If a short-tempered chef screaming creative insults in a British accent sounds familiar, you've probably seen Gordon Ramsay at his finest. One show that features much of this is Kitchen Nightmares, an American reality TV show on the Fox network, in which Ramsay attempts to revive failing restaurants. In Kitchen Nightmares, Gordon Ramsay pulls no punches, loudly and decisively calling out the mistakes he sees in an effort to whip the downtrodden restaurant at hand into shape. One especially horrific episode of Kitchen Nightmares centers on a disgusting frozen pizza at J Willy's Barbecue House.
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Kitchen Nightmares Episodes
gordon ramsay yelling at people on kitchen nightmares is free therapy for me
— ella (@boobagorl) December 21, 2020
Each episode of Kitchen Nightmares shows chef Gordon Ramsay spending a week in a struggling restaurant, observing and giving advice (in between the creative insults). One of the show's successes is its visit to Pantaleone's New York Pizza in Denver, Colorado. After being on Gordon Ramsay's show, this Italian restaurant is considered some of the best pizza in Colorado and has over 200 yelp reviews, along with a 4.5 rating on tripadvisor! Pantaleone's thin crust pizza is called by many the best pizza in Denver. Other popular Kitchen Nightmares episodes are those focusing on Amy's Baking Company, Mama Maria and Oceana.
This episode of Kitchen Nightmares focuses on J Willy's, a failing barbecue restaurant in South Bend, Indiana. J Willy's is owned by couple Rick and Tricia, along with John. Rick and Tricia live three hours away from the restaurant, leaving John to run it in their absence. This seems to be part of the problem, since John's questionable decisions regarding ingredients and cooking processes are a large factor in the restaurant's unsavory food.
An Appalling Visit to J Willy's
When J Willy's was featured on Kitchen Nightmares, the restaurant was already $1.2 million in debt. They reached out to celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay as a last hope that his harsh but valuable advice could save them. Gordon Ramsay is famous for his role in Hell's Kitchen, another reality TV show in which two chefs compete to become head chef of a restaurant.
In Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsay starts the process by coming to observe the goings-on at J Willy's business. He is met with an appalling scene. One of his first experiences of the night is observing the head chef preparing a sausage pizza on the Kitchen Nightmares episode. Gordon Ramsay is horrified to discover that it is a frozen pizza covered in frozen sausage, exclaiming "That's the saddest excuse for a pizza I've ever seen in my entire life!" He then criticizes a bag of cooked chicken that "smells like cat food."
Ramsay surveys the pizza place's ingredients, discovering that the potatoes still have dirt on them. Restaurant owners Tricia and Rick explain that John has been cutting corners with the ingredients in his attempt to keep the badly run restaurant going. Tricia criticizes the quality of the food, saying that she wouldn't even feed it to her dog. Throughout the night, Ramsay watches customer after customer send back food, many of whom eventually leave without eating.
Here's a YouTube clip of the restaurant's brutal review by chef Gordon Ramsay:
Throughout the next week, Ramsay provides fresh ingredients and teaches the inexperienced kitchen staff how to cook an assortment of crowd-pleasing dishes. He performs a culinary makeover, creating a new menu with better ingredients. Sadly, this struggling restaurant couldn't be saved by Gordon Ramsay, and it closed within weeks of being featured on Kitchen Nightmares. This was a sad time for J Willy's, but it certainly proved entertaining for America!
