User Reviews

I really enjoyed this one. Chef Ramsay goes to help a Japanese restaurant. The owner, who is a former chef, is completely crushed emotionally. It is obvious in his responses, that he has just completely given up and doesn't have a clue what to do.

His family is great, quite clearly they care about him, his 2 children helping in the restaurant, and his son even having lent his father a rather large sum of money.

Gordon Ramsay fixes a huge problem by getting Akira back in the kitchen. That is how Akira came up in the world and he seems to enjoy cooking, wearing a big smile as he cooks, rather than just managing.

Very enjoyable to see the family get closer together and for Akira to be doing something he seems to love.

I was actually looking forward to this episode. Mainly because it's one of the few cases where Gordon Ramsay deals with an Asian restaurant (and, at least to my knowledge, the first episode featuring a Japanese sushi-restaurant). Now, granted that Ramsay isn't a sushi-chef and probably has limited experience with this style of kitchen, but being an admirer of sushi and Japanese cuisine in general, I had hoped for a little more insight into what's going on in the kitchen. This was not to be, unfortunately.

The basic scenario: the restaurant is at the brink, the chef and former star-chef is, so tells us the narration, disillusioned, a "broken man", both financially and spiritually, over bared by his dominant wife and the staff, consisting primarily of the owners kids, fearing that both business and family life will break under the strain. And yes, the food seems dreadful. No, not even the staff would "recommend it to anybody". The starter of Miso soup is apparently neither "very fresh nor very hot", in the chef's opinion (it turned out to have been cooked the day before), there's hair in the "Green Tower"-dish, and the salmon on the sashimi is frozen. This "formidable feast" is topped off with a "Sushi Pizza", which is just what it sounds like: rice, salmon, crab, mayonnaise and cheese. Without wanting to insult fusion-style cooking, but presuming the sacrilege of producing such an abomination would carry a penalty of mandatory seppuku in Japan. Plus, it's rancid, exiting Ramsay's mouth faster than it entered it. But that is only the first ten minutes of this 40-minute episode.

Then comes the mandatory kitchen inspection: the fridge doesn't function anymore (due to the lack of money, so the owner assures Ramsay), which could potentially "kill somebody", as Ramsay returns as assurance. Neither does the deep-fryer heat up properly and the kitchen staff seem generally clueless. As it turns out, even the wooden chopsticks are "recycled", or rather cleaned and re-used.

Unfortunately, that's pretty much the last we see of the kitchen and cooking.

"The most emotional Kitchen Nightmares ever!", proclaims the opening narration, sounding all the while like a French fishmonger, haggling away his produce. Sure enough, there is a virtual flood of tears, enough to fill many-a cup of Sake before the first five minutes are over. There's plenty more where that came from. Understandably, there will be high tensions and emotions when a business and one's livelihood are on the brink, but in my humble opinion, that should not be the focus of a show like this. Naturally, like almost all other episodes of the US-version, there's a make-over for the restaurant, the chef returns to his stove and redeems himself (though not without relapses), the customers are once again satisfied and all seems good as Ramsay takes his leave.

Well, though not in reality: the Sushi-Ko had to close its doors a mere few month after filming, now apparently being replaced with a burger-chain.

So we have the typical "Kitchen Nightmares"-routine, where nothing but names, faces and menus change. And again, the contrast to the original British series couldn't be starker. This is all about rending tears from the viewer's eyes, not to make his/her mouth watery. And perhaps the expected publicity didn't help the establishment much either. Personally, I would find it difficult to enjoy my food at a place where I'd suspect that the cook and his staff shed tears into the soup.

4/10