And again the right decision. Amazing!
Obviously the GRAVAD LAX couple live in a world of their own, but al least everybody there knows them.
Granddad should have used a bullhorn to make sure his message was heard eveywhere.
He was so up his own @rse, it's a miracle he heard the sitting ovation at all.
After a brief recap and (grrr) the spoilers of what’s to come we are introduced to a magnificent vista of light and glass and the equally magnificent shirt worn by Barney, who looks he has come hot-foot from the Army Catering Corp Gay Pride day out in Brighton. They are in Bristol’s newly built Cabots Circus shopping centre and Raymond is enjoying a café au lait (and probably a crafty Gaulois) when the 7 couples arrive to hear of their task for the day. If any of them think they’re getting their hands on the keys to their restaurant, they are badly mistaken. “Restaurants are farting….farting for zeir lives”, claims Raymond.:eek: Better stop serving the Brussels sprout éclairs then, Ray old chum. Ah wait, he’s talking about the competition between high street chain restaurants (welcome return of the word “ambiance” there, which Raymond takes about 7 seconds and 43 facial muscles to pronounce) and this is today’s little wheeze to knock-off one of the remaining couples: spend a day in teams working in such an establishment with their identikit menus, rigid procedure manuals, centralised purchasing, silly uniforms and stop-watch timing. All of which are the antithesis of what Raymond stands for in the restaurant business but hey, it’s good telly. Raymond tells them to “investigate and understand” each chain – which means the poor saps will get a menu or ingredients test somewhere along the line. It’s a pressure test really and, although they aren’t told this at the time, there will be one couple leaving at the end of the day and the other six will, finally, receive the key they have been craving. But first they have to wear a really silly hat.
Barney and Badger/Frances and Lucy/Rebecca and Stephen are told to run a YO! Sushi – Japanese food cafes with the conveyer belt style of eating. Customers sit at the bar and pick a coloured plate off the belt. At the end the bill is tallied according to the colours of the dishes they’ve eaten from. The good thing for the team is that the food can be made well ahead – as long as the conveyor belt is stocked, they’re laughing. Customer can request ‘hand rolls’ which are prepared to order.
When they arrive we actually find out that they are allowed a day’s training. This is particularly useful for the Sushi gang as they’re clueless on what and how to make the stuff. Stephen and Rebecca gibber excitedly for a couple of minutes, hiding the fact that they’re both scared stiff about the task. They don’t do sushi, in fact judging by Rebecca’s face the nearest she’s been to raw fish was the last time she opened a pouch of cod and hake Whiskas for the moggie she was mauling in the previous episode. The very unoriental Gareth gives the FoH a quick lesson in how to serve customers the YO! Sushi way and they all get a chance to try it out. Lucy is by far the best, Rebecca still would rather be in any other restaurant than this one whilst Badger wishes he was back chasing the Iraqi Republican Guard back up the Basra Highway. “How d’you think it went, Badger” asks the infuriatingly jolly Gareth. “Crap” reponds Badger, tersely and accurately. In the kitchen the trainer Pogs (?) is helping their chefs lose their sushi virginity. Of course the sequence is edited so it appears incomprehensible: Frances bites her lip in an alluringly bewildered way whilst Stephen nods, possibly to stop him losing consciousness as his squishy brain attempts to take it all in. The hand-rolls are demonstrated and they all have a go (in fact, with the conveyor belt it’s all a little bit like the Generation Game). Barney, who looks for all the world like a cheffy version of Pob (but with oddly long forearms), seems to get it better than the others which is more than can be said of Badger who is given a conveyor-best test by Lucy who seems in her element. Badger couldn’t look more uncomfortable if he was wearing horsehair Y-fronts. “You’ll know things are going drastically wrong when there’s one dish going round on the best” says Badger to Gareth. Funny you should say that, Sarge.
Chris and Nathan/JJ and James land a gig with Tampopo, the pan-Asian high-street chain that no-one’s heard of. A rather unpleasant glimpse into the changing room shows us JJ’s unimpressively girly physique and lobster-red chest. Must have just had it waxed. The FoH boys have to made do with Pol Pot’s old prison clothes.
The restaurant serve “canteen-style” food and they expect every dish to be cooked and served in 10 minutes. FoH trainer Caroline, who is very pretty with an accent that seems to travel between Australia, west-coast USA and Skegness, emphasises that speed of service is the key to customer satisfaction. She means profits of course, but she looks like an old girlfriend of mine so I just sigh and forgive her. In the kitchen the trainer Tem is showing them Chris and JJ how to use the wok burners. “Low flame, low flame” he sqeals at JJ who’s clearly nervous of the heat. The wok combusts, the dish is ruined and there’s six fewer eyebrows to go round. This is the first time that JJ has fried a pan in anger (the not-so-crumbly crumble from Ep 1 nothwithstanding) and he really does have a problem whilst it’s second nature to Chris. JJ thinks it’s like cocktail making but “taking out the ice and putting in the fire”. And lots of burned garlic, apparently. His test dish is rank whilst Chris, smugly silent, has cooked a doozy. Nathan’s confidence is sky-high and it’s shared by his mate who sees it as a chance to go mano-a-mano with JJ. It’s going to be woks at dawn and it could get bloody.
Janet and Sean/Daisy and Nadine get the easy one: Pizza Express, the chain famous for selling overpriced and undersized pizzas in otherwise elegant surroundings. As they have basically three menu items (dough balls, pizza and salad) this shouldn’t be beyond them but the producers aren’t stupid and we thoroughly expect Janet and Sean to bugger it up somewhere along the line. Sean cuts quite a dash in his black PE shirt (although he has to be dressed by his wife) whilst Janet looks like a Jean-Paul Gaultier advert gone horribly wrong.
FoH Training at PE is in the hands of Karen, a fussy and unpleasant woman who’s dressed like she’s running a lesbian cooperative wholefood café and not a pizza chain. She’s going to show them how to lay a table the PE way and talks to Sean as if he was a 6-year old with OCD “that’s great Sean…WELL DONE”. She very nearly pats him on the head and sticks a lollipop in his mouth. It’s pathetically banal but Nadine is scribbling notes as she was attending a Stephen Hawking lecture on dark matter. Still, being able to accurately place a knife and fork on a napkin without screwing up has boosted Sean’s confidence and he’s looking to take on all comers. In the kitchen the girls nod confidently as gangly trainer Dane explains the laboratory precision of every pizza. 65 grams of mozzarella, 24 slices of pepperoni etc to thoughful nods from Janet and Daisy. They don’t do a gravadlax and goat meat pizza, ladies. Sorry.
Come 7:30 and training is over and the teams have a chance to relax and enjoy the view from the other side of the counter. Stephen, who can’t bear to be parted with his little hat, stuffs his cavernous mouth with all manner of sushi whilst his missus still can’t bear to be near the stuff but their spirits are high. He can make it, she can sell it. Where can it possibly fall down? We’re going to find out soon enough….
I think they just couldn't believe the drama and comedy.
The speech for me was just cringy. I'm pretty sure that when the restaurant manager asked him to go and apologise to the customers, she mean't go quietly table to table, not deliver a monologue on the type of flowers Angelina Jolie buys and tell everyone that basically the resturant will be closing soon whether or not they'd had their food!
And as the other poster mentioned the levels of sweat were getting beyond reasonable!
She did mean that and then Raymond was repeating what she'd said. I expected him to go to the tables discreetly.
So to suddenly hear him shouting was shocking to say the least :eek::D
Sadly I think this is time to expect this to be the last series of The Restaurant folks, because the BBC have clearly stitched Raymond up with a load of morons purely for our entertainment so I doubt he'll agree to do it again.
That said, I can't wait for this week's TV Burp. "Sexy Service" and those ridiculous pizzas have to feature, surely?
I thought it was great..brilliant comedy, I laughed out loud several times. As I mentioned previously, I'm new to "The Restaurant"..have the contestants always been so hopeless ? I was expecting something closer to Masterchef..but it's still early days and maybe some of them shouldn't be judged on what we have seen so far.
Another little point..they were occasionally offering "free drinks". Surely everything was probably free on the day to the customers of those chains ?..they couldn't expect them to play some kind of Russian roulette, ordering meals from a bunch of (largely) incompetent amateurs ?
PS..Great post there Buck Tarbrush..I'm looking foward to the follow-up.
I really thought Shaun was going to do a 'Basil Fawlty' speech at the end there....'You ponce in here expecting to be waited on hand and foot, while I'm trying to run a restaurant here. Have you any idea of how much there is to do? I've had it. Come on, pack your bags and get out.' In the end he come up with something just as good!
Also loved the shots of Sarah in the kitchen, with her white 'pork pie' paper hat on - I have the strangest thoughts about her some times which I am unable to rationalise....
Also liking the arty 'filler' shots of Bristol - am I the only one who keeps thinking Eddie Shoestring is going to shuffle into the background at some point with a wry smile on his face?
Couldn't really see the problem of having to wait an hour at Pizza Express for an overpriced pizza - isn't that normal service?
They must need more chefs than that in the Sushi bar.......that's nonesense
Well except that they decided to all do a different type of hand roll when really one person should do the rolls whilst two concentrated on keeping the belt full.
If you order something special off of the menu then you expect to wait.
Oh I thought the applause was affectionate. They appreciated his speech, as did I. I don't believe anyone was laughing at the guy.
Yeah I think they were applauding him for saying it.
But what he was celebrating, and would never forget, was basically the evening he completely cocked up and had to tell a packed restaurant that they were shutting and everyone should go home.
Car crash TV at it's best; complete ineptitude from most of the candidates and, oh, how we like to snigger when it descends into complete chaos and mayhem.:D
How did this lot make it through the selection process? Whoever's in charge of that should be looking for a new job I think.:D
Isn't JJ just the most irritating floppy haired dollop?
Couldn't really see the problem of having to wait an hour at Pizza Express for an overpriced pizza - isn't that normal service?
I was more concerned with the target of "five seconds after they come through the door to greet customers" at Tampopo.
If a staff member appeared that quickly it would scare the bejusus out of me. I'd still be shepherding the children through the door at that point. :eek:
I was more concerned with the target of "five seconds after they come through the door to greet customers at Tampopo.
If a staff member appeared that quickly it would scare the bejusus out of me. I'd still be shepherding the children through the door at that point. :eek:
Am I the only one who keeps thinking of tampax when I read that?:eek::o:D
REALLY don't like this series!! All credibility is LONg gone.
I feel so sorry for RB, the show is a complete farce. He must be mortified to have anything to do with it.
Clearly they are the most incompetent bunch ever. Any guise of looking for serious business partners is long gone.
Really disappointing, makes the ending of Masterchef even more painful
We think we came across well in our elimination programme last night, and as you all know, Sean was recording Harry Hill’s TV Burp while the Restaurant was showing.
Words of wisdom from the somewhat deluded Janet "Gravvvaad Laaaaxxx" and Sean on their website:
I really thought Shaun was going to do a 'Basil Fawlty' speech at the end there....'You ponce in here expecting to be waited on hand and foot, while I'm trying to run a restaurant here. Have you any idea of how much there is to do? I've had it. Come on, pack your bags and get out.' In the end he come up with something just as good!
Also loved the shots of Sarah in the kitchen, with her white 'pork pie' paper hat on - I have the strangest thoughts about her some times which I am unable to rationalise....
Also liking the arty 'filler' shots of Bristol - am I the only one who keeps thinking Eddie Shoestring is going to shuffle into the background at some point with a wry smile on his face?
Couldn't really see the problem of having to wait an hour at Pizza Express for an overpriced pizza - isn't that normal service?
What is the point of Sarah's white pork pie paper hat when the glossy, auburn tresses are hanging loose?
I don't think they are all hopeless. It seemed a task designed to make them struggle, to see how they coped. The group in the sushi restaurant had the hardest task, I thought, because none of them claim to have any experience in sushi and they did OK at lunchtime. They made a key error in understanding what would happen if they focussed on orders instead of stocking the conveyor belt, but it was something the manager could have told them and a mistake that once learned they wouldn't necessarily make again - and all of them seemed genuinely distressed that the night had gone so badly.
JJ can't cook, which I suppose might not be an issue in whatever a 'picnic restaurant' is but stuffed him up here, especially as he was in the kitchen with by far the best cook, who seemed to shine from what we saw. JJ is an unlikable idiot, but I did start to feel sorry for him with 10 minutes to do 17 dishes and when RB was standing over him. JJ's friend seemed worse because as long as he thought he was being charming he didn't really seem to care that the customers weren't being fed. But I am quite curious to see what special hell a picnic restaurant is so I'm not sorry they stayed.
I don't understand why the Pizza express one was so difficult - I'd expect both those women to be able to cook pizza and salad more than I'd expect the 3 in the sushi place to cook sushi first time. Maybe I'm missing something but I couldn't see why it would be so hard?
I thought the right couple went. They messed up hopelessly and they didn't care about the customers at all. I thought he'd had more than one Guiness by the time he came to make that speech. They weren't serious about a restaurant at all - none of the sushi couples deserved to go before them.
We'll probably pop into Pizza Express tomorrow lunch time, will be sorely disappointed if our pizzas actually resemble pizzas and a member of staff doesn't have a complete breakdown and start randomly yelling about flowers, Hollywood film stars and then tell us it's closing.
And I'll admit it, I'm curious as hell to see what the Duran rejects mean by Picnic food restaurant - are we talking a branch of Greggs with delusions of grandur
Comments
OMG! I thought he was a plain and simple winker!:p
http://stemsfloraldesign.com/blog/
Obviously the GRAVAD LAX couple live in a world of their own, but al least everybody there knows them.
Granddad should have used a bullhorn to make sure his message was heard eveywhere.
He was so up his own @rse, it's a miracle he heard the sitting ovation at all.
Excellent read guys, thanks so much for that!
Wow, and the winkers get to open their restaurant... amazing
Car crash telly at its best!!
Part 1 – The Training
After a brief recap and (grrr) the spoilers of what’s to come we are introduced to a magnificent vista of light and glass and the equally magnificent shirt worn by Barney, who looks he has come hot-foot from the Army Catering Corp Gay Pride day out in Brighton. They are in Bristol’s newly built Cabots Circus shopping centre and Raymond is enjoying a café au lait (and probably a crafty Gaulois) when the 7 couples arrive to hear of their task for the day. If any of them think they’re getting their hands on the keys to their restaurant, they are badly mistaken. “Restaurants are farting….farting for zeir lives”, claims Raymond.:eek: Better stop serving the Brussels sprout éclairs then, Ray old chum. Ah wait, he’s talking about the competition between high street chain restaurants (welcome return of the word “ambiance” there, which Raymond takes about 7 seconds and 43 facial muscles to pronounce) and this is today’s little wheeze to knock-off one of the remaining couples: spend a day in teams working in such an establishment with their identikit menus, rigid procedure manuals, centralised purchasing, silly uniforms and stop-watch timing. All of which are the antithesis of what Raymond stands for in the restaurant business but hey, it’s good telly. Raymond tells them to “investigate and understand” each chain – which means the poor saps will get a menu or ingredients test somewhere along the line. It’s a pressure test really and, although they aren’t told this at the time, there will be one couple leaving at the end of the day and the other six will, finally, receive the key they have been craving. But first they have to wear a really silly hat.
Barney and Badger/Frances and Lucy/Rebecca and Stephen are told to run a YO! Sushi – Japanese food cafes with the conveyer belt style of eating. Customers sit at the bar and pick a coloured plate off the belt. At the end the bill is tallied according to the colours of the dishes they’ve eaten from. The good thing for the team is that the food can be made well ahead – as long as the conveyor belt is stocked, they’re laughing. Customer can request ‘hand rolls’ which are prepared to order.
When they arrive we actually find out that they are allowed a day’s training. This is particularly useful for the Sushi gang as they’re clueless on what and how to make the stuff. Stephen and Rebecca gibber excitedly for a couple of minutes, hiding the fact that they’re both scared stiff about the task. They don’t do sushi, in fact judging by Rebecca’s face the nearest she’s been to raw fish was the last time she opened a pouch of cod and hake Whiskas for the moggie she was mauling in the previous episode. The very unoriental Gareth gives the FoH a quick lesson in how to serve customers the YO! Sushi way and they all get a chance to try it out. Lucy is by far the best, Rebecca still would rather be in any other restaurant than this one whilst Badger wishes he was back chasing the Iraqi Republican Guard back up the Basra Highway. “How d’you think it went, Badger” asks the infuriatingly jolly Gareth. “Crap” reponds Badger, tersely and accurately. In the kitchen the trainer Pogs (?) is helping their chefs lose their sushi virginity. Of course the sequence is edited so it appears incomprehensible: Frances bites her lip in an alluringly bewildered way whilst Stephen nods, possibly to stop him losing consciousness as his squishy brain attempts to take it all in. The hand-rolls are demonstrated and they all have a go (in fact, with the conveyor belt it’s all a little bit like the Generation Game). Barney, who looks for all the world like a cheffy version of Pob (but with oddly long forearms), seems to get it better than the others which is more than can be said of Badger who is given a conveyor-best test by Lucy who seems in her element. Badger couldn’t look more uncomfortable if he was wearing horsehair Y-fronts. “You’ll know things are going drastically wrong when there’s one dish going round on the best” says Badger to Gareth. Funny you should say that, Sarge.
Chris and Nathan/JJ and James land a gig with Tampopo, the pan-Asian high-street chain that no-one’s heard of. A rather unpleasant glimpse into the changing room shows us JJ’s unimpressively girly physique and lobster-red chest. Must have just had it waxed. The FoH boys have to made do with Pol Pot’s old prison clothes.
The restaurant serve “canteen-style” food and they expect every dish to be cooked and served in 10 minutes. FoH trainer Caroline, who is very pretty with an accent that seems to travel between Australia, west-coast USA and Skegness, emphasises that speed of service is the key to customer satisfaction. She means profits of course, but she looks like an old girlfriend of mine so I just sigh and forgive her. In the kitchen the trainer Tem is showing them Chris and JJ how to use the wok burners. “Low flame, low flame” he sqeals at JJ who’s clearly nervous of the heat. The wok combusts, the dish is ruined and there’s six fewer eyebrows to go round. This is the first time that JJ has fried a pan in anger (the not-so-crumbly crumble from Ep 1 nothwithstanding) and he really does have a problem whilst it’s second nature to Chris. JJ thinks it’s like cocktail making but “taking out the ice and putting in the fire”. And lots of burned garlic, apparently. His test dish is rank whilst Chris, smugly silent, has cooked a doozy. Nathan’s confidence is sky-high and it’s shared by his mate who sees it as a chance to go mano-a-mano with JJ. It’s going to be woks at dawn and it could get bloody.
Janet and Sean/Daisy and Nadine get the easy one: Pizza Express, the chain famous for selling overpriced and undersized pizzas in otherwise elegant surroundings. As they have basically three menu items (dough balls, pizza and salad) this shouldn’t be beyond them but the producers aren’t stupid and we thoroughly expect Janet and Sean to bugger it up somewhere along the line. Sean cuts quite a dash in his black PE shirt (although he has to be dressed by his wife) whilst Janet looks like a Jean-Paul Gaultier advert gone horribly wrong.
FoH Training at PE is in the hands of Karen, a fussy and unpleasant woman who’s dressed like she’s running a lesbian cooperative wholefood café and not a pizza chain. She’s going to show them how to lay a table the PE way and talks to Sean as if he was a 6-year old with OCD “that’s great Sean…WELL DONE”. She very nearly pats him on the head and sticks a lollipop in his mouth. It’s pathetically banal but Nadine is scribbling notes as she was attending a Stephen Hawking lecture on dark matter. Still, being able to accurately place a knife and fork on a napkin without screwing up has boosted Sean’s confidence and he’s looking to take on all comers. In the kitchen the girls nod confidently as gangly trainer Dane explains the laboratory precision of every pizza. 65 grams of mozzarella, 24 slices of pepperoni etc to thoughful nods from Janet and Daisy. They don’t do a gravadlax and goat meat pizza, ladies. Sorry.
Come 7:30 and training is over and the teams have a chance to relax and enjoy the view from the other side of the counter. Stephen, who can’t bear to be parted with his little hat, stuffs his cavernous mouth with all manner of sushi whilst his missus still can’t bear to be near the stuff but their spirits are high. He can make it, she can sell it. Where can it possibly fall down? We’re going to find out soon enough….
She did mean that and then Raymond was repeating what she'd said. I expected him to go to the tables discreetly.
So to suddenly hear him shouting was shocking to say the least :eek::D
That said, I can't wait for this week's TV Burp. "Sexy Service" and those ridiculous pizzas have to feature, surely?
Another little point..they were occasionally offering "free drinks". Surely everything was probably free on the day to the customers of those chains ?..they couldn't expect them to play some kind of Russian roulette, ordering meals from a bunch of (largely) incompetent amateurs ?
PS..Great post there Buck Tarbrush..I'm looking foward to the follow-up.
I really thought Shaun was going to do a 'Basil Fawlty' speech at the end there....'You ponce in here expecting to be waited on hand and foot, while I'm trying to run a restaurant here. Have you any idea of how much there is to do? I've had it. Come on, pack your bags and get out.' In the end he come up with something just as good!
Also loved the shots of Sarah in the kitchen, with her white 'pork pie' paper hat on - I have the strangest thoughts about her some times which I am unable to rationalise....
Also liking the arty 'filler' shots of Bristol - am I the only one who keeps thinking Eddie Shoestring is going to shuffle into the background at some point with a wry smile on his face?
Couldn't really see the problem of having to wait an hour at Pizza Express for an overpriced pizza - isn't that normal service?
Well except that they decided to all do a different type of hand roll when really one person should do the rolls whilst two concentrated on keeping the belt full.
If you order something special off of the menu then you expect to wait.
All we needed was a third to cover their mouth...
*She put it there, not me
But what he was celebrating, and would never forget, was basically the evening he completely cocked up and had to tell a packed restaurant that they were shutting and everyone should go home.
How did this lot make it through the selection process? Whoever's in charge of that should be looking for a new job I think.:D
Isn't JJ just the most irritating floppy haired dollop?
..loved your recap again Buck..thanks for that.
If a staff member appeared that quickly it would scare the bejusus out of me. I'd still be shepherding the children through the door at that point. :eek:
Am I the only one who keeps thinking of tampax when I read that?:eek::o:D
I feel so sorry for RB, the show is a complete farce. He must be mortified to have anything to do with it.
Clearly they are the most incompetent bunch ever. Any guise of looking for serious business partners is long gone.
Really disappointing, makes the ending of Masterchef even more painful
Words of wisdom from the somewhat deluded Janet "Gravvvaad Laaaaxxx" and Sean on their website:
http://stemsfloraldesign.com/blog/
Their "about Janet and Sean" is pretty cringy too! :eek:
What is the point of Sarah's white pork pie paper hat when the glossy, auburn tresses are hanging loose?
JJ can't cook, which I suppose might not be an issue in whatever a 'picnic restaurant' is but stuffed him up here, especially as he was in the kitchen with by far the best cook, who seemed to shine from what we saw. JJ is an unlikable idiot, but I did start to feel sorry for him with 10 minutes to do 17 dishes and when RB was standing over him. JJ's friend seemed worse because as long as he thought he was being charming he didn't really seem to care that the customers weren't being fed. But I am quite curious to see what special hell a picnic restaurant is so I'm not sorry they stayed.
I don't understand why the Pizza express one was so difficult - I'd expect both those women to be able to cook pizza and salad more than I'd expect the 3 in the sushi place to cook sushi first time. Maybe I'm missing something but I couldn't see why it would be so hard?
I thought the right couple went. They messed up hopelessly and they didn't care about the customers at all. I thought he'd had more than one Guiness by the time he came to make that speech. They weren't serious about a restaurant at all - none of the sushi couples deserved to go before them.
That joke might have worked except eels are famously eaten by Cockneys.
And I'll admit it, I'm curious as hell to see what the Duran rejects mean by Picnic food restaurant - are we talking a branch of Greggs with delusions of grandur
They do seem to like themselves quite a bit!!!! Not sorry to see them go...
Winkers next?