Each week I think things couldn't get worse in a restaurant, but tonight's episode with the French chef takes the cake. I was expecting Gordon and Frenchie to take out the cleavers and start hacking away. Some people are so clueless, but fortunately all's well that ends well. I really want to go to one of these new and improved restaurants.

British radio was just discussing this show only tonight. One DJ said that, when he visited one of the actual London restaurants on the show, they'd sorted out the culinary problems..... but that the service he and his wife received was abysmal!

Probably because it's very hard to find good wait staff, no matter what type of restaurant you have. Perhaps if wait staff were given incentives, they would stick around longer, instead of using the job as a stopgap until they found a "real" job. On one show, Gordon put up a bingo type of board with all the items on the menu listed. The first waiter to sell every item got a $100 bonus. It worked.

It's my fantasy to actually go to one of Gordon's restaurants.

I love the show. Gordon Ramsay's advice on running restaurants efficiently and his recognition that the customers come first is applicable to most businesses.

I get a kick when he tells some owners they shouldn't be in the restaurant business. ~LOL~ For some, they took all their savings and sunk them into an egotistical fantasy. Running a restaurant and professional cooking could be some of the hardest work there is. A kitchen is a very hot, hard place to spend one's life on one's feet. Most people do not possess the stamina.

Yes, I've watched the last few episodes. It's a great show and he's always dead-on right. Some of these restaurants and the people who own/cook/run this place are just insane and living in some dream world.

Let's hope the show will be a wake up call for them. Now, we need a reality show about running a BnB, because so many people have that fantasy. My friend's parents tried it to supplement their retirement income, but gave up: "I had no idea I'd be doing so much laundry!" For me, it would be like having permanent guests. My idea of hell!

I'm home sick today, and I saw this show for the first time. I had never seen anything of Gordon before this except for "coming highlights" of other programs. I found him blunt but right on the money, and a good judge of character besides. I plan on watching this again.

Here in my town there is a very nice little Bistro, run by a man who really is Cordon Bleu educated...

When he first opened, he loved to meander through his dining room in white coat and toque, greeting his guests, shaking hands, on a very personal, first-name basis, a-la Wolfgang Puck.

Now, a year later, he doesn't do that... I think he realized that his "haute" gestures were just not appreciated-- or even understood-- by the local country Texas denizens, who basically just wanted to get in-get out as though his place were a greasy spoon, wondering why the lowly cook had left the anonymity of his galley.

He's also gotten used to his very loftily-conceived, special "signature" dishes (e.g., cranberry-lemon buckwheat crepes) sullied by so many banal customer "substitutions" and what-not. Dreams die hard...

I listen and watch for some very sound business and management advice.