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Secret Garden Restaurant Suckered Us
Restaurant, owners skewered on TV series "Kitchen Nightmares"
By Lisa McKinnon (Contact)
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
It was the kind of call that Michel and Lauréa Bardavid thought might come but were hoping wouldn’t: A new customer who had booked a table at their Moorpark restaurant, The Secret Garden, was calling back to cancel because of something she’d seen on the Internet. |
Specifically, the would-be diner had visited the Web site for the Fox reality TV series “Kitchen Nightmares.” There, she clicked on two video-clip previews of the show, which at 9 tonight will feature the restaurant in its season finale.
In one clip, the show’s star, celebrity chef and self-styled restaurant fixer Gordon Ramsay, curses and groans theatrically after finding allegedly moldy food in the walk-in refrigerator. (More on that in a minute.)
In the other, Ramsay, who is British, calls Michel, who is French, a “filthy pig.”
“I couldn’t really blame her for not wanting to come, based on the way those clips falsely depict our restaurant,” Lauréa said. “We’re a romantic, destination restaurant with French-California cuisine. We are not by any stretch of the imagination dirty.”
Michel, who is the restaurant’s executive chef, returned the woman’s call and persuaded her to rebook the reservation. But as the hours tick down to the debut of tonight’s show, he said, he feels a growing sense of dread.
“If I had to give advice to someone considering being on a reality show, I would tell them not to do it,” he added. “The stress is not worth it.”
The Bardavids have owned The Secret Garden for nearly eight years and say business was good until Ramsay came along and simplified both the menu and the decor, rocking the expectations of longtime patrons.
Pared down and sped up
Michel had been offering five- to 12-course tasting menus in addition to the regular, French-inspired fare. Ramsay countered with a bistro menu designed to get patrons in and out the door in less than an hour.
“People complained; they come to our restaurant to linger,” said Michel, who has since reinstated many of his original dishes.
Of the restaurant’s pre-makeover look, which included Victorian flourishes like silver tea trays and paper-doily slippers for the pedestal water glasses, Ramsay can be heard muttering in one of the show’s promos, “I feel like I’m at Buckingham Palace.”
Apparently, that’s a bad thing. Before the episode is over, Ramsay’s unseen team of designers will have cleared away the restaurant’s ornate salt-and-pepper shakers and crystal bud vases in favor of more streamlined items straight from the pages of a West Elm catalog.
“I do like the new curtains they gave us, and the rods,” said Michel, pointing to the winter-white silk dupioni drapes framing the restaurant’s front windows. “I can’t be completely negative about everything.”
So, if things were OK at The Secret Garden, why did the Bardavids agree to participate in a show whose basic premise is that Ramsay swoops in and fixes a so-called “troubled” restaurant in a week or less?
“I wanted to teach Gordon how to cook,” Michel said with a laugh.
He’s aware that such statements come off as cocky.
“In one of our arguments, Gordon calls me arrogant, and I agree with that,” Michel added. “I only wish I was half as arrogant as he is. I probably would be way more successful.”
An alternate reality
Like several other owner-chefs featured on “Kitchen Nightmares,” Michel came to the producers’ attention because he had interviewed to appear on “Hell’s Kitchen,” another Fox reality show in which Ramsay pits chefs against one another in tests of wills and skills.
Despite the change in shows, Michel decided to go forward with his goal of a possible cook-off with Ramsay. He said he got his wish in a segment involving soup, but doesn’t think that the scene will make it into the episode.
What does make it in, judging by the promos, is a scene in which Michel arrives at the restaurant to find the doors covered with plywood, caution tape and signs proclaiming “Foreclosed by bank” and “Closed for business.”
Ramsay’s on-screen explanation for the staged closure: “If he (Michel) doesn’t start changing … that’s the end result.”
It was not the only time that a scene was played for effect rather than accuracy, the Bardavids said.
That tray of allegedly moldy brown food? What looked like mold, Michel explained, was actually trimmings created when he cut out heart-shaped bits of chocolate cake for a dessert called Chocolate Surprise.
The Bardavids hope to share many other behind-the-scenes insights into their “Kitchen Nightmares” experience during dinner-and-a-show events tentatively scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Dec. 19 and 20.
Until then, it’s safe to say that The Secret Garden hasn’t come in for this kind of attention since the wife of singer Frankie Valli was found guilty of slapping the restaurant’s former owner in a dining room dispute over the bill nearly a decade ago.
That incident, which was covered in the tabloids and settled at trial despite charges of juror misconduct, still inspires visits from out-of-town diners, Lauréa said.
So maybe it’s true: There is no such thing as bad publicity. |
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