GORDON Ramsay is an entertaining sort. I like his ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ thing, well I hate every single person who’s ever been on it, but I like the bits when they get told off.
It irks me that these people ever had the notion to be in the restaurant business and its happening every day. Some arsehole who’s made a few quid doing up council houses decides that seeing as he’s been to the odd restaurant for a bit of well done steak him and his best mate who used to manage a Ladbrokes should open up a “bar and grill” with the vapid expectation that “if we build it…they will come”.
'These criminals should have their own
testicles served to them, medium rare,
on a bed of raw violence'
I occasionally get asked by friends for advice on opening bars and restaurants. My advice is simple, if you haven’t done the time – forget it.
Liverpool has tons of great places that I hope will flourish – but for every great new place opened by seasoned experts with a long and gleaming history of success in one of the most demanding and competitive markets in existence, there’ll be at least one contemptuous, plastic funhouse of a gaff – badly thought out, badly designed and badly managed. Save yourself the heartache and spend the money on plastic surgery and a new Cayenne.
I commend the patience of the aforementioned Mr Ramsay, I’d end up doing time for these marauding gobshites. What I cannot condone is that he will then reward their consummate dumbwittedry by redesigning the restaurant, teaching everybody how to actually do their jobs and saving the business.
I would rather see a TV show where an expert visited restaurants that were doing quite well, gave them a pat on the back, some free publicity and then everybody sits down and has a nice dinner and a pleasant chat.
Either that or Ramsay should continue to visit morons but doesn’t help them – they have their business taken away then have to fight to the death against rabid mutants in a post-apocalyptic arena…music by Toto.
I especially hate it when Gordon returns to a restaurant he’s salvaged and they have returned to former, erroneous ways and are right back in the mire. It’s usually some part time pan-jockey with too many cookbooks trying to reinvent the wheel by serving everything with “foams” and “swooshes” on plates made of fossilised mermaid.
These criminals should have their own testicles served to them, medium rare, on a bed of raw violence.
Which leads me to another thing: who writes these crackpot menus? “Ballotine of Chicken Hips with a disgruntlement of radish sweat, served on a flourish of dolphin nipples with a pepper spray and moonrock infused jelly”.
And who gives a monkey’s nut how the bloody thing was caught? “Diver-tormented sea urchins” – “Hand molested baby pigeon” – “Accidentally electrocuted pheasant”. Get a grip.
I saw a menu recently which used three different words for the same effing thing, “rocket, rucolla and arugula”; another using the terms “spring onions” and “scallions”. Just stop it. Stop.
Why A Plumber Should Not Open A Restaurant
If it takes me half an hour to decipher the pretentious ramblings of a deluded maniac, that’s half an hour that I won’t be spending any money, half an hour spent on your precious real estate doing nothing but giving myself a migraine and a churning gut. When a badly conceived menu becomes the focus of dinner, we may as well jump in the river and be done with it.
So if you’re sitting there with a good few grand in the bank, hard earned Sterling just waiting to be invested, look back at how you made the money in the first place and do a bit more of that.
Don’t waste your money, your time and precious moments of all of our lives by throwing it down the never ending drain of opening a third rate restaurant. Nobody cares how great you think it is or how amazing you believe yourself to be or how many times you’ve tested the patience of a good restaurant with your borrowed and fleeting expertise.
I used to get a train to work every day – I would neither attempt to drive one or build one, should the opportunity every arise.
