- That is awful.
Oh, it's awful.
- Sit down, lemme see.
Oh, look at this, guys.
- Wow.
This burger is raw.
This is your burger.
(opening theme music)
- Happy birthday.
- Thank you
- A well needed drink.
- Let me just get a burger.
- How do you want it cooked?
- Medium.
- Okay, so we got a club sandwich.
- There's no POS system
so they're handwriting checks.
So is there a concern of how long the check's been in?
- Alright.
- Okay, cool.
Got it. Great. Cool.
- Oh, at least we're gonna cook our bacon.
- Do you know what this guy is doing?
Right after he touched the raw bacon. There's our onion.
- Ohhhh
- Here's our, oh, raw is on.
On a cutting board.
Bingo. Health violation.
There we go.
- There's the patties. Frozen.
- Nooo. It's frozen.
- We're gonna...
It's freezer burned. Did you see the white?
- How long does it take to cook a burger patty?
- A medium burger?
- Eight minutes.
- So the burger has yet to move.
- Hasn't even touched it yet.
- Alright, Jason.
- Yeah. 99 11.
- What?
Is this a karaoke bar or a bingo hall?
Did you just hear that?
(laughing)
- How's everyone doing out there?
- Come on, show me what you're gonna do
to the burger there, brother.
(laughing)
Leave it where it is.
- Just right there.
- You don't touch that.
You're good, man.
(man singing karaoke)
- Come on.
Turn. Please turn the burger.
Roberto.
- Dude. Flip the burger.
Flip the burger, Roberto!
(man singing karoake)
- This guy won't flip this burger.
- Oh my god.
- Oh my god. Is he going to flip the burger?
Yeah, see now you've got all the grease
and all the fat and we have a burger.
That's a medium burger that's been
on the grill for 13 minutes.
- I'm dying to see when he takes a bite of that burger.
- I want to hear the crunch.
- Love you.
You rock, man.
- I love you because you rock
because you have a 24 minute check time.
Right?
- Okay.
- Quite a bit overcooked.
- Maybe cuz it was cooked for 15 minutes...
- on one side.
- Roberto. I'm Jon Taffer.
Hello. How are you?
Nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you too.
I saw you put a hamburger on a grill.
- Yeah.
- And I watched you for 14 minutes.
Not turn that hamburger over.
The hamburger was burnt.
The guest couldn't eat it.
The reason why you're not selling food, I think
is that you're lazy.
And for a guy who's been working
in a kitchen 19 years,
you know better.
- No, this is not the (beep)
- outta me.
Okay?
- Don't talk to me like that.
- Let me tell you what he does, Sal.
He goes into the refrigerator, he pulls out a raw piece
of bacon, puts it on a cutting board with your bare hands
raw pork.
Then a couple minutes later he puts the salad right on top
from where the pork was.
You didn't wash your hands.
You didn't wash the cutting board.
- Yes, I did wash my hands
- No, you did not.
No, you did not.
- Every time I wash my hands.
- You're lying.
- You did not.
You're full of (beep)
- What happens when you put raw pork
on lettuce and send it out in the dining?
What happens, Roberto?
- Oh yeah
It gets contaminated.
- It's irresponsible and it's illegal.
- In 19 years, nobody
got sick here.
- You don't know that.
- Okay
- So I put your guys' food order in.
It should be coming out shortly.
- They ordered a bunch of food.
Let's see how long it takes to come out tonight.
All fried foods pretty much.
- Thank you.
- You've got that look on your face.
I think I need you to go in there.
You gotta try that freaking drink, don't you?
Alright, go to it, buddy.
Go ahead and taste it.
Maybe you can share that food with them.
Let's see what's going on.
- Okay.
- It seems like it's just a big party in there.
There's a lot of work to do.
- Hey,
what's up, guys?
- There he is.
- Oh, I got this.
- I got this.
- It's interesting.
Denise owns this place.
She hasn't looked at a bartender
she hasn't looked at the kitchen.
All she's doing is drinking and talking to people.
So clearly this is a social club for her, not a business.
- Hey. Cheers.
- Here's your fried stuff and your burger.
- That is not medium rare.
I'm telling you.
Look at it.
That looks
- Burger's disgusting.
I'm going in.
- Oh my God.
- How you doing, buddy?
How you doing, man?
- What happened here?
- I asked for a medium rare.
- Would you eat this?
Who would eat this?
How's this feel, Denise?
- Horrible.
How much you losing a month?
- Thousands.
- Thousands of dollars a month.
And you're hanging out here drinking and partying
at the bar as this comes out
of the kitchen and you're wondering why you're losing money.
- God, those are charred.
Oh. They are way over cooked.
Yeah, he's got two burgers that are way overdone
and he knows it
- But he's still gonna sell 'em.
They're about to come out.
- The cook in the kitchen has overcooked two hamburgers.
If he sends them outta the kitchen, I'm gonna bust them.
- Order up.
(bar noises)
He's got two right here about to go out.
- Thank you.
And I got one more coming
- That was out
- With without the onions and peppers.
Thank you very much.
Okay
- I wanna see how well done your hamburger is.
Could you just take the top of the bun off?
I wanna see how cooked it is.
Is that overcooked?
Do you mind if I take it away?
- No
- Look at this.
- Is this acceptable?
- No.
- Why'd you send it out?
You saw it before you sent it out, right?
- Yes.
- That's it.
We're out of balloons.
We've had enough.
Close this down, guys.
If I were you, I'd say a prayer tonight, maybe two.
- I was on the website and I read something about barbecue.
- Um. Our website has not been updated.
- Why would they have barbecue
on a website and then not feature barbecue?
- So you guys don't have anything barbecue?
- We do have barbecue sauce.
- That's okay.
Don't worry about it.
- I'll do the bacon cheddar burger.
- That's Q in the kitchen.
He's our cook.
- Beef from a tube.
- So you know that meat is fatty cheap chuck?
- Oh that's gross.
Look at that meat on fire.
He almost burned himself.
- That's all fat.
Now the fire comes up
chars the outside and then you ruin the burger.
- Yep.
- There's our partner kitchen manager.
Not even in the kitchen.
- He should be with them making sure
that everything is going
out the way that he would want it to be.
- And he calls himself an executive chef.
- That's ridiculous.
- There's the burger.
Look at the color of that cheese, chef.
It's yellow oil basically.
- Yeah
- It's not real cheese.
- Oh my God.
- Look at the look on her face.
She doesn't want to eat it.
The cheddar bacon burger was disgusting.
I had two bites.
Then I'm surprised I had two.
- The grill is full.
Now who's gonna pick this food up, man?
The systems out there are just nonexistent.
There is not one system
in place that causes anything to happen.
They don't know how to take a food order.
They take a drink order
come back 15 minutes later and take the food order.
They put 'em all in at once and this is what happens.
They kill you, guys
cuz they don't know how to do it and stage it correctly.
It is so disorganized out there, Alex.
I hope the food lands in the right place
- Let's do...
- I hear ya.
Agave
- We go...
- You okay up?
- Yeah, I'm alright. I'm alright.
Oh, okay.
That's all right.
- Ready?
- Yeah.
Let me just hold on.
- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let me get up slow.
- All right.
- Got it?
- Yeah
- I saw this burger cooking on the line
so I know it's not right.
- And here's the reason why.
The top of it is so charred
from that burnt up dirty grill that it's like a hockey puck.
This thing.
Look at that.
Does that look appetizing to you?
- No.
No. A lot of work to do
- Patrick.
- Yes, sir.
- Can you come out here for a minute?
- Yes, sir.
Come with me.
- This is inedible.
I mean, I even showed it to the
these are your regular customers.
They even showed it to them and I said
do you want to eat this?
They said, no.
Look at that.
And if you take a bite and it
it's like biting into a piece of leather almost.
Cuz it's been pressed and pressed and pressed and pressed.
It doesn't even have the consistency of a burger anymore.
Terrible. So guys, I gotta get this team trained.
I gotta get you up to speed to elevate all of
this and I gotta make you the enforcer.
And we got 24 hours to do it.
You in?
- I'm in. Hell yeah.
Okay, let's close this down.
Let's see what we need to see.
Let's go to work, guys. Okay?
Shut it down.
- Alright folks, we're gonna shut it down.
I'm sorry.
Please come back Friday night.
Hopefully we'll do better.
- What's up, guys?
- How are you?
And any food or anything, guys?
Check it out.
- Now, make sure we're getting orders in.
Is somebody hitting these tables, Sean?
- Ah
- You should know
- Yes.
- It wasn't done yet.
Still raw.
- It'll cook pretty quick cuz you just squished it down.
Yeah, put it together.
- Say what?
- That burger's ready.
- So listen, as an owner, what's gonna happen is
there's gonna be times where he's gonna know something
and you gotta kind of just, and
- This is not cooked. It is still raw.
- kind of just stand behind him
- And it's still that's raw as hell.
- You cooking, you cook burgers too well done.
- If you want to sell it, you can go ahead and sell.
- This is (beep) stupid.
This is your show.
All of it everything.
- You mean everything is all a clustered (beep).
Everything's disorganized.
There's not a team, you know
so it
it makes it really hard to do anything
if there's not a team back here.
- This goes to Angela.
- Burger. No cheese.
No cheese. All right.
There you go.
All right, guys.
Paloma.
Three. Palomas.
Three more Palomas.
Six eight. Palomas.
That makes it easy.
- You guys can keep doing it that way.
- What's wrong?
I'm sorry.
- This is raw.
It's actually raw.
So we didn't even order it rare , but it's actually
like raw.
Look at this.
This is raw
- Right from the get go.
I'm seeing problems in the back of the house.
The fact of the matter is the front
of the house is doing pretty well.
Phil managing the kitchen is unraveling
while Sean has the bar together.
Phil, Moe.
Whoa. Look at this burger.
- I told him it was raw.
I told him.
I told him several times.
- Chef, do you know how to cook burgers?
- Yes, I do.
- Well who's cooking here
This is Moe's grill and you backed him up.
- We (bleep) up.
- You don't know what time the burger has gone on
when it's been flipped.
One guy has to do this.
Sean, are you managing or bartending?
I'm heading to the kitchen right now
because we have some serious crises.
People aren't served.
Some people are half served food.
Food is coming out raw.
Yep. Yep.
Take control.
- All right, where are we at?
- What are we behind on?
- Talk to me, guys.
What's going on, man?
- I mean, I can't really call it a fries.
- Doesn't even look like it's been fried.
It just looked like a potato burger tomato.
- Oh man.
Now you know why I'm here, guys.
I'll make sure you get your money back.
We should.
- Five tickets are taking it down.
So guys, we're not even traveling at 20 miles an hour
nonetheless 120.
So come on.
What am I here with?
Five tickets.
What the hell are we doing here?
- One of my tables
their burger is not cooked all the way through.
Phil, another raw hamburger.
Come on.
Phil is standing here not knowing what the hell to do.
Everybody out there is waiting and waiting and waiting
and nothing happens.
Yo, you've gotta get off the grill.
- Come down here and fry.
- 14 freaking years.
How does this happen?
Come on.
Crazy stress.
How's that?
Crazy stress.
Stress is going crazy.
Stress.
- What do you like here?
I like the four Castle burgers.
Those are really good.
- Okay. All right.
You said it. We're sold. So can I get medium?
Yes, of course.
- Why is the owner cooking all the food?
He can't run his business from back here in the kitchen.
So what are those meatballs?
- Must be sliders.
- So he cooks it as a ball and then flattens it to a burger.
Had he flattened it in the first place
It would've cooked all the way.
Do you realize how long those burgers were cooking
on that grill?
How well done those are?
So he's sauteing chicken.
That's interesting.
Did you see him handle that pan?
He can flip in a pan.
I I, it's not so easy.
His knife skills are there.
This guy actually knows how to cook.
He might just be confused
cuz no one orders food or
it just doesn't happen often enough.
He doesn't give a (beep)
- Hey, Lonnie.
- Let's get ready to start taking this (bleep) out, huh?
- Oh wow.
Here comes the food.
- Alrighty.
- So, and everything else was coming out.
- Look at that burger.
Look at that.
That's like a piece of leather.
- Black?
No, that's the burger patty that's overcooked.
You gotta be (beep) kidding me, bro.
He won't even eat it.
- Nah.
- Okay. Okay guys, keep hustling.
Everybody join.
Come on, come on, come on.
Let's start.
- How's the burgers coming?
- He's working on it.
Boss is working on it.
- It's pretty busy, Jon.
- And how many tickets do you have
and how much time on these?
So what's,
- oh my god, you know what?
I'm probably about 20 minutes behind.
- Hey guys, keep going.
Keep going, guys.
Come on.
My smashes.
Where are my smashes?
I need that smash.
- Oh my gosh.
Stop yelling. Stop yelling.
Sunny is a wreck right now.
She's a mess.
All she's doing is running back and forth and yelling.
She's yelling, yelling, yelling.
She doesn't need to yell.
She needs to direct people.
- All those burgers. They're killing me, man.
They gotta be briquettes by now.
- No. They're not briquettes. They're beautiful.
- This is beautiful?
- It's well done.
It's cooked.
- That's burnt!
- No, this is not (bleep) burnt.
- Are you not an idiot?
- You're an idiot.
- Is that burnt or not?
- No, it's not burnt.
- Then you are a moron.
- And so are you.
So we're dealing with a guy who's a fool. Do your job.
No, you do your job.
You know what my job is, my job is to tell you
(beep)
- You will not serve this.
No.
- Oh no, no, no, no.
- You will not serve it while I'm here.
- No no no no.
- You will not serve it while I'm here.
- And that's the last (beep) time you say no to me ever.
- No.
- Shut your (beep) mouth.
- No, no, no.
- Get out of my kitchen.
- He's burning your food
- Temper's everywhere.
- That's why you're failing.
He needs to do better.
Or he can't be here.
- Can I talk to him?
- Of course you can.
- We have a good opportunity here to make some positive
changes. Oh, what we're doing has not been working.
You have to step up
and we have to allow other people to help us improve.
- Ah.
- So before my recon spies eat anything
I wanna go inside and see the kitchen.
Does that feel cold to you?
Not at all.
None of this is stored at the right temperature.
Sour cream. Warm.
- How you guys doing?
Hey, how's it going, man?
Can I get a burger?
Okay.
- Monica, what are you doing?
You don't want them to be juicy?
When you do this, all of the grease comes out of the burger.
The burger is now dry.
You never ever squish a hamburger.
Who taught you to cook?
- Richard.
- Where's Richard?
Richard?
- 12 and a half minutes on the food so far.
You should be able to crank out a burger in 12 minutes.
There's not even anyone in this place.
- Richard
I'm Jon Taffer.
- Jon, nice to meet you.
- My friend, Maria Menounos.
- Maria, hi.
- Nice to meet you.
- You are the one who taught her to squish burgers.
- Can speed the process but...
- For who?
Your floor is empty.
- I'm not the one serving the (beep) food.
They are.
- Are you gonna get people to come here doing that?
- Any signs of any food coming up soon?
The staff ignored us a little bit
and it took forever to get food.
It just really felt like we were on an island out there.
- What is this? Old cheese?
Does it look fresh? Smells like your refrigerator.
Somebody eats this, they don't come back. Right?
What else we got?
- Thank you.
- Old sausage.
Are they gonna come back for that?
- No.
So they won't come back for that either.
There's cool restaurants coming down here now, aren't there?
- Yes.
And this is what you got.
You're failing cuz you should be.
This bar really sucks.
The food is spoiled.
Richard owns the place.
Doesn't know how to cook.
Monica works for him.
Doesn't know how to cook.
I gotta check in on my recon spies before
they eat this food.
- That is awful.
- Oh, it's awful.
- So that, lemme see.
Oh, look at this, guys.
Wow.
This burger is raw.
This is your burger.
Oh my God.
This is what your future is banking on.
- When I took a bite of it, it was like barely cooked.
I'm down for some beef tartar in a nice spot
but not at the LA Brewing Company.
- Hi, this is John Taffer.
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