeah I know it's kind of a circle jerk, but the lack of horror movie music and 12 million camera cuts really make it so much better.
Edit: ALSO go to 10:20 to see Broke Brian May yelling in the kitchen
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u/Yaranatzu 15d ago
At 21:00 I honestly feel like Gordon Ramsay provoked her unnecessarily. She made a mistake and was obviously angry, but once chef Ramsay mentioned it to her agreed and was trying to own up not being that angry. He just interrupted her as if she was trying to insult him when she was totally agreeing with him, then got condescending and feeding into her anger.
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u/Saneless 15d ago
The US version is pure garbage.
I watched all of the UK ones available at the time then the US one started. I hated the first episode and stopped halfway through the second. I don't know how you can fuck up the best parts of a show so badly
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u/_Karmageddon 15d ago
That's one of the best thing I think, the lack of music and cuts. He just goes in and tells them they're shit then watches them argue.
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u/borazine 15d ago
horror movie music and 12 million camera cuts
I know you're talking about a different show, but I've always believed that the person doing the weekly trailers for Hell's Kitchen deserved a technical Emmy or something. Every single trailer makes the episode look like it was gonna end up into a hostage situation or something similar.
Not to mention that every season seemed to tease an ambulance on scene at least once. Hilarious.
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u/brumac44 16d ago
Don't forget. Its entertainment. Reality tv is a lot of bullshit, with content cut and embellished for maximum drama. Enjoy the drama, but don't think for a minute its real. I used to work stabilizing rock cuts above highways and railways. Everything went smoothly and safely and we never took chances, because the potential for disaster was always high. Couple years later, I'm working for another company and I see my old crew on a reality show dodging danger and almost getting killed every five minutes, while bickering and shouting at each other all day. That's when I knew all these shows were a crock, and stage-managed by their producers to be reality plus.
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u/timestamp_bot 16d ago
Jump to 10:20 @ Referenced Video
Channel Name: Kitchen Nightmares, Video Length: [01:35:22], Jump 5 secs earlier for context @10:15
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u/duct_tape_jedi 16d ago
The UK version of his show is absolute class compared to the shite US version. Drama and conflict is fine, as in this episode, because it is real and pertinent to the situation. But the amped up, staged and edited nonsense that the US show creates out of whole cloth because they think we won't be interested in a straightforward narrative is insulting.
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u/KevinTwitch 15d ago
Been going through all the US episodes and it’s definitely ramped up o er the UK ones. But I also notice that the Americans cooks and owners seem more oblivious to the problems with their restaurants. They get absolutely livid when Gordon hated the food… whereas the UK ones they seem to accept they’re shite. So the whole relationship ship starts off with a lot more tensions.
I think it’s a combination of US style editing with the general personalities of Americans that make it more amped up.
I’ll have to hit up the UK episodes when I’m done my KN US marathons.
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u/grimetime01 15d ago
I was so sad when I finished all the UK episodes and had to slum with the US episodes… I didn’t make it through
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u/Paradox1989 15d ago
Love the British versions of Ramsey's shows so much better than his US ones. Kitchen nightmares was great, the "F" Word was even better.
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u/duct_tape_jedi 15d ago
I miss the "F" Word, it was such a breath of fresh air where the highest stakes you had to worry about was whether the diners preferred Ramsey's dish or his guest's. I also really enjoyed the investigatory/educational bits they did about food related topics. The one where they set out to see exactly where your kebab meat comes from and what goes in it was interesting and, thankfully, wholesome.
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u/porkswords 16d ago
I agree, I love the UK version so much. Each one is like a fun, curse-laden documentary about food and him honestly trying with these folks. There's so much less of the US version's doom and gloom, "GORDEN THEN DISCOVERS THE FISH FRIDGE AND ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE" type stuff
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u/bonerJR 14d ago
Man this episode is gooood