Spoilers for Kitchen Nightmares’ finale, which aired last week, follow
Last week I saw a story on the front page of Reddit titled “Craziest Restaurant Owners in Kitchen Nightmares History (US). (Gordon Ramsay actually walks out for the first time).” (That thread has since been shut down.) It led to a link of the show on youtube, the finale this year, which showed a small Scottsdale Arizona restaurant called Amy’s Baking Company. The owners, a husband and wife, were cursing out a customer who dared question why his pizza hadn’t arrived after an hour. It got worse from there. The husband, Samy, was caught taking the tips of one of his servers, claiming he paid her hourly and had the right to take her tips. Samy and Amy argued with customers constantly and admitted they had gone through over 100 staff in a year. At one point Amy fired a server, on camera, for daring to ask “are you sure?” about an order.
I should have given more information about Kitchen Nightmares at the intro, but that episode was so fascinating I had to share. It’s a Fox show which involves famous British chef Gordon Ramsay going into failing restaurants to help them revise their business practices, menus and decor. I prefer the show Restaurant Impossible on the Food Network, with chef Robert Irvine, as he’s more collaborative with the restaurateurs (although he’s certainly harsh). Ramsay can be argumentative and abrasive, but I’ve never seen something like this before.
Anyway once Ramsey came in to Amy’s Baking Company the sh*t really hit the fan. He only liked Amy’s desserts and basically sent everything back. Amy could not take feedback at all and kept arguing with him and insisting her food was good. She didn’t seem “sane” exactly, and talked very quickly and loudly. By the end of the show the dysfunction got to be too much for Ramsay and he told the owners he couldn’t help them. It was the first time he’d walked out on a restaurant in the show’s history.
Well it gets better. After the show aired, the Facebook page for Amy’s Bakery blew up. Amy and Samy just could not hack it and went off on everyone. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this – if you check their Yelp reviews from years ago they personally attacked reviewers who left negative reviews. (Their yelp has since exploded with fake reviews and people posing as them.) In fact Amy spoke on camera about the “haters” online, blaming them for her business problems.
So of course people started trolling these two online, with Reddit mocking them and people posting negative comments on Facebook. They went crazy, as was expected. (Screenshots via Huffington Post and Eater as they’ve since deleted these from Facebook.) Amy’s “kids” that she refers to below are her cats.
The best part? They’re now claiming their facebook was hacked. Look at those facebook postings. Amy writes in all caps and Samy is all lower case. These two should not be running a restaurant or dealing with the public in any capacity. It’s possible their facebook was hacked, and I do believe that someone started a fake twitter account for them the day before the show aired. I think those posts on facebook are real, especially since Samy was insulting and harassing people on Yelp back in 2010. Oh and Redditors found that Amy is a convicted felon, she used another woman’s social security number to get a credit card back in 2001.
Part 1. 3:40 into this video for the argument with a customer.
Part 2:
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