Kitchen Nightmares / Tropes A to D

Kitchen Nightmares Trope Examples
A - D | E - N | O - Z

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• 0% Approval Rating: A recurring theme with some of the owners, which is unsurprising given that many of the restaurants are on the verge of failure due to owners being bad leaders. In many cases employees happily vent about the terrible practices of the owners and in the case of Joe from Mill Street Bistro they listen with utter glee was Gordon verbally tears him to pieces.

A

• Abusive Parents: Sometimes crops up when the owners are parents and their children work under them.
  • The namesake owner of Sam's Mediterranean Kebab Room admitted he had so many kids so he could use them as unpaid labor in order to cut costs. The kids were naturally all miserable working unpaid jobs for him.
  • The husband-and-wife owners of The Burger Kitchen stole a quarter million dollars out of their son's inheritance without his knowledge to fund the restaurant, and leaving their son to shoulder the responsibility of running a business where he was not treated as an equal partner. When asked what will happen when the restaurant goes deeper into the red, Alan's response is to use the remaining $160,000 in his son's account.
  • Implied to be the case at Mangia Mangia. The owner Julie keeps the head chef employed at the restaurant even though he apparently assaulted her daughter Janelle.
• Actually Pretty Funny: During his time at Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack, Ramsay talks to one of the cooks, a part-timer whose primary job was repairing cars, about picking between one of the jobs^note Ramsay prefers people who are insanely passionate about cooking over those who merely like it, are hobbyists, or are in it for the money, because the restaurant business is hideously tough and stressful, on top of said cook only being available sometimes when the restaurant can't afford to have an extended staff. Ramsay notes that, even though the pay and hours are crappy, you'll do it because you love it. The cook responds he'd love it even more if he was as rich as Ramsay, getting a chuckle out of him.
• The Alcoholic: Several owners drink (on duty) when things start really deteriorating.
  • Oceana owner Moe really stands out in this regard. He's late for the re-opening... strongly implied to be due to him drinking (or doing something worse). He even leaves during the dinner rush to "take a break".... probably to go drink somewhere private.
  • One of the UK episodes featured a chef that had been drinking due to job pressures and had to go to the hospital during filming due to mild cirrhosis. Gordon was forced to bring up the fact that this is something of a major problem among chefs, since it's a very stressful job and there's often a bar right there in the restaurant.
  • Lisa from Galeria 33 is drinking during service. After the relaunch, her sister, Rita, asks her if she would stop drinking if Rita stops smoking, and Lisa agrees to the condition.
• All for Nothing: For all the work Gordon puts into some restaurants, most end up shuttering anyway. In some cases, the owners revert back to their old ways as soon as he leaves; sometimes minor, sometimes drastically. In other cases, the places follow Ramsay's instructions totally, or at least partially, but they are too far in debt to recover, get derailed by circumstances beyond their control (such as an economic recession), or in a handful of cases, they sell the restaurant after Ramsay's revamp. ^note  Reports show around a 40 percent success rate for the restaurants that Gordon has visited. Competing show Restaurant: Impossible has around a 30 percent success rate for comparison.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Gordon in the US version. He is occasionally a target of nationalistic insults from certain chefs that Can't Take Criticism due to his British nationality, notable examples including Oceana, Anna Vincenzo's, Barefoot Bob's, and Ms. Jean's Southern Cuisine.
  Lisa from Barefoot Bob's: He comes from a country where they think scones are delicious!
  CeCe from Anna Vincenzo's: He's British, they don't know anything about Pizza.
• Almighty Janitor: More often than not, the servers and other kitchen personnel will be well aware of the issues that the restaurant is having, only to be ignored by the owner, who's convinced that the restaurant either has no problems or its trouble stems from other areas.
• Analogy Backfire: In the Curry Lounge episode of the British version, Gordon makes a stubborn owner bat at cricket while being partially bound, to demonstrate what his stubbornness is doing to his restaurant. The owner still manages to hit the ball, on his first try.
• Angry Chef: If there's a trope about dysfunctional staff, or owners, or customers, it's here.
• Appeal to Novelty: Frequently invoked by chefs who serve up bizarre items on their menu and get called out on it by Ramsay. Just two of the most notable examples were mashed potatoes with apricot, and grilled lettuce — and that's before you get to restaurants like La Parra de Burriana and Sebastian's, where the entire menu is designed with this in mind.
• Artistic License – Geography: In the "Spin a Yarn" episode, the narrator describes Fremont as being "just outside of San Francisco." Anyone familiar with the Bay Area would know that Fremont is not "just outside of San Francisco" at all, being on the other side of the bay and closer to Oakland and San Jose than to San Francisco.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In the pilot episode Tim, the head chef of Bonaparte's, said that someday he'd like to have three restaurants; one in London, one in Paris, and one in...Leeds? Which, as Gordon showed us in the episode, is a good place to buy your supplies from, but isn't terribly likely to impress fellow chefs when discussing your establishments.
• invokedAudience-Alienating Premise: Gordon lampshades this in the intro for "Piccolo Teatro":
  "The French are a nation of meat lovers, each eating an average of 90 kilos of this stuff every year. A vegetarian restaurant in Paris, my God."
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • A lot of owners make the mistake of keeping menus cluttered and bloated with dozens of dishes, sometimes even a few that don't particularly fit in the theme of their restaurant. Smaller menus with less variety (8-12 dishes) don't look as impressive, but by design they drive food quality up (as the chef is under less pressure) and costs down (there are fewer ingredients to buy each night, of course).
  • The most generous interpretation of the confusing menu from "Sebastian's", which is so big that it leaves customers overwhelmed rather than wowed. Only the namesake owner really thought it was awesome, though, and it didn't help that he was using substandard ingredients.
  • Curry House attempted to incorporate a DIY menu, which doesn't work with the intricate flavors of Indian cuisine.

B

• Bad "Bad Acting": After food service has started off badly at Sebastian's, the owner instructs one of the waitresses to give Gordon the next dish while saying "As Sebastian's mother says, mangia!" Her delivery could not be more stilted, and Gordon sees right through it, joking that she's already gotten the part and making it clear that the performance was unnecessary. Given that she's an actress when not working, it's likely she just wasn't trying.
• Bait-and-Switch: Lisa had a tendency to hide in the bathroom when things were getting too stressful for her in "Lido di Manhattan's". When Gordon Ramsay revisited the establishment a year later, he returns... and Lisa's in the bathroom. But it turns out she wasn't hiding, just genuinely needed to take a bathroom break. Lisa proceeded to then showcase that she had done a 180 and became one of the show's genuine success stories.
• Beat:
  • In one of the American revisited episodes, Gordon asked one of the waiters (over food at the restaurant that replaced his) about his love life. The waiter then complained about how no one in New York is looking for a relationship, only for sex, which is okay for him as long as they don't string him along. There follows one of the most awkward pauses on the show, followed by Gordon asking "So, how about these sliders?"
  • From the Sebastian's episode:
    "So what do you do?"
    "I'm an actress."
    "Oh, do you play with Sebastian?"
    (Beat)
    "...cause he's an actor."
• Berserk Button:
  • Gordon has many:
    • One word: Pride. He really hates people who boast that their food is the best in the world, right in the face of a 13-star Michelin chef... aka insulting one of the Gods of culinary arts. Gordon uses Brutal Honesty to make them see the truth of their businesses' condition.
    • Do not lie to Gordon Ramsay. Even if the truth is something you know he won't like (the food isn't fresh, the kitchen isn't clean, etc.), lie to him and he will call you out on it. And if you try doubling down on a lie after he's already learned the truth... nice knowing you.
    • Mistreatment of wait staff will always set him off. Granted, some of the restaurants' wait staff are the Only Sane Man ready to tell Gordon the truth about the restaurant.
    • He hates it when chefs drink on the job because alcohol shifts focus (resulting in bad preparation) and can affect the chef's sense of taste, on top of the serious issue of alcoholism being rampant among chefs. Gordon also despises alcohol and alcoholics on a personal level, since his own father was an abusive drunkard.
    • He doesn't like it when men disrespect their mothers. In the "El Greco" episode, for example, it looked like he was about to strike the head chef after the chef cursed out his mother.
    • Workers coming in on their free time is a huge no-no to him, as he feels it disrupts discipline (how are you going to respect your boss when you were out drinking with him last night?) and intimidates customers with the wrong message (that the business prefers its own workers over its own customers).
    • To lesser extents: separating wait staff/front of house from the kitchen staff (to him, staff is staff, no matter their role, and waiters are just as important as the cooks and chefs), staff that are too casual and/or lax on the job (he doesn't even like smiling or joking on-the-job, as food work really is Serious Business if you want to keep afloat), and out-of-place cuisine (such as, in the case of the Sandgate Hotel, New Zealand-style BBQ instead of the seafood and Brit/French fusion dishes the region is known for).
    • He always dislikes oversize complicated menus (Sebastian learned this the hard way) and will always make sure there's a redesign towards affordability of "fresh local produce".
    • God help you if Ramsay finds you've cross contaminated raw meat with cooked meat; this is a one-way ticket to automatic shutdown. In Barefoot Bob's when he discovers raw pork next to hot wings he absolutely goes ballistic.
    • Referring to food that's previously been frozen as "fresh frozen"; for Gordon this demonstrates the owner's lack of common sense in preserving uncooked food and exposes them as liars when they claim to have the freshest food available; a surprisingly large number of restaurants have made this mistake. Not all of them have been mistakes however. In some cases, the owners claim that it wastes too much food to make everything to order, and use it as an excuse for the practice. In "Sabatello's" case, they were baking a whole lasagna and cutting it into servings and freezing it as a proported cost-saving measure.
    • Relatedly, using pre-frozen food when fresh produce is readily available; Gordon has even had to point this out to restaurants in towns with a thriving fishing or farming trade. The episode "Jack's Waterfront" in particular sees Gordon utterly flabbergasted that the eponymous seafood restaurant is buying frozen fish from the store and microwaving it rather than do business with the fishermen who work mere feet from their front door.
    • The Seascape episode saw a chef refuse Gordon's cooking, the first time it's ever happened to him. He is, to say the least, not pleased. The chef's days are numbered after that.
    • Never accuse Gordon of staging or otherwise faking things for the show. Not only was he ready to walk out of Blackberry's when he was accused of planting a dead mouse he found, he successfully sued a tabloid for libel when they published claims from Bonaparte's former owner that Ramsay had staged the conditions of her restaurant.
    • Chefs not taking dietary or health issues seriously is a major one for him. In "Mama Maria's" when he discovers that pork is in sauce being served to vegetarian diners he's NOT happy. In "Chappy's" he tries explaining the problems of cross-contaminating fish with other meats, and Chappy seems to react as though he's talking about a fad diet rather than a genuine health concern. He just seems baffled by the presence of an actual pescatarian who says they'll get sick from the presence of other meat products.
    • Gordon gets annoyed by excessively large sandwiches. When he encounters one, he'll often descontruct it and eat it with a knife and fork.
  • In the "Peter's" American episode, the burly, eponymous part-owner got enraged by a rude bill collector and chased him out into the street where he had to be restrained by Gordon and his staff.
  • Just about anything in the episode "Sebastian's" where the owner's batshit insane menu (pardon me, the batshit insane "concept") was challenged or threatened.
  • Joe Nagi from the "Mill Street Bistro" two-parter gets unreasonably furious about Gordon handing him back the raw micro-carrot he had used as a garnish on one dish.
• Better Than New: Ramsay and crew resurrect failing, insolvent restaurants, making them over into high-class fine dining establishments that are far nicer.
• Big Brother Mentor: Gordon has a soft spot for younger cooks. He's even hired a couple of Nightmare alumni who had their restaurants close down from under them. One that stands out is India, the chef of the Piccolo Teatro, a vegetarian restaurant in Paris. She'd accepted the job while still living in Scotland, and upon her arrival, Ramsay helped her to get situated and acquainted with the area. He also regaled her with stories of his time in Paris when, at the same age she is now, he had left Scotland for Paris to study French cuisine. Upon learning that the restaurant had closed, Gordon sought India out first and, upon learning that she was now unemployed and stranded in Paris, hired her for his restaurant in London.
• Big Damn Heroes: Often Gordon Ramsay, to the owners of the restaurants he saves.
• Bittersweet Ending: If the episode doesn’t conclude on a full-on Downer Ending, then it can conclude with this, with the restaurant being closed or other complications. For many, this is the best they can hope for:
  • In the Piccolo Teatro episode, Gordon arrives at the restaurant after some time had passed since his last visit, only to find it closed for good, thanks to the owner's laziness and that the owner had gone on to the prostitution business. So, where does the "sweet" part come in? Well, Gordon had found a promising young chef by the name of India who had been hired as the new chef at the Piccolo before it closed, and she was the first person he sought out after the restaurant's closure. She was stuck in Paris and unemployed because of how lazy the owner was, and Ramsay gave her work experience at the Boxwood Cafe in London.
    Ramsay: Let's look at getting you some work experience in London, because if she's, you know, not going to take full advantage of your level of excitement, then fuck it, I will!
  • Giuseppe's, despite doing very well after Gordon's intervention, was hit hard by a recession. During his year-later revisit, he learns that the owners are about to lose their house, and a month later, they end up having to close down. However, the family is closer than ever (something that none of them would have ever thought possible before Gordon came into their lives) and remain hopeful for the future.
  • After the relaunch of the Black Pearl, Gordon admits he had little optimism in its long-term future due to the arrogance of its owner and manager David, who insisted on butting heads with Ramsay and the rest of his staff at the expense of his restaurant's ability to function. Surely enough, the restaurant shuttered just after the episode aired, and Gordon returns to find it had been replaced by another eatery. On the upside, the young server who had been so supportive of Gordon's efforts is shown to be doing well since the Black Pearl's closure, and Gordon finds the new restaurant with its new food to be excellent.
  • When Gordon returns to Anna Vincenzo's a year later, he finds the place closed. However, upon visiting the former owner, he finds she has lost considerable weight and is happier since she sold the business to spend more time with her children.
  • Sam's Mediterranean Kebab Room is an interesting case - despite the restaurant's relaunch going 100% smoothly with no issues (unlike most which "break down" an hour into the relaunch), the place closed down because business failed to pick up due to local competition; in fact, another Mediterranean restaurant had opened and took their business in short order. But, the owner admitted that he'd really only had children so he could have unpaid employees for his business later in life, so the restaurant's closing at least allowed them to go on their own and live independent lives.
  • This sometimes happens after the fact. A number of restaurants (such as Maggie's and Love's Fish Restaurant in the UK version, and Lela's and Peter's in the US version) pulled themselves together, followed Ramsay's instructions to the hilt, and enjoyed some initial success... only to go out of business anyway when their financial backers pulled the rug from underneath them during the Great Recession, or the restaurant property was seized for failing to pay taxes.
  • Nearly happened with the owners of the Fenwick Arms pub, who turned Gordon's "Campaign for Real Gravy" idea into even more of a success than he ever imagined and kept running in the face of some new competitors that sprung up nearby... only for the couple that owned the pub to be evicted after the brewery "disagreed" with the campaign. Averted in the end, though, as they bought a new pub near York and resurrected their campaign with much success.
  • A similar thing happened with J. Willy's. Although the restaurant itself didn't survive in the long run, the BBQ sauce that Ramsay helped them to create proved a big success, and the restaurant's owner focused his efforts on that instead.
  • A particularly sad case with Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack: Ramsay proclaimed that their food was actually good even before he had to lift a finger, they had a team that gelled together, they really turned things around, things were going so well, and they expanded into a larger place... only for her to have to close the restaurant down due to the recession. The owner has since started a Youtube channel where she explains how to cook soul food, and now has over 100,000 subscribers.
  • Sometimes, Ramsay may not have been able to save the business, but he saved the owners and/or the family. A few restaurants did close or were sold to a new owner, but sometimes it was done because the owner had to move on or it was done to save the restaurant.
  • Leone's managed to pull things together after the episode was filmed and are still open as of 2020, even Michael managed to eventually become the manager the restaurant needed after Gordon's revisit helped break him of old habits, but Rose, the owner, passed away only 3 years after filming due to her ongoing health issues.
  • Capri closed their doors in September 2019 due to one of the brothers suffering health problems, after 8 years of remaining open thanks to Gordon's help. However only 3 months later the COVID-19 pandemic began, which would force many businesses to close down.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Whenever a chef claims that the typical disgusting kitchen had been supposedly "cleaned" recently.
  • If an owner promises that everything is fresh and homemade, you're virtually guaranteed to then immediately be shown a scene where the chefs are removing the dish from a freezer and heating it in a microwave. Even more entertaining are those who try to claim that food is "fresh frozen," an oxymoron that has now cropped up at least thrice on the program. This is a term apparently used to excuse food that was originally cooked fresh, but has since been sitting for a week or more in a freezer.
  • In the British episode "D-Place", head chef Philip lied so blatantly to Ramsay in one instance. Despite the oven not working properly, Philip tried to say that some clearly fried potatoes were baked after Gordon told Philip that he did not want him to rely so much on the fryer. He held on to this lie so tightly that even Ramsay was beginning to doubt himself. It was only after asking one of the chefs under Philip when he learned that he had, in fact, fried the potatoes.
  • In "Blackberry's", Ramsay discovers a dead mouse by the door in his second entrance to the restaurant. He asks the general manager, James, if an exterminator was ever hired, to which James claims they hire one once a month and he had been there last week (and then says behind Ramsay's back that it reminds him of a rat they found under a table a few months back). James later accuses Ramsay of planting the mouse for the sake of generating hits for the show. Ramsay gets greatly offended, and when he sees that the owner, Shelly, believes the lie (due to James having whispered it to her), he lets everyone know that they can take the restaurant and shove it because he's not going to be accused of pulling a stunt for TV. After some drama happens with Shelly, James apologizes to Ramsay.
  • In "The Black Pearl", Gordon discovers that the lobster dishes, which purportedly came from Maine, were all imported from Canada. The restaurant's arrogant owner David repeatedly makes excuses and sees no difference, and Gordon damn near loses it when he can't get him to fess up to his blatantly false advertising. David justifies the practice by claiming that since all the lobster comes from the same ocean, it's all the same lobster, so why say that it came from Canada or Maine?
  • In "Mill Street Bistro," Joe claims to be "self-taught by the greatest European chefs." Gordon seems to brush off the oxymoron in that statement, but it becomes clearly apparent when Gordon actually tries the food. Later on, when Gordon actually talks to Joe about Joe's food, Joe tries to backpedal and say "I didn't fucking tell you that!" when Gordon points out that statement of Joe's about being taught by the greatest chefs of Europe and we see a flashback from earlier proving Joe to be a liar. In addition, Joe initially told Gordon that all of the meat cooked at the restaurant comes from his personal ranch, but Gordon doesn't find any of it in the kitchen's storage when he checks it later.
  • In "Oceana", everyone was willing to lie to Ramsay about the condition of the food - except for Rami, because he cared enough about the business to be honest. They lied to Ramsay about having not frozen the crab cakes, only for that lie to be shot down by Rami, and they admit to Ramsay they have lied after being exposed. They even have a rather weak excuse for doing so: they don't get enough customers and they pointlessly make big batches of crab cakes. Next, they try to withhold the details of when the duck that Ramsay ate earlier was made, which is still not being honest as it is lying by omission, and they deny knowing when the duck was cooked... only for Moe to admit that it was cooked a month before and it was made outside of the restaurant's premises. Worst of all, nobody was even ashamed of that simple fact (except for Moe and Rami, perhaps). This alone almost got Gordon to say "screw it" and leave, as he will NOT tolerate being lied to by people he's trying to help.
  • In "Zayna's Flaming Grill", co-owner Fayza seems to be nothing but a chronic liar, and is called out for this constantly. More often than not, the actual truth is shown to the complete opposite of what she claims. She claims the rest of the staff do no work, that her food is fresh, and even lies about thawing meat in hot water, among many other fibs. It's unclear whether she is deliberately lying, or if she is possibly suffering from the early stages of dementia; what is known is that after the episode aired, she sold her half of the restaurant and left the business.
  • In "Zocalo", when Gordon notes the pricey nature of the food he asks co-owner Mary who sets the prices, and she tells him her husband Greg does. During a talk with Greg and Mary later, when Gordon is criticizing the quality of the food and pointing out it's practically robbery at those prices, Greg agrees and reveals Mary is the one who sets the prices and she has apparently changed prices without consulting him. A confused Gordon and Greg confront Mary on this, and she can only start blabbing excuses that she just set the prices based on how much Greg said it took to prepare the dishes, which Greg notes he still never told her to set them at those prices.
  • One episode had the owner of a Jamaican restaurant wailing that it's impossible to make fresh Jamaican food every day...which would beg the question as to how the people of Jamaica make food every day.
  • Sammy from "Sabatello's" ended up using cut rate meat instead of Black Label Angus on his menu to save costs. Gordon had to call him out on the practice more than once until Sammy got it, as he was charging the same prices for the cut-rate meats as he was for serving the higher-end Angus meats.
• Book Ends: Ramsay ends his visit at Mangia Mangia the same way he began, by pulling through the inexplicable drive-thru.
• Both Sides Have a Point: A frequency when there are two owners is that they correctly criticize the other, but won't own up to their own failings. In Luigi's Grace points out Tony is irresponsible which is why their kitchen doesn't run correctly. Tony argues that Grace scares away the customers they do have with her hostile attitude.
• Bow Chicka Wow Wow: Plays for a rather phallic looking chicken dish in the Sandgate Hotel episode of the British series.
• Breather Episode: Mama Maria's, which probably had the most sympathetic owner, came after the "La Galleria 33" two-parter.
• Brilliant, but Lazy:
  • The owner and staff of Momma Cherri's fit this trope, very charismatic and incredibly talented but with less than an ounce of discipline between them. Gordon manages to whip them into shape, however, and their natural ability combined with a bit of motivation leads to great success, until the recession, that is...
  • Lisa from Lido di Manhattan's. She was a business graduate, yet couldn't manage a restaurant and was too busy trying to be friendly with everyone. The fact that her restaurant is not only still open but has even updated the menu and launched its own wine brand shows that she's actually quite competent as an owner. Additionally, Lisa now owns a second restaurant, Playa Hermosa Fish & Oyster Co. at Hermosa Beach.
• Broken Ace: Many owners and chefs Gordon works with are very talented, but suffer from a lot of stress and/or corruption and can't cook at their best.
• Broken Pedestal: Downplayed in the Oceana episode. Owner Moe is the first one to defend chef Damon, dismissing any critique Gordon has and basically saying he has no right to complain since he knows nothing about cajun cuisine. But when Gordon shows him how lax and lazy chef Damon's methods are, and how much food spoils due to it, he really starts to see how much of a problem Damon is.
• Brutal Honesty: Ramsay's MO. And the only way half the restaurants ever improve.
• Bullying a Dragon: Don't accuse Gordon Ramsay of not knowing food. Just... don't.
• Bumbling Dad: Alan from Burger Kitchen, on so many levels. He took $250,000 out of his son's trust fund (without his knowledge/permission) to buy a restaurant he had no idea how to run. And he was confused as to why his son resented him. Oh, and at one point he gives Gordon a copy of a book he wrote about how horribly his own father treated him as a child; he never puts two and two together until Gordon explicitly spells it out for him later.
• But Now I Must Go: Chef Ramsay sometimes has this effect when he's finally fixed the restaurant, but the owner(s) wish he could stay longer. The most blatant case is in the episode of "La Galleria 33," after Gordon finished his episode postscript and walked away, Co-owner Rita chased him down the sidewalk and begged him to stay longer, as Gordon humorously rejected the request.

C

• Call-Back: As he walks away at the end, Chef Ramsay mutters a reference to a memorable segment of the episode (e.g., "Nino. He can really clean. And take pictures, apparently.")
• The Cameo: In "The Handlebar" episode, Mick Foley can be seen entering the restaurant on the night of the relaunch.
• Catchphrase: Oh, fuck me. It's raw!!!
  • When he discovers some of the truly nasty kitchen conditions, which happens MUCH more often than it should, Gordon likes to remind the chefs and owners that "I'VE EATEN HERE!!"
  • "It's ROOOOOOTTEEEEEN!"
  • More than once in the British version Gordon has stated "I wouldn't trust you/him to run a fucking bath, let alone a kitchen."
  • "What a shame." to describe the first dish he gets that disappoints. More often than not, it's the first dish he is served, and his comments quickly go downhill from there.
  • "Damn. Damn damn damn." Usually said by Ramsay to express disappointment at the quality of the food.
  • "Have you given up?"
  • "You need to step up to the plate!"
  • "SHUT IT DOWN!"
  • "Holy mackerel."
  • "Oh my god..." when things are going downhill or are about to or when finding something really nasty in a fridge.
  • "What is that?" is often uttered when doing his inspection of fridges.
  • "I'm not here to blow smoke up your ass!" Typically said to people who were expecting to get compliments from him instead of criticisms.
  • "Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow."
  • For Nino, he has a catchphrase of its own that has ended up gaining Memetic Mutation on the official Kitchen Nightmares channel (usually in the form of The Stinger): ''HI, MY NAME'S NINOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
• Chained Heat: In the episode featuring "The Greek at the Harbor," Ramsay handcuffed a father and son to force the father to teach his son to cook; the father was burnt out after doing it all himself for years, but too stubborn to quit.
• Character Development: Gordon often tries to invoke this as he not only aims to improve the restaurant, but also the people who run it. Sadly, this is often averted as the restaurant owners usually revert back to their old ways after he leaves. It is played straight with some of them, though, as they really do make a change in their restaurant and themselves.
  • Lisa from Lido's is one example. At the beginning she was an immature owner who hid in the bathroom, was dating one of her employees and hated/ignored Gordon. When Gordon revisited her, she had made some big changes. She took his lessons to heart and really wanted to impress him by remembering what he taught her. She was a much more successful, assertive professional whose restaurant had improved profits by 20%, and she was even actually launching her own brand of wine.
  • Rishi from the Prohibition Grille. She starts off totally oblivious to all things restaurant related, not even knowing what "soup of the day" is supposed to mean. She's the owner but unwelcome in her own kitchen, and thinks her chef Rocky is a genius when he's lazy and barely putting in any effort to make the food edible, nevermind good. With some encouragement from Gordon, she gets the strength to fire Rocky, and take a turn in the kitchen herself, revealing that she's always loved cooking but wasn’t permitted while Rocky was there. She dresses more fitting for a restaurant owner and with her increased confidence and joy in her business, engages with staff and customers on friendly terms, making everyone feel welcome. And she stops doing belly dance dinner shows that make everyone feel awkward.
  • On the flipside, we have Sebastian. Ramsay gives the restaurant an overhaul, a new approach, and a new start. However, he also takes Sebastian aside and explains that, even after all this, Sebastian is the same useless, misguided and pretentious frat-boy loser he's always been, and he's a waste of time to try to mentor as a chef *or* as an owner. As you can see in the page quote, it's brutal. And just to take it a step further, around the time the episode originally aired, Sebastian posted anonymously on several culinary websites trying to defend himself while he talked shit about Gordon; the other posters quickly realized it was him and called him out on it.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • In the two-parter "The Burger Kitchen", Alan lends Gordon a copy of his memoir of his father. When Gordon reads it, he finds that the father-son situation from the past was repeating itself in the current times between Alan and Daniel, much to Alan's own obliviousness. By the time Gordon makes light of it with the entire family gathered around, it comes across as a pretty brutal slap on the head for Alan. Manly Tears were shed at that moment, as well.
  • In "Michonne's Grill", Ramsay makes a big deal about the expensive smokers in the restaurant that the staff are misusing, calling them the "Rolls Royce of smokers". Later on in relaunch night, the chefs in the kitchen have trouble keeping up with the orders and make the barbecue VIPs that will put the restaurant on the map wait for their meals. The owner, Natalie, saves the day by bringing them out to see said smokers, knowing that the experts would be impressed enough to tolerate the extended wait for their food.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Daniel, the original head chef of Piccolo Teatro in the UK version. There is rarely a moment when he's not ambling about dancing and singing, even when he's cooking. Unfortunately, this dancing and singing drastically slows down the pace of his work. He also does not take the owner seriously, and after she fires him, he lingers in the kitchen, then continues his singing and dancing wandering around the dining area in front of the customers. Gordon had to literally carry him out of the restaurant and lock the front door for him to get the idea that he was fired.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes:
  • Several chefs who are professional chefs, yet can't cook right.
  • Lisa from Lido di Manhattan's is a business graduate who gets flustered and spends a lot of time crying in the bathroom. However, she's far more competent than it seems.
• Comically Missing the Point: After one lunch, to drive home the point of how much of his orders were microwaved, he asks the kitchen staff what item he had that WASN'T microwaved. After a brief pause, one of the staff tells him the salad he ate wasn't microwaved. It's made even more funny by the fact that the staff member was completely earnest. After an unspoken "Seriously?" Gordon calls him a "Fucking donut."
• Companion Cube: In El Greco, the microwave is used so often the restaurant employees refer to it as "Chef Mike."
• Control Freak: Several owners and chefs.
• Cool, but Inefficient: Davide featured Caesar salads made from scratch tableside (one of the few things on the menu that wasn't premade or frozen), but it took the waiter ten minutes to make one, and when Gordon tried to eat it, all the dressing fell off the lettuce because the waiter forgot to dry it.
  • Sebastian's pizza menu (available here on web archive). It's massively bloated, featuring eight types of fries (for a pizzeria), burgers, sandwiches, steaks, seafood, salads, desserts and even breakfasts on weekends. It took the waitresses up to ten to fifteen minutes of their time, each time to explain how the "concept" worked to the customers. Indecisive customers were left overwhelmed with options that often didn't work together at all. And on top of all that, the sheer amount of food bought in meant the restaurant was paying through the nose in costs.
• Cool Old Lady:
  • Charita aka. Momma Cherri, of Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack. You know that you are a truly exceptional cook when one of the world's most renowned chefs clears his plate of all your food and calls it "bloody delicious".
  • Rosemary Leone, of Leone's. Well regarded by all of her staff as a kind and affable woman, bearing up through poor health with a cheerful attitude and still working at the restaurant despite spending three years in a coma, and even showing a feisty side by playfully flirting with Gordon.
  • Mary, from Blackberry's. While Shelly was very much a Lethal Chef, her mother Mary who chips in on the dessert fridge made a delicious red velvet cake that even impressed Gordon (leading to a quote that became the birth of an internet meme). She also delivers a simple but epic putdown to Shelly when she laughs off Gordon's critiques.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: Has happened with quite a few of the chefs.
  • Laurence from "La Para de Burianna" stands out in that he made prawns in spicy chocolate sauce and chicken with banana filling. What makes it worse is that unlike a lot of the other cooks featured on the show, Laurence actually did make sure to get quality ingredients, but ruined them by serving them in bizarre combinations. It didn't help that he didn't really cook the ingredients up to par, either, as everything was cooked either on a dirty flat-top stove, or on a barbecue by Laurence's blatantly incompetent (and borderline insane) sous-chef.
  • Amy from "Amy's Baking Company" is a similar example in that she uses a variety of unconventional recipes and cooking methods for her decent-quality ingredients. While only a few of the recipes are explored, it's apparent that Amy does this for the restaurant's entire menu, as nobody is satisfied with their food during the course of the dinner service. Gordon's mentions include the following:
    • The pizza Amy made for him was rather sweet with an undercooked crust.
    • Her Blue Ribbon Burger is overloaded with extra ingredients and flavors, on top of being soaked through with grease.
    • The Red Pepper Ravioli's flavor is a combination of sweet and spicy, which Gordon considers a bad flavor mix for ravioli.
    • Amy's salmon burger is overcooked to the point of being dry and flavorless.
  • A peculiar example was Sebastian's, whose "unique" menu involved combining a variety of spices and "flavor combinations" with different meats, many of which made no sense together. After Sebastian himself tried, in vain, to explain the menu to Ramsay for almost twenty minutes (with the servers behind the counter laughing at Gordon's expression), Ramsay just had Sebastian bring out what he thought was best. Ramsay was not pleased with the results.
    • A good number of his pizza ideas were simply not flavour-balanced. Take the "Meat Man" for example: salami, pepperoni, bacon, sausage, blue cheese, BBQ sauce and basil, with nothing to counteract all that salty flavour.
  • Gordon described the menu at Park's Edge as "fusion confusion", and that was before he tasted an overly-spicy grilled Caesar salad with grilled lettuce and a sesame-grilled salmon with a red onion ragù, strawberries, sticky rice, and green curry sauce. The head chef and one of the co-owners opened the restaurant right out of culinary school, and hadn't quite got the hang of which flavours work together.
  • At the Mill Street Bistro, Gordon doesn't know how to react when served a quesadilla stuffed with elk meat.
• Country Matters: In possibly the biggest row ever seen in the series, Gordon gets so fed up with Michel's arrogance and stubborness that they get into a heated profanity-laden argument that ends with Gordon calling him a lazy cunt before storming off.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Twins Jeff & Jim from Capri. They spend the episode slacking off, cracking under pressure in the kitchen, and bursting into tears of self-pity from their own incompetence. They somehow managed to acquire serious cooking and business savvy out of nowhere, since Capri stayed in business for more than seven years until September 2019, when they sold the restaurant and retired.

D

• Dagwood Sandwich:
  • The Cowboy Burger at the Burger Kitchen, which was a full-pound patty whose vegetables and bun were roughly half of its diameter. Gordon could not figure how to eat it, and he made it clear to the waitstaff with his gestures.
  • In Cafe Hon he was given a massive club sandwich with crab cake. After trying and failing to figure out how to get it in his mouth he just gave in and disassembled it with his utensils to eat the bits separately.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to the UK version, the US version goes out of its way to emphasize everything, from the incompetence of the staff to the level of yelling that happens in each episode. While in the UK run owners could have problems and hygiene could be poor in some restaurants, the American one often features owners whose story would be worthy of a soap opera or are completely delusional, and absolutely filthy kitchens. Ramsay would also only occasionally shout in anger in the UK series, whereas the US series tones up the yelling and insults among everyone.
• Deadpan Snarker: Ramsay: "Eduardo, no wonder you've gotten so old. You've been waiting so long for the food to be served."
• Diabolus ex Machina: There have been several instances where the relaunch was a success, only for the restaurant's business to be later derailed by a random factor that neither Gordon nor the owners could've reasonably seen coming. Particularly striking examples are "Jackson's" in the UK version, where Gordon returns in the epilogue to discover that a disgustingly unsanitary bus station moved in next door a few months later and drove away all the customers the relaunch had brought in; and "Fiesta Sunrise" in the US version, which went from one of the most disgusting establishments Gordon had ever seen to a complete success, only to be killed by bad publicity a few years later after someone was murdered in their parking lot.
  • Several restaurants that Gordon helped to turn around ultimately went out of business during the 2008 recession or the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • This exchange from "Mama Rita's".
    Gordon: What's wrong with the place?
    Cheryl: Lack of customers.
    Gordon: So why have you got a lacking of customers?
    Cheryl: We need more customers.
  • One particular meal Gordon had is a five cheese fried ravioli, with one of said cheeses used being skimmed cheese. When Gordon asks the waiter what this means, well...
    Waiter: It's fat-free cheese, dipped in fat.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • One of the recurring themes in both versions is the restaurant was recently bought by an owner or owners with little to no previous food service experience, with retirement or life savings. Ramsay is constantly exasperated that people think running a restaurant is easy and is something you do in retirement to pass the time.
  • Several of the people featured would try to cut down on costs or time, inadvertedly exacerbating the very situation that caused it. In one case a chef was using a flat-top grill to combat his kitchen constantly being backed up, unaware that the flat top was taking longer to cook individual dishes, backing up the kitchen and causing the very problem he was trying to fight.
  Gordon: A restaurant is a business, not a second home.
  • Many of the restaurants featured would try to make a profit by cooking food ahead of time and reheating it via microwave, and sell it for a premium. The problem is, this causes a huge decline in quality that drives customers away, despite the best efforts of the restaurant owners to "pull the wool over their customers' eyes".
• Disproportionate Retribution: Overlapping with Can't Take Criticism, Denise of Cafe Hon 86es (in other words, pulls from the menu, including discarding any that's already prepared) almost the entire menu — including basics like French fries — over minor complaints^note some of which she caused by yelling at the chefs for not plating asparagus the way she liked while they were trying to cook, distracting them and preventing them from cooking the food properly, and banning them from seasoning the fries, resulting in them being served bland, leading to over seven hundred dollars' worth of perfectly useable ingredients being dumped and wasted in one night.
  • Katy, the waitress from Amy's Baking Company, asked Amy for confirmation that an order was going to the right table. Amy's response? Fire the waitress on the spot, drive her to tears and then call her back to tell her she shouldn't walk away from her while reminding her that she was still fired.
• Don't Like? Don't Read!: The chef at "Luigi's D'Ltalia" basically said in an interview that if people don't like his food, they can get the fuck out of there rather than criticize him.
• Dope Slap: Gives one to a head chef whose palate was so shot that during a blind taste test, he said that he would serve Ramen Noodles with swordfish as opposed to the other sides that Ramsay put up for consideration.
• Downer Ending: In truckloads. Even though the concept of the show is to try to prevent this, it doesn't usually succeed, usually because the financial damage has been done long before Ramsay's arrival, and/or the owners simply do not have the business skills to keep it going after he leaves. Originally, the biggest difference between the UK and US versions of the show was that the UK series is unafraid to admit when a Nightmares reboot hasn't succeeded in turning around a restaurant's fortunes. However, it should be noted that restaurants are inherently a risky business, with only a 50% of them managing to stay in business for any length of time. To put it in perspective, out of the 44 restaurants from the first four seasons of the US series, only seven are still open.
  • Two restaurants in the UK version, D-Place and Piccolo Teatro, ended up closing even before the episode ended — the former because the landlord had already decided to evict them before Ramsay arrived, the latter due to the laziness of its owner.
  • The US version seems to be more willing to admit when a relaunch hasn't entirely worked as of Season 3; aside from the incident with Bazzini's dessert chef, the episode featuring PJ's ended with the owners admitting they weren't up to the task of running a restaurant and subsequently selling it.
  • The Cafe Tavolini episode had perhaps the biggest downer ending of any Kitchen Nightmares episode until that point, with the possible exception of the UK pilot. At first it had the usual ending, with Ramsay telling the owners that they now had everything they needed to make the restaurant a success, and the owners appearing optimistic about the future. Immediately afterward, the epilogue revealed that the owners never got behind Ramsay's changes or tried to do a better job of managing the place — consequently, the restaurant closed, everyone lost their jobs, the owners lost their house, and their marriage collapsed.
  • The "Amy's Baking Company" episode ends on an incredibly negative note: the toxic, abusive behaviors of Amy and Samy, topped by their refusal to accept any sort of criticism, is enough for Gordon to completely give up on helping their business. No redemption, no restaurant makeover, Gordon just leaves, concluding that he "can't help people that can't help themselves".
  • Probably the ultimate example being Campania's from Fair Lawn, NJ. Despite initially starting to recover after Gordon's visit, owner Joseph Cerniglia separated from his wife Melissa after she discovered he was having an affair with the pastry chef and filed for divorce, and she took custody of the children too. Joseph sold the restaurant in September 2010 and then eight days later took his own life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge. The episode still does not re-air in the US out of respect for Joseph and his family.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: An unfortunate reality that contributed to some of the series' downer and bittersweet endings. Some restaurants actually did follow Ramsay's advice - but they unfortunately did so well that they couldn't keep up with demand and/or their lease(s) went up.^*A lot of restaurants and stores don't actually own the building(s) they are in - this is incredibly risky, as it means they will have trouble relocating. Increased success can often cause the lease to go up, and can even harm their neighbouring businesses since their leases go up, too.
• Drama Queen: Many owners have acted out before or during Gordon's involvement, some moreso than others.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: A majority of owners will fail to recognize the methods they're doing to run their businesses are the reason they need Ramsay's help.
  • "Burger Kitchen": the owners fail to recognize that their son's resentment comes from using his money without his permission.
  • "Sebastian's": the owner is trying to make his restaurant into a franchise, but Gordon tells him that it's ridiculous to even consider expanding when his first restaurant isn't even succeeding.
  • "Prohibition Grille": the owner is oblivious to how bad her food is as long as she can entertain diners with bellydancing. What she doesn't realize is that her diners aren't interested in her dancing and are upset with the food.
  • "Michon's": Gordon questions why Natalie puts the freshly made meat from the smokers into bags to be in the fridge then reheated when ordered. She states she was trying to figure out how to serve the meat after it's done cooking, but Gordon points out that it's a no-brainer.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • Mike, the chef at Mike & Nellie's, in order to cope with the death of his father. Not surprisingly, it was affecting the quality of the restaurant.
  • John, the owner of Mama Maria's, hits the bar hard after being forced to call 911 on a customer suffering food poisoning from a tainted lobster tail.
• Dysfunctional Family: Most of the restaurants that are family operated tend to suffer from this, as the failing business begins to drive a severe wedge between everyone.
  • The Burger Kitchen episode featured a family that treated their son like absolute crap. On top of that, they pretty much stole $250,000 from him to finance the restaurant in the first place.
  • Greek At The Harbor: The son (who was technically the restaurant manager when Ramsay arrived) had made a thoughtless speech at the party (thrown by his parents) celebrating his graduation from college in which he said he wasn't interested in working at the restaurant anymore. Even though he very soon changed his mind, he hurt his parents' feelings - in particular his father's - so badly that they pretty much cut him out of any role in running the place or learning how to cook the menu. When Ramsay came to the restaurant, the son had been essentially relegated to the role of floor-show entertainer, doing Greek dances.
  • The UK series has the family running The Dovecot. The father more or less spends the family's dwindling cash on things they do not need without his wife knowing, and has his adopted daughter take the fall for his inability to cook. When Ramsay gets there, they are on the razor's edge of breaking up completely.
  • Sushi-Ko's head chef had become little more than a shell of a man which caused him to almost completely ignore his family as a result.
  • The owner of Pantaleone had become so pig-headed that it took his wife and son threatening to abandon him to get him to agree to change the way he ran the restaurant.
  • The brothers at Nino's seem to have issues that go beyond the restaurant's failure.

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