Thursday Thoughts # 92
from Strange Magic: A Yancy Lazarus novel by James Hunter
" That's the mark of a good leader: not someone who can do everything, but rather someone who knows what they can and cannot do, and surrounds themselves with competent professionals to fill in the gaps."
"God must have one heck of a sense of humor. Just wish I wasn't always the butt of the jokes."
"So he was joking. I still wanted to give him a thousand paper cuts and throw him into a piranha tank."
"The world blurred and all of the oxygen I'd been enjoying suddenly left me without so much as a Dear John letter."
Today's Thoughts:
Gordon Ramsay's Costa Del Nightmares.
I've watched a few of these in the past weeks and I'm beginning to really like Gordon Ramsay.
Called in to help by the parents, he's gone into a disaster of a Bar and Grill, tasted the menu items, which were prepared from items taken from a freezer, so were predictably awful.
Gordon goes through the kitchen. There's bad food in the fridge, no one knows how long it's been there.
It's a family run business, parents retired, two sons in their 30s, one runs the bar, one cooks, and a younger daughter, waitressing. The sons are on the way to becoming alcoholics, drinking along with the customers, (and alone), with the one who runs the bar knowing nothing about the wines he is selling.
Which are actually horrible cheap plonks instead of quality wines.
Gordon asks to taste the wine and asks for a red. He then asks where does the wine come from? the son says, well it comes in these bottles.
When asked to describe a wine he's recommending, he admits he can't.
Even worse, he talks back to the customers and even criticises them for disagreeing with him. I watched that bit with my jaw hanging open. OMG!
At one point, the local drunk goes behind the bar and grabs a bottle of wine to serve customers waiting outside. Naturally Gordon stops him.
No wonder the place isn't doing well.
(Let's not get into the grubby customer bathrooms and dead cockroach)
So Gordon dresses the sons up in clean white shirts and takes the boys to another restaurant where they spend an entire day shadowing the regular staff and learning from them how they should be doing things.
One important lesson is don't wipe your sweaty forehead on your clean white sleeve!
Back at the family Bar and Grill, Gordon changes the too big, complicated menu to a much simpler one based on locally available fresh foods, and things begin to turn around.
As they always do. There's also an entire new stock of good wines and no freezer foods.
After making no profit at all for a year before Gordon gets there, Gordon returns after six months to see how the place is faring since he set them up and on a better path.
The sons have sobered up, the kitchen is running well, and the son who runs the bar can tell the difference between rubbish and good wine.
" That's the mark of a good leader: not someone who can do everything, but rather someone who knows what they can and cannot do, and surrounds themselves with competent professionals to fill in the gaps."
"God must have one heck of a sense of humor. Just wish I wasn't always the butt of the jokes."
"So he was joking. I still wanted to give him a thousand paper cuts and throw him into a piranha tank."
"The world blurred and all of the oxygen I'd been enjoying suddenly left me without so much as a Dear John letter."
Today's Thoughts:
Gordon Ramsay's Costa Del Nightmares.
I've watched a few of these in the past weeks and I'm beginning to really like Gordon Ramsay.
Called in to help by the parents, he's gone into a disaster of a Bar and Grill, tasted the menu items, which were prepared from items taken from a freezer, so were predictably awful.
Gordon goes through the kitchen. There's bad food in the fridge, no one knows how long it's been there.
It's a family run business, parents retired, two sons in their 30s, one runs the bar, one cooks, and a younger daughter, waitressing. The sons are on the way to becoming alcoholics, drinking along with the customers, (and alone), with the one who runs the bar knowing nothing about the wines he is selling.
Which are actually horrible cheap plonks instead of quality wines.
Gordon asks to taste the wine and asks for a red. He then asks where does the wine come from? the son says, well it comes in these bottles.
When asked to describe a wine he's recommending, he admits he can't.
Even worse, he talks back to the customers and even criticises them for disagreeing with him. I watched that bit with my jaw hanging open. OMG!
At one point, the local drunk goes behind the bar and grabs a bottle of wine to serve customers waiting outside. Naturally Gordon stops him.
No wonder the place isn't doing well.
(Let's not get into the grubby customer bathrooms and dead cockroach)
So Gordon dresses the sons up in clean white shirts and takes the boys to another restaurant where they spend an entire day shadowing the regular staff and learning from them how they should be doing things.
One important lesson is don't wipe your sweaty forehead on your clean white sleeve!
Back at the family Bar and Grill, Gordon changes the too big, complicated menu to a much simpler one based on locally available fresh foods, and things begin to turn around.
As they always do. There's also an entire new stock of good wines and no freezer foods.
After making no profit at all for a year before Gordon gets there, Gordon returns after six months to see how the place is faring since he set them up and on a better path.
The sons have sobered up, the kitchen is running well, and the son who runs the bar can tell the difference between rubbish and good wine.
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The people who get his help are the fortunate ones, as are their customers! I know a couple of places that could really use his help - oops, they are out of business!
ReplyDeleteS.J.Qualls; there are too many places that go out of business simply because the owners don't know what they are doing. It looks and sounds like easy money, but often they have no proper training, so no knowledge of foods or wines and therefore don't know how to manage a kitchen or know if something is going wrong.
DeleteI love Kitchen Nightmares, but I wish Ramsey wouldn't swear so f-----g much
ReplyDeletefishducky; the swearing is off-putting, but I've got into the habit of not hearing those words.
DeleteI've seen it once and I couldn't believe how hopeless the owners were. While the show is very watchable, I can't bear Ramsey.
ReplyDeleteI've seen it once and I couldn't believe how hopeless the owners were. While the show is very watchable, I can't bear Ramsey.
ReplyDeleteAndrew; agreed, the owners are usually hopeless and make things worse by insisting the kitchen staff do things the way the owners think they should be done.
DeleteI tend to distrust those programs where a celebrity comes in to save the day. And Gordon Ramsey's own kitchens have had issues. They make for good television though. And educating people that kitchens should be clean and food fresh is sadly necessary.
ReplyDeleteElephant's Child; in days past when there was something worth watching on TV, I never watched Gordon Ramsay, but it fills a time slot between the news and whatever show I'm waiting for and of course the insistence on fresh foods and clean kitchens is spot on. I like seeing the bits where he goes through fridges, freezers and store rooms clearing out what sometimes amounts to years worth of supplies that clearly should never have been allowed to accumulate.
DeleteIt sounds like the restaurant is on a road to recovery. I don't watch these types of shows, but it sounds like they got good advice and instructions.
ReplyDeleteTerra Hangen; welcome to drifting. I didn't used to watch these shows, but there was better TV back then, now it's all repeats or reality shows. I like the fact Gordon Rmasay egts in there and tosses out menus and old accumulated supplies that shouldn't be used and shows them that fresh food is so much better and brings in more customers.
DeleteI've worked in restaurant when I was younger. Have nor desire to. Mostly own one there profit margin is so tight.
ReplyDeleteCoffee is on
peppylady (Dora); I've never worked in a restaurant, but I have worked in a hospital kitchen, which might be similar, but less intense as there aren't extra people dropping in requiring so many different meals. I wouldn't want to own a restaurant.
DeletePortrays a typical Western Sydney 'Greasy Spoon' cafeterior
ReplyDeleteVest; I don't think I've ever eaten in a "Greasy Spoon" type place. I have bought from takeaway fish'n'chips shops that also do burgers, but don't have eat-in facilities and they've been okay.
DeleteGorden goes to weird restaurants but that's his job regarding that show.
ReplyDeleteHate to think of any our restaurants being like the one you described...
Margaret-whiteangel; we've probably got a few scattered around the country. Places where the owners are just in it for a quick buck, or straight out haven't got a clue.
DeleteI often wonder how much truth there us behind these reality shows if that is what they are called.
ReplyDeletePersonally, now matter how much good Ramsay is doing (or how much he gets paid to do it) I just can't stand the man and his language is almost gratuitous, as though people expect him to swear all the time.
It is good, as others say, if people do learn about hygiene when dealing with food wherever they are.
Some of the quotes are really great.
Mimsie; reality shows are completely scripted and not a bit of it is "real".
DeleteThe kitchen nightmares ones I think are real; a restaurant is in trouble financially, no one knows why, Gordon gets called into sort things out. Calling in Gordon may be pre-planned, instead of calling in a complete stranger that no viewer knows, but I don't think anyone would script a disaster kitchen with many tons of frozen food dating back 15 years and going bad.
He's not my favourite person either, the swearing is a bit much, but my ears have learned to not hear that most of the time and he certainly does get things cleaned up.
I'm glad you enjoyed the book quotes, nobody else mentions them.