Reality bites: Fake scenes sour restaurant makeover
When Kitchen Nightmares, Fox’s loud and bleep-filled restaurant makeover show, airs an episode Friday that was shot in a Pinecrest restaurant, there’s one moment I’m sure you won’t see: my near-arrest by the Fox Reality Police.
After a tip from a reader that Kitchen Nightmares might be shooting at the Scandinavian restaurant Fleming, I dined there the night that the show set up its cameras. And when I tried to surreptitiously jot down a few notes, I caught the eye of one of the shrill producers barking orders at waiters and customers.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, striding briskly to my table. “Just jotting down some thoughts,” I replied, truthfully if incompletely.
“I’m going to have to take your notebook,” she said in a harsh voice as her eyes flitted this way and that, looking for a convenient wall against which I could be lined up and shot. (And not with a camera.)
“You are not taking my notebook,” I corrected her. One of the cameras must have caught the look on her face, an exquisite blend of astonishment and rage: Doesn’t this tattered peasant know I’m from TELEVISION? She actually looked so crazed I thought she might leap across the table and grab the notebook. Instead, she stalked over to her crew, which gave my table a wide berth (and numerous dirty looks) for the rest of the night.
I haven’t seen Friday’s episode of Kitchen Nightmares, which airs at 9 p.m. on WSVN-Fox 7. But I’m willing to bet any and all takers a month’s worth of dinners at Fleming that it won’t include the confrontation over the notebook or anything else that hints at just how unreal a reality TV show can be.
On the night I was there last July -- the first of six during which Kitchen Nightmares taped -- everything was faked, starting with the diners. Most were ringers, recruited at a site in Broward where another reality show was shooting. “I’d never heard of this place,” one man confided as we sat in a production office, waiting to sign a release that said we understood we were being taped. “But this is a cool chance to be on TV.”
Once inside the restaurant, 8511 SW 136th St., the producers made it clear exactly what we needed to do to be on TV: Complain, volubly and bitterly. “If you have something to say about the food or the service,” a producer instructed, “give us a signal so we can bring the camera to the table. Once we’re there, don’t look directly at the camera, but speak in a loud voice so the microphone will pick you up clearly.”
Since even the un-media-savviest of the diners understood that shouting “Waiter! Waiter! This is the best damn salmon I’ve ever tasted!” was not likely to make the air, the producer’s speech unleashed a gushing torrent of querulous complaints: The tomatoes were small. The martini was weak. The chicken was undercooked. The chicken was overcooked.
At the table next to mine, three couples from Fort Lauderdale tormented the waiter so viciously that I really thought he might cry. (Great shot, camera No. 1! Zoom in on his eyes!) Watching them was like a scene from a culinary Lord of the Flies as their nostrils flared at the scent of videotaped blood.
“Waiter, the lettuce in my salad is dry and wilted,” shouted one man. “Hey, so is mine!” chimed in another. Amazingly, all six salads at their table turned out to be dry and wilted. Even more amazingly, the two at mine were just fine. And while I can’t say I enjoyed the dining experience -- it was like eating dinner in the middle of a flock of squawking parrots who learned English from Rodney Dangerfield -- I thought my food was pretty good. (Perhaps more significantly, my opinion was shared by my companion Sue Mullin, a former Miami Herald dining critic who has written three cookbooks.)
But that doesn’t fit in with the standard Kitchen Nightmares narrative, which is that acid-tongued British chef Gordon Ramsay takes over some swill-trough of a restaurant and overnight turns it into haute-cuisine heaven, mostly through the strategic application of four-letter words. (Typical of Ramsay’s constructive criticism: “You fat, useless sack of bleeping Yankee-dankee doodle bleep!”)
Ramsay wasn’t there the night I ate at Fleming, but as owner Andy Hall told me this week, the abuse only got worse when he showed up. “It was a mentally and emotionally draining experience,” Hall said. “He yelled at me a lot. He yelled at everybody, but I’m the one who really took the brunt of it.”
Hall says he volunteered his restaurant for the show in hopes the publicity would bring in more customers. But he also expected to get some sage off-camera advice in addition to the onslaught of on-camera insults.
“Insights from a Michelin chef, what could that hurt?” he says. “But what was really disappointing was the amount of time you get with him. It’s actually no time, off-camera. What you’ll see on the show is what we got. The whole thing is about their TV show, not about cooking or the restaurant business.”
As for the rampant fakery that I saw at Fleming on the night of the taping, Hall -- who signed enough releases and nondisclosure agreements to turn the Amazon rain forest into a parched desert -- chooses his words carefully. “It’s, well, it’s a TV show, that part’s correct,” he muses. “Reality is a very loose word to use.”
No bleep, buddy.
This story was originally published May 7, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Reality bites: Fake scenes sour restaurant makeover."