In this episode of BBC's Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsay finds himself in Letchworth, a city twenty miles north of London, where the aim is to whip Lanterna's owner -- a self-styled Italian chef -- into some sort (or ANY sort) of culinary shape, thereby pulling the guy out of his GBP 180,000 debt.
Right off, Ramsay is fairly overwhelmed by Lanterna's festering glut of problems. The kitchen is disgustingly dirty, the Tesco-brand veggies are pre-cooked before being microwaved before serving, and the resulting meals are disgusting. One dish is described by Ramsay as looking like "two poodles' penises doused in parsley." Moreover, Ramsay sees nothing really Italian in Lanterna's food, determines there's no real thought or care going into the cooking, and pronounces the place "fucking dire."
Rolling up his sleeves, Ramsay orders a thorough cleaning of the kitchen and announces that only a "lazy bastard" would use Lazy Lemon in a restaurant. After perching himself in the kitchen in order to watch Chef Alexander cook, Ramsay diagnoses another problem area: all of Lanterna's food is frozen or from a packet. Ramsay informs Chef Alexander that the "plastic sauce" idea needs to be binned along with all the decaying rolls behind the fridge.
Another major area to tackle is Chef Alexander Scott's delusions of grandeur. First of all, the Brit-born chef calls himself "Alessandro"; second of all, he buys a GBP 46,000 BMW instead of fixing his wonky restaurant stove; and finally, the man who microwaves veggies and barely spends any time cooking in his own kitchen has slapped an "A1 Chef" vanity plate on his penis-mobile. Chef Alessandro claims to have been taught to cook by a "very well-respected Italian chef," but when Ramsay tracks down this paragon of Italian cuisine, he finds him in a cab. Not riding in the cab -- driving the cab. Not that there's anything wrong with that profession, of course, it's just that you don't usually see it on a chef's career trajectory, you know? Ramsay decides that Chef Alessandro needs to sell his car, sell the vanity plate, and learn what good Italian food is and how to cook it. When Ramsay takes it upon himself to find a home for the "A1 Chef" vanity plate, none of his own celebrated chef friends seems to be in current need of a "penis extension."
After observing how useless Gavin is as a maître d' one night -- booking too many guests, not having any authority in the dining room, and not pushing the right dishes to give Chef Alessandro room to breathe -- Ramsay points at a plate of profiteroles and tells weedy Gavin that's how big his front-of-house balls need to be. To toughen him up, Ramsay takes Gavin out to a rain-drenched field and roundly abuses him, hoping the maître d' will fight back. Unfortunately, Gavin just breaks out in silly, embarrassed grins every time Ramsay calls him a "jumped-up little fucking prick." You know, I don't think this show is going to translate well to our side of the pond. Americans are too fucking sensitive; they will never see the humor in Ramsay's highly profane, red-faced tirades.
After completely overhauling Lanterna's menu and banning all "plastic sauces" in the form of Chef Alessandro's favored béchamels and demi-glaces from the kitchen, Ramsay puts Chef Alessandro and Gavin through a blind pasta taste test. He wants them to pick one pasta from three offerings that they think will best pair with a new grilled swordfish entrée. After tasting a pasta with homemade blue cheese sauce and another with fresh herbs and olive oil, both Gavin and Chef Alessandro choose the Curry Pot Noodle as the best of the bunch. Poor, suffering Ramsay frog-marches Chef Alessandro to a small neighborhood restaurant and forces him to taste and learn that fresh, simple Italian cuisine is not Curry Pot Noodle.
After Ramsay does an on-the-cheap overhaul to Lanterna's interior décor -- and good-humoredly insulting Chef Alessandro's ex-flight attendant girlfriend and Lanterna decorator in the process -- the new Lanterna debuts on its one-year birthday with a new menu, a new look, and, Ramsay hopes, a new dedication to good food. Lanterna is soon filled with "local Letchworth dignitaries," and it's not long before Chef Alessandro starts to fall apart in the kitchen and show signs of returning to his former frenetic, slap-dash cooking. Ramsay yanks Gavin into the kitchen and instructs him to start pushing certain ready-to-go starters so that Chef Alessandro has time to catch up and cook properly. Things start to improve, and the diners are not only getting their food but are also enjoying that food. At the end of the night, Ramsay toasts Lanterna, her chef, and Gavin's newfound profiterole balls.
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Six weeks later, Ramsay shows up to check in on Lanterna and is happy to discover that the kitchen -- including Chef Alessandro's fingernails -- is clean, all vegetables are done to order, and Chef Alessandro is actually making his own pasta dough. Ramsay sits down to sample the food, and aside from some veal, which he decides has been "battered to death," Ramsay is suitably impressed by the flavors of Chef Alessandro's simple, fresh Italian cuisine. While Chef Alessandro has managed to clear off GBP 20,000 of his debt, he still hasn't managed to sell his car or that stupid-ass vanity plate. Hysterically, the close of the episode has Ramsay putting in a desperate call to Chef Gary Rhodes and pleading with him to buy the "A1 Chef" plate for GBP 2,998.
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