Stop me if you’ve seen this one before.
The scene: a restaurant kitchen. A new restaurant. Everything’s going poorly. The owner doesn’t know what he’s doing, the chef is frustrated, and the other employees feel helpless to make things better. But! One of them decides to call a celebrity chef! That celebrity chef comes in, tries to fix things, and… does. Everything’s going great at the end of the show.
Sound familiar? Yeah, it kind of is. 3 Days to Open with Bobby Flay is a new Food Network show that uses this formula. It’s not a bad show, really, but I’m getting tired of the formula. If you’ve watched Kitchen Nightmares or Restaurant: Impossible then you’ve seen this show, just without Bobby Flay.
The problem I have with this show is that it feels like there’s no real suspense in the thing. Maybe there just isn’t. But on the show I watched, an overpriced chicken finger joint called Sticky’s made it just fine – although things looked horrible at first. I think the only way this show can really work for me is if some of these restaurants don’t make it. (I also acknowledge that the whole thing could be nicely staged, a la House Hunters.)
But that would be more interesting to me, for sure. Bobby Flay comes in, tries to save a restaurant, and… it runs out of money. Or it opens but only sticks around for a week. Or what-have-you. Celebrate the failure!
Posted in Television, Movies, and Music
Ryan July 19, 2012, 8:39 am
On Kitchen Nightmares, there have been a number of times where the restaurants have had to shut their doors a month or two after the show was filmed because even with the increased business, their debts were just that bad.
I have to admit I’m a bit curious to see Gordan Ramsey’s hotel show (essentially Kitchen Nightmares, but with hotels) starting in a few weeks. Of course, there’s already another show similar to it already on the air, but Ramsey’s so much more entertaining than most so I’ll probably still watch this new one occasionally.