Three Emmy Winners: Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

RAMSAY'S KITCHEN NIGHTMARES.  The Brits carried off a number of the Emmys for foreign shows, and of course we are so glad that Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares took the award for best non-scripted show.  I've said it before, but I'll say it again:  I think everyone in America should watch Ramsay deal with these ailing restaurants.  In so many instances the solutions turn out to be going in the direction most business owners don't ever seem to contemplate:  from practices that are expensive and complicated to simpler, less expensive solutions. 

Perhaps I'm drawn to this sort of situation because my late husband Don was in the business.  So many people who open restaurants are blinded by their own visions, without regard to the demographics, local preferences, and local spending habits.

I saw a bit of this in my old hometown in the Carolinas, where a friend of mine who married a chef actually opened a (by local standards) fine dining restaurant that's succeeded.  It's successful because it combines fine food with a comfortable atmosphere, and while the food is pricy by local standards, it's only fairly pricy. Moreover, it's all food that people in a small southern town would eat anyway---just more elegantly prepared and presented.   For example, my mom's favorite thing on the menu is the chocolate bread pudding.  It's a sort of elegant riff on the typical meat-with-two-vegetables that people in the south prefer when they're eating what my mom used to call "the big meal of the day."  Everything served is like the delicious ideal of itself.  Furthermore, the chef didn't get carried away with visions of ris de veau or hearts of beef casserole, because Southerners just won't eat those things on purpose.

Finally, the place is only as large as the traffic will bear.  While it's never crowded, I've never been there when we were the lone diners (which is uncomfortable, cold, and disconcerting).  The decor is plain, but comfortable.  The money goes into the food. 

Anyway, I love watching Ramsay pinpoint and skewer the sorts of problems that develop right beneath a particular restaurant owner's blind spot.  A menu that is ambitious beyond the chef's competence, food that isn't right for the area or the atmosphere, staff who've fraternized too long with the management and become too comfortable, cooks who have no passion for the art, owners who rely on prepared sauces...all are just grist to the Ramsay mill. 

It's strangely satisfying, as I've said before, to see competence in action and to watch a person who has the passion for an undertaking offering guidance to others.   I'm glad other yanks share my enjoyment of Ramsay's style of intervention.  I hope the BBC will let us have more of him. 

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