Top10 Worst Chefs on Kitchen Nightmares
#10: Akira
After losing his confidence, Akira starts to let standards slip at Sushi Ko. Gordon discovers all kinds of issues, including a hot fridge and reused sticks for the sushi, but the biggest problem is plain and simple: the food. It wasn’t enough to serve him sashimi with frozen salmon and an unpleasant bowl of miso soup, Akira also made the mistake of recommending the sushi pizza to Gordon. This ‘pizza’ is so bad Gordon spits it out and tells the kitchen it’s both an insult to both sushi and pizza!
#9: Anthony
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Gordon’s dining experience is already off to a rough start when it begins at four-thirty in the afternoon, but Anthony’s food doesn’t help. Though Anthony thinks his food is faultless, Ramsay disagrees. It turns out that Anthony has never actually worked in an Italian restaurant before. Trobiano’s specialties range from odd combinations, like salmon and spaghetti, to culinary abominations, like the chicken-wrapped-shrimp. Aside from being rock-solid, the shrimps just ruin the taste of the chicken. Anthony is furious that Gordon doesn’t like his food - not to mention his sanitary standards - leaving Gordon unsure at first if he can help him.
#8: Ricky
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This executive chef was a lot for Gordon to handle. Audibly rapping in the kitchen while diners were eating, Ricky didn’t seem to have a care in the world – not in the least for the food he was serving. He was out of his depth and buying frozen food, with roughly half of the ingredients needed for the menu missing at any given moment. When Gordon finally tested Ricky against his sous chef Lex, Ricky couldn’t tell chicken from beef or steak from pork. But this is one cloud that has a silver lining; after the show, Ricky cleaned up his act and learned how to cook for real, realizing the potential Gordon saw in him.
#7: Chappy
He’s earned a reputation for being the angriest chef to ever appear on the show; but where Gordon also has a reputation for being angry, Chappy didn’t have the culinary skills to back up his attitude. The staff say Chappy flies off the handle at anything, even cussing them out when they asked him what’s in a dish on behalf of a customer. The conditions in the kitchen weren’t good either, with Gordon finding filth at every turn. Worst of all, Chappy immediately returned to his old ways at the end of the show. Chappy’s shut down shortly after filming, and Chappy turned all the blame on Gordon.
#6: Doug
The owners of La Galleria 33, sister-act Rita and Lisa, were enough of a struggle for Gordon, but throw in bitter head chef Doug and you have a recipe for disaster. Doug’s ineffectualness was made worse by the fact he was Rita’s ex-husband, with an unpleasant divorce making things all the more difficult. Doug lost all passion for his food; the menu special hadn’t changed for years, and he didn’t make anything fresh. The final nail in the coffin was Gordon seeing him drop a piece of chicken on the dirty floor and then put it right back in the pan.
#5: Erick
The restaurant’s failings can’t be blamed entirely on Erick, not when the owners had no restaurant experience and he was just one in a long line of chefs to pass through the kitchen. But he certainly didn’t help anything. Gordon finds Erick’s kitchen filthy and in disarray, just like the rest of the restaurant, but Erick blames all his problems on it just being a bad day. An old rack of ribs Erick was keeping for months is so pungent it makes Gordon sick, and Erick finds himself out of a job part way through the show.
#4: Doug
After almost killing Gordon by serving him a rock solid “homemade Greek cookie,” you’d think Doug might be a little more open to criticism. Unfortunately, his attitude just gets worse as the episode goes on. Doug refuses to listen to restaurant owner Peter, who’s walked all over by his staff, and serves customers some truly appalling dishes. It took days for Gordon just to get them to clean the restaurant and Doug continued to resist changes, refusing to taste any of the new food Gordon introduced. Unsurprisingly, Gordon told Peter to fire Doug, and he gladly obliged.
#3: Jorge & Matt
At Park’s Edge, Gordon is faced with one of the weirdest foods of his career - namely Jorge’s unique take on a Caesar salad, which involves grilling a large piece of lettuce. Neither Gordon nor the waitress can wrap their heads around why anybody would grill lettuce, but that’s not the worst thing these chefs have to offer. Jorge has absolutely no experience and has never trained as a chef, and Matt has a short temper and lack of pride in what he does. To top it off, chef Matt loses his cool and leaves the kitchen in disgrace during dinner service on the final night.
#2: John
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Both the ailing owner of Mama Maria’s and its head chef, John is at his wit’s end trying to do everything at once. Because of this refusal to delegate, he risks ruining the restaurant’s glowing reputation, built up by his parents when they owned the restaurant. But John’s haphazard cooking and bad habits don’t just threaten his business, they also threaten the lives of his customers. Mama Maria’s has to be shut down by Gordon mid-service after someone eats a rotten lobster and ends up vomiting in the bathroom. An ambulance is called, and John has to face the consequences of his actions. Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few Dishonorable Mentions: Luigi Jim & Jeff Shelley Perla CeCe
#1: Amy
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While as a chef Amy isn’t COMPLETELY awful, as a restaurateur in general she’s easily worthy of the top spot. Gordon made a point of complimenting her desserts, which is fair enough because she’s actually a baker by trade, but when it came to the other courses she was way off the mark. It wasn’t just the gross pizzas that were sent back to the kitchen, without her knowledge; the way she treated her staff was just tyrannical. After firing a waitress during the show for asking if she was sure about which table an order was going to, Amy went down in “Kitchen Nightmares” history as the one Gordon couldn’t save.
