Chapter Text
Gordon Ramsay walks along a pebbled beachfront foreshore.
“We’re here in the picturesque seaside town of Herne Bay, a place with the ignominious title of ‘Worst Seaside Town in Kent’, and we’re here for a restaurant that might just be vying for the title of worst restaurant in the Worst Seaside Town in Kent, if I can’t pull them out of the hole they’re in.”
Gordon moves to voiceover, and we cut to footage of tourists on the beach and beachfront, eating ice creams, buying souvenirs.
“Herne Bay is famous for its pebble beaches, colourful beach huts and classic charming English seaside atmosphere. Despite the title, tourists flock here in the warmer months to enjoy the sea air. Stéphane’s is a French bistro just a street back from Herne Bay’s beachfront, where owner Stéphane Fournier set out to bring the English day-tripping public the dishes of his native Narbonne, France – a town on a much sunnier and sandier Mediterranean beach than this one.”
More B-roll, this time of Stéphane, David and Nick, in their restaurant kitchen, cooking, moving order tickets, Stéphane flipping the door sign from ‘Closed’ to ‘Open’.
“But the cracks are showing in this family-run business. Owner Stéphane and his two sons, David and Nick, run the restaurant together; Stéphane manages the restaurant, David is Chef de Cuisine, and Nick is sous-chef and baker.”
“I’ve run a really successful restaurant here for five years, and I don’t understand why the customers suddenly just aren’t coming in,” says Stéphane. “It’s the middle of the season, and we had only four tables. It can’t be the food, because that hasn’t changed. People love my food.”
“Despite Stéphane’s confidence, the restaurant is struggling,” says Gordon’s voice.
“Some days, we barely get two or three tables through,” says waiter Charlie. “Saturday nights are our best nights, and I don’t think we’ve been booked out for dinner since I started here.”
“We really need Chef Ramsay’s help,” says Nick. “If anyone can give this place the kick up the arse it needs, it’s him.”
—
Gordon approaches the front door of Stéphane’s, a small shopfront sandwiched in between a shop selling ‘Modern blinds and shutters’ and a tattoo shop. The sign has a small, awkward French flag that looks a little bit like an emoji, and the name is – for some inexplicable reason – in Papyrus font. In front of the plate glass window are a couple of supremely awkward empty cane chairs and café tables; they’d be impinging on the pavement and generally getting in everyone’s way, had there actually been anyone to get in the way of. As it is, the street seems deserted.
Gordon kicks at a pot of very wilted red geraniums at the front door.
“My nan had geraniums,” he says, looking into the camera. “They’re almost impossible to kill. These are in such bad nick I’m almost… impressed? Let’s go find out if the rest of the restaurant is any better.”
Inside the restaurant, the decor is off-kilter; a combination of classic bentwood chairs and red-checked cloth covered tables, but for some reason, the walls are almost completely bare, and the décor has a faint flavour of office-building to it; the ceiling is a grid of acoustic tile. The only decoration is a collection of dusty kites hanging over the register at the back.
“Weird,” says Gordon.
“Hi, welcome to Stéphane’s,” says a young man in a crisp white shirt and black trousers. He’s got dark, curly hair, piercing blue eyes and a soft manner.
“Hi, nice to meet you, I’m Gordon,” says Gordon, unnecessarily. “And you are?”
“Charlie,” says the waiter.
“And you’re… head waiter?”
“I suppose so,” says Charlie. “Right now, I’m the only waiter.”
“Oh, wow,” Gordon says. “Well… let me sit down and try some of the food, yeah?”
Gordon pulls up a chair at a table and unfolds the menu.
“I’ll have the… holy fuck, is that a cow’s head?”
The camera zooms in on the menu, where Gordon’s finger is pointing to an item in the list labelled ‘Tête de Veau’.
“I mean, it’s not, like, a cow’s head cow’s head. Like, we don’t bring it out with the whole face, and, like, sprigs of parsley up its nose,” Charlie says hastily. “But, um, yeah. It’s basically a slice of stuffed cow’s head.”
“Well, I’ve got to have that, haven’t I?” Gordon says. “And I’ll get the cassoulet, and the moules marinières, and a crème brûlée for dessert. Thanks, darling.”
“I’ll get those started for you,” says Charlie.
Cut to Charlie talking to the camera:
“I’m just there, really hoping he actually likes anything we serve. I mean, I know he’s going to hate most of it…”
Charlie brings Gordon the tête de veau. Mercifully, it doesn’t actually look like a cow waxwork, and instead just looks like a round slice of something stuffed. It’s drowning in a white cream sauce.
“Your tête de veau, in a sauce Gribiche,” says Charlie.
“Tell me, Charlie, mate, is the cow usually known as an aquatic animal?”
“Um… no?” Charlie says. He looks like someone who knows a joke is coming and wants to laugh pre-emptively, but isn’t quite sure whose expense it will be at.
“So why on earth is this one swimming around on my plate?” Gordon says. Charlie laughs, relieved, and says he’ll go get the next course.
Gordon picks at the dire soupy plate. He takes a reluctant bite of the veal, chewing it cautiously. And then chewing it. And chewing it.
Eventually, he spits it into his napkin.
“If the chef was trying to invent beef-flavoured chewing gum, then he’s got it spot on,” he says, disgusted. “Bland, rubbery and completely inedible. Like eating the sole off a sneaker. And this sauce is a national embarrassment to France.”
Charlie appears, putting down a plate of cassoulet.
“You didn’t like the veal?” he says, one cheek dimpling up in a nervous smile.
“Didn’t like the… No. I did not like the veal. I couldn’t even chew the veal. You can take that, thanks, I’m done with it.”
Charlie picks up the plate. We follow him through the kitchen doors, where Stéphane and his two sons are waiting anxiously. The boys are in the kitchen pretending to be busy, while Stéphane is just standing there, arms crossed.
“He didn’t like it?” Stéphane demands.
“He said he couldn’t even chew it,” Charlie admits. He sounds somewhere between mildly terrified and utterly gleeful about being the one to convey this review. “And he asked why his cow was swimming on his plate.”
In close-up, he scrapes the remainder of the hapless bovine into the rubbish.
Cut to Stéphane talking to the camera.
“He just doesn’t know French food, that’s all,” Stéphane says confidently. “I know my food is amazing. People love it. They say so all the time.”
We move to footage of Stéphane, leaning over a table of slightly intimidated diners. He’s standing so close they’re having to crick their necks up to look at him.
“Are you enjoying everything?” he says, and then, before anyone can do much more than nod wincingly, “Can I get anyone more wine?”
In quick succession, footage shows Stéphane descending on diners the second they open the door, introducing himself as ‘Stéphane Fournier, the owner’, and then him berating a couple for their choice of beer with their dinner instead of wine.
“Papa is… a lot,” Nick says into the camera.
“Dad’s a complete pain in the arse, and he’s absolutely why this restaurant is failing,” David says, in his own interview footage. “If he’s not underfoot, he’s breathing his horrible manky breath on the customers. He insists everything be made according to his recipe book, which Mémère wrote down after she had the stroke. Oh, and he completely cheaps out on ingredients, because he insists he can’t taste the difference. I’m the only one who ever stands up to him, and we always just end up yelling at each other. Nick’s too soft; he couldn’t stand up to a teletubby.”
“I really don’t like arguing,” Nick says; we’re back to his interview footage. “Mémère’s recipes aren’t quite right in the cookbook, but where David argues with Dad, I just tell him I’m following it to the letter. He wouldn’t know the difference anyway. He’s killed every tastebud he has with thirty years of smoking Gitanes. But it is horrible having to send out food I know is bad.”
Charlie places down the cassoulet in front of Gordon. A moment later, he’s declared it watery, weak and tasteless, eviscerating it for using what he suspects are frozen catering sausages and pre-cooked canned beans. The moules fare even worse.
“Are these mussels frozen?” he says incredulously, poking at an invertebrate in half a shell. “Even if they weren’t, the sauce is tasteless and watery, but I could literally go outside and pitch a rock and it would probably land on a fresh mussel. There is no excuse for serving frozen mussels by the sea.”
“Yes, chef,” Charlie says, in a tone that makes it hard to tell if he actually means ‘daddy’. He’s clearly starting to enjoy this parade of disasters.
Gordon picks up a piece of the buttered bread that came out with the mussels
“Oh, and this bread is fucking…”
— Dramatic music swells —
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