Amy’s Baking Company: A “Kitchen Nightmares” Disaster
The popular reality series Kitchen Nightmares premiered in 2007, two years after the first season of Hell’s Kitchen, and continued for seven seasons.
Kitchen Nightmares featured Gordon Ramsay, a popular British chef, restaurateur, television personality and writer whose restaurants hold seven Michelin stars. In the series Ramsay would visit failing restaurants all over the country and would attempt to rescue them. The process included Ramsay tasting the food of these restaurants and critiquing it based on the performance. He would then analyze the reasons for its lack of success and remodel the decor as well as introduce modern and popular cuisine to the menu.
Often in these episodes, different restaurateurs could be seen going head to head with Gordon Ramsay, while he would point out the flaws within the staff, menu, kitchens, business management and the decor. Most viewers would agree that the conversations between Ramsay and the restaurant owner’s would result in an amusing yet intense experience as he aimed towards improving the place’s patronage and bottom line. Throughout Kitchen Nightmares Ramsay would always push through the stubborn and arrogant owners and would improve their businesses, ultimately giving the audience an hour’s worth of content to watch. However, in one episode, specifically Season 6 Episode 16, Gordon Ramsay butted heads with a couple which opposed his help out of sheer arrogance. The memorable owners were Amy and Salomon Bouzaglo of Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, Arizon
The situation completely got out of hand during this episode which concluded in Ramsay leaving before any improvement was made by his team. He stopped working with the Bouzgalos by saying that it was unusual for a restaurant to lose over one hundred members of the staff, have 65 menu items despite the small kitchen and have palpable tension because the owners would refuse to take criticism and respect the staff and the customers. According to Ramsay, the level of animosity inside and outside the restaurant was not something that was considered normal.
Other then Chef Ramsay, a lot of people were fed up with the couple and their arrogance. Amy’s Baking Company received a lot of criticism from its customers on Yelp where people stated that the service was horrible. One diner wrote that the food was barely edible, and both the owners were rude and not hospitable. Additionally, a day before Gordon Ramsay’s arrival, the owners got into a huge argument with a customer who had received raw pizza. When he went to complain, Sam Bouzgalos refused to admit the kitchen’s mistake and threatened the customer.
After the episode aired, the restaurant received a lot of negative media attention and it did not survive the test of time. Amy’s Baking Company closed in 2015 when the owners found a new buyer for the business. Amy Bouzgalos confirmed that the restaurant was not closing because of the bad press from kitchen nightmares and stated that she and Sam were taking this opportunity to focus on other projects.
These projects today include creating content on Instagram and earning revenue through shops on Amazon which feature homemade goods. One of her recent Instagram posts gave people an insight of her latest creation which was a sweet tart lemon meringue pie. Like Ramsay, many still remain unimpressed.
