Like a knight in shining armor on a noble steed, Gordon Ramsay has spent years traveling
across the United States, valiantly saving restaurants and diners from the brink of bankruptcy
by giving them the people skills and culinary finesse required to run a successful one.
As well as helping out the owners and staff of these restaurants with his show, Ramsay
has also given us a show that is darn good fun to watch.
People freak out and get mad and grow and it’s spectacular.
So here are the Top 10 Untold Truths About Kitchen Nightmares that you won’t get from
just watching it.
You may recognize the Kitchen Nightmares opening title theme
The opening title theme from the show is actually an old classical song that has a lot of history,
Misirlou.
It’s a traditional song from the Eastern Mediterranean region.
The earliest recording of it is from 1927, the sound of which was influenced by the music
of the Middle East.
It has since been covered by Martin Denny, the Beach Boys, the Ventures, Consider the
Source, and the Trashmen.
It was also sampled by the Black Eyed Peas for their song “Pump It.”
You probably recognize the more popular recording from 1962, a surf rock version by Dick Dale,
since that’s the one that Gordon Ramsay has used for his opening title sequence (the
one where he has knives thrown at him and then throws a knife at the camera, supposedly
shattering our screen) and it’s also the one that Quentin Tarantino used for the cool
opening credits of his darkly comic crime masterpiece Pulp Fiction.
It plays right after Pumpkin and Honey Bunny begin robbing a diner and kicks off one of
the most killer soundtracks in film history.
These uses have all helped the song to become one of the most recognizable in all of popular
culture.
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Kitchen Nightmares has taught Gordon a lot about international cuisines
Gordon Ramsay does a lot of interviews to promote the show, and during one of them with
a handful of reporters, he was asked what he had learned from doing the show, and surprisingly,
he said that the thing he has learned the most about is international cuisines.
It’s certainly a vast and interesting world.
He explained that there’s nothing quite like the research and authenticity that goes
into a real ethnic restaurant.
Rather than going to some fancy, high-budget restaurant where things are needlessly expensive
and complex, Gordon appreciates a real classic meal.
He doesn’t want kitchen equipment akin to a Rolls Royce, he just wants an authentic
trip into international cuisine.
Kitchen Nightmares made Gordon tone down his swearing
Gordon Ramsay has always been known as the chef with the foul mouth who uses a lot of
swear words.
It certainly hasn’t made him any friends.
Fellow celebrity chef Delia Smith has gone so far as to say that with all of his swearing,
Ramsay is a disgrace to the culinary world.
When he was asked about the rampant swearing on his show in an interview with the Guardian,
he dropped an f-bomb.
But then he explained that his excessive use of bad language in the show has gotten him
to reflect on his swearing and tone it down.
He saw a compilation video where each f-bomb was counted across several Kitchen Nightmares
episodes, and he said the expletive 298 times.
He wasn’t proud.
Now, he says he’s no longer proud of being the foul-mouthed bully chef.
He doesn’t want some kind of radical change where he has to suddenly act all prim and
proper either, but there’s a time and a place for outrageous cursing.
Don’t change too much, Ramsay!
We love you just how you are.
All of the restaurants featured in Kitchen Nightmares season 2 closed down
Over the course of seven seasons of the show, it was determined that 60% of the restaurants
that were featured eventually closed down.
No matter what Chef Ramsay came in and did – whether it was changing the look of the
place or changing the menu or even changing the staff – those restaurants were still
doomed and still had to close their doors.
It’s thought that season 2 of the show is cursed, because all of those restaurants closed.
While 90% of the restaurants featured in season 1 eventually had to shut their doors and season
3 had a closure rate of 75%, season 2 boasts an astounding 100% rate of failure.
There were twelve episodes in the second season of the show, although one of them was a “Revisited”
special going back to check up on the progress of a restaurant that Gordon already made over
in the first season.
So, there were eleven restaurants in season 2 – Café 36, Fiesta Sunrise, Jack’s Waterfront,
J. Willy’s, Trobianos, Handlebar, Sante Le Brea, Sabatiello’s, Hannah & Mason’s,
Black Pearl, and Giuseppi’s – and they all closed within a couple of years of being
featured on the show.
The Kitchen Nightmares title comes from a Gordon Ramsay outburst
Gordon Ramsay is known for his angry outbursts on the job.
While he was shooting the pilot episode of the show, he had one of his signature sweary
outbursts that ended up giving the series its title.
The producers were not sure what to call it.
They had a few names under consideration, like “Kitchen S.O.S.” and “Ramsay to
the Rescue,” but they weren’t really happy with any of them and they wanted to come up
with something new that sounded snappier and fresher.
They were still struggling with it when it came to the time of the follow up visit to
the restaurant.
The restaurant featured in the pilot episode was called Bonaparte’s and usually, during
the follow up visit, Ramsay gets to congratulate the restauranteurs for taking on his advice
and shaping up and finally having a super efficient and successful restaurant.
But with Bonaparte’s that wasn’t the case.
When Ramsay found out that the restaurant was in even worse shape when he came back
to it than when he had first arrived to help them, he yelled out “This is a living f-ing
nightmare!”
The producers loved the “nightmare” thing and it gave them a title to use.
Gordon Ramsay has noticed a shift in the reality TV landscape since he started
Although he is really a chef at heart, it’s hard to deny that Gordon Ramsay’s real job
is that of an entertainer.
He’s a TV star who has presented a ton of his own reality shows, from competition series
to more Ramsay centric shows like this one.
He said in an interview with Deadline that he’s noticed a shift in the reality TV landscape
in his day.
He’s said that viewers are so much savvier now than even a few years back.
It’s more important than ever to respect the integrity and intelligence of the viewers.
Given our ever-decreasing attention spans, making things more vibrant and bringing in
more realism is key.
Ramsay goes on to talk about how high-octane sets used to be - but now, people don’t
want fake and glamorous.
However, he says the most essential thing about running his show isn’t tactic - it’s
about not taking anything for granted.
Some of the subjects on Kitchen Nightmares have accused the producers of misrepresenting
them
As with pretty much any reality TV series or documentary, the subjects of Gordon Ramsay’s
show have often criticized the producers for supposedly misrepresenting them in the edit.
It is said that editing, if it’s done in a certain way, can make you look, well, really
bad.
But if there is footage of you doing something, then you did it.
There’s no getting around that.
Still, in a couple of cases, some of Ramsay’s subjects have objected to the way that they
were portrayed.
Martin Hyde of the Indian restaurant Dillon’s in New York actually tried to sue the producers
in 2007 when he claimed that the show was edited to make him look like an “angry”
boss and “a lazy idiot,” and that the “satisfied” customers who came into his
restaurant after Ramsay’s makeover were actually just extras who the producers had
hired.
He said that his restaurant’s biggest earner of revenue is its cabaret bar, which the producers
apparently refused to film.
Hyde said, “I’d love people to be able to see the unedited footage.
Gordon called me a fake – but the whole show is a fake.”
The lawsuit was eventually thrown out by a judge, so make of that what you will.
Ramsay has figured out the pattern of why restaurants fail
After spending so much time at failing restaurants and fixing them, Gordon Ramsay has noticed
a pattern in what makes restaurants fail.
He explained that once restaurants open, they tend to become static and forget to fight.
They’re just stuck in a time warp, going through the motions.
But the key to a successful restaurant is staying ahead of your customers’ wants and
needs.
A restaurant needs to continually evolve, not settle into complacency.
You need to work up new ideas, keep the staff on their toes, and definitely keep your finger
on the pulse of what other restaurants in a five mile radius are up to.
Knowing your competition is a key factor to any successful business!
The Kitchen Nightmares end credits contain two very telling disclaimers
In the end credits of every episode of Kitchen Nightmares, there are two telling disclaimers
that shed some light on the way that each episode is made.
The first one says this: “The producers may have provided customers at the restaurant
with a financial contribution towards the cost of their meal.”
So, when the Gordon Ramsay makeover of the restaurant and its menu gets “some buzz”
around town and attracts customers to the place until it is “fully booked,” what
is really happening is that the producers are paying people off to come in.
The second disclaimer says this: “The footage shot in this program has been edited such
that in places it is shown in a different time sequence than actually shot.”
So, some of the reaction shots of people are taken from different points and aren’t actually
genuine reactions to whatever happened right before it, or some outbursts aren’t directly
related to some things that some people said.
Since this is reality television and those kinds of practices are used all the time,
it’s hardly surprising that the show isn’t entirely honest in its editing, but it will
change the way that you watch the show and cause you to watch it with a grain of salt.
The infamous Amy’s Baking Company has since shut down
Gordon Ramsay has had to deal with a lot of terrible restauranteurs in his day.
Some of them have been incredibly stubborn in thinking that their food is fine just the
way it is and that the customers are the ones who are wrong.
But few of them – maybe none of them – have been quite as terrible and quite as stubborn
as the proprietors of Amy’s Baking Company.
They threatened to stab their customers, responded viciously to negative online reviews, stole
tips from their own employees, and kicked people out if they dared to criticize the
food.
There have been very few times that Gordon Ramsay has found people to be so stubborn
that they are beyond help, but in this case, he walked out.
Well, it should come as no surprise that in 2015, a couple of years after Ramsay gave
up on Amy’s Baking Company, the restaurant closed down.
They posted on their social media accounts to announce the end of the restaurant with
a black and white image of the sky marked with the words “THE END,” although the
caption reads: “Or is it the beginning #amysbakingcompany #movingonup.”
Let’s be honest, though, it probably is the end.
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