Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

Tonight, for the first time ever on Kitchen Nightmares, Gordon takes on a nightmare restaurant abroad. La Parra de Burriana is an ex-pat restaurant in Nerja on Spain's Costa del Sol. Nestling among the cafes lining the seafront offering all-day English breakfast and chips, La Parra is the brainchild of twenty-six-year-old ex-nightclub manager Laurence. He set himself up in business eighteen months ago with a loan from his dad and, although he's not an experienced chef, mans the kitchen on his own, determined to offer something better than chips to his largely British clientele.

In tonight's second programme Gordon tackles a pub for the first time, getting to grips with The Fenwick Arms in rural Lancashire. The pub is run by landlord Brian who, after thirty years in the business and a quadruple heart-bypass, still puts in 120 hours a week and insists on laying down the law in the kitchen. Despite their best endeavours Brian and his partner Elaine are ~£250k in debt, losing ~1500 a week and facing bankruptcy within three months unless there's a drastic reversal in their fortunes.

In tonight's programme Gordon finds a chef caught in a time warp when he tackles a picturesque but largely unfrequented upmarket restaurant in King's Lynn, a traditional market town on the Norfolk coast. For the last eighteen months ex Michelin-starred chef Nick has owned and run Rococo but his past success is now eluding him. The menu is past its sell-by date, the service is stuffy, the food is over-priced and the only thing being fed is his ego. Yet, despite debts of ~£100k and the prospect of putting his home at risk and his young family on the streets, Nick continues to cook comatose in a 1990s fantasy land of his own making.

Gordon last left Laurence knowing that he had simplified his menu to have clean, simple, honest, traditional food using local produce. Surely this was enough to bring back the locals and win back the faith of the ex-pats.

With landlord Brian's continual stress and interference in the kitchen, which Gordon believed was one of the main reasons for the inefficiencies of The Fenwick Arms, and now the added pressure of new competition, it's no wonder the pub is in trouble. Gordon's not going to like what's happened in his absence.