Can Gordon Ramsay Kill A Dead Restaurant?
The lawsuit that a fired restaurant manager is bringing against Chef of the Realm Gordon Ramsay is the gift that keeps on giving. As we noted, Martin Hyde, the general manager at Dillon's, a failing theater district eatery, applied to be a part of Ramsay's show "Kitchen Nightmares." Hyde alleges Ramsay humiliated him, planted rancid meat in the fridge (is this a euphemism for something?) and hired actors to pose as customers. Hyde got fired and the restaurant is still failing as miserably as always. But, as Chris Shott writes in the today's Observer, the real question is whether anything could have been done to save Dillon's.
After years of serving Irish-style fare—"hamburgers, steak, shepherd's pie, fish 'n' chips," he said—management decided last October to shake things up, hiring an outside consultant to help remake the place into an Indian-style eatery. "New chefs were brought in, new menus," Mr. Hyde said.
The changes, he alleged, only chased away Dillons' regulars, and few new customers have shown up to replace them. The consultant, as well as three chefs, were fired just days before Mr. Ramsay's arrival.
Following the taping of the show, the restaurant changed its name to Purnima and, when Shott bit the bullet and visited, there were six customers.
But perhaps the most telling forecaster of the restaurant's future was management's decision to use PR lady Amy Krakow. Remember her? She was the one boasting to the Times about the 1,000 dollars a week she spends on lady upkeep. Perhaps if she spent less time in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber and more time with her clients, the prognosis of Dillon's or Purnima or whatever wouldn't be so bleak.