In this Kitchen Nightmares episode, Gordon Ramsay visits La Parra de Burriana in Nerja, Spain.
La Parra de Burriana is owned by British expat and chef Lawrence Davey.
He wants to offer Brits in Spain something a bit different from fish and chips.
Lawrence borrowed £40,000 from his father to open the restaurant.
It is located 500 meters from the beach.
He has a catering degree and a few years’ experience of managing nightclubs in the UK.
To cater for the Brits he designed a Mediterranean menu with a twist for British citizens.
Eighteen months after opening the restaurant and he isn't doing well.
He lost £20,000 in the first year and added more dishes to his menu.
He raised it to 72 items, serving Chinese and Turkish dishes.
If he doesn’t have a good summer, the restaurant won't survive the winter.
Gordon meets Lawrence and he finds out he is £75,000 (105,000 Euros) in debt.
He sits down to try their dinner service.
Gordon is confused by the wide range of dishes on the menu.
He tries Lawrence’s signature dish, spicy prawn with chocolate sauce.
Gordon’s says that they do not go together at all.
Gordon orders a filet steak kebab.
It arrives swinging from a hook and Gordon describes it as "swinging like a Donkey's dick."
He notices smoke coming from the kitchen.
The waitress tells him that the dessert is being burnt.
Gordon gets his desert, the creme catalana and it is burnt and runny at the same time.
Gordon meets Lawrence in the kitchen.
He explains that he wants to make exciting dishes but Gordon says his meals were a joke.
The next day, Gordon observes the dinner service.
He discovers Chef Norm is forced to cook on the grill, serving poached chicken kebabs.
The kebabs are ready but no one ordered them yet.
They are kept at least one day after being pre-cooked to serve customers.
Gordon asks him not to even serve the kebabs from that night to the local stray cats.
Night falls and Chef Norm cooks in near darkness at the grill, using just a torchlight to check the food.
There is a long wait and customers complain of waiting over an hour for their barbecue.
Alex, the server mismanages the dining room.
Lawrence has a lazy style of cooking, deep frying vegetables and cooking everything on a grill.
The next day, Gordon comes in early to inspect the palace.
It is dirty with dog mess in the outside dining area.
Neither Lawrence or Alex seem bothered and he gets the staff to clean the floors.
Gordon finds thick grease in the deep fryer and they start deep cleaning the kitchen.
Gordon discovers Lawrence hosted a valentine’s dinner for a local donkey sanctuary charity.
Lawrence tells him it was a disaster.
He served them an unset chicken liver parfait and an over cooked cardboard chicken dish.
After the poor food he still had the nerve to charge them for the meal!
Gordon highlights the importance of the local expats.
He visits the charity to get their side of the story.
They said they had frozen parfait, chicken stuffed with bananas and asparagus.
He was arrogant and they laughed at the thought of going back to the restaurant.
He somehow gets them to promise to try the restaurant out again.
Gordon serves Lawrence and Norm smoothies of dishes including the prawn and chocolate and chicken and bananas.
They blind taste it and can't tell the subtle flavours apart and think it tastes disgusting.
Gordon tells them they don't need to have a twist.
He proposes a reduction of the menu to 12 items but Lawrence insists on his menu.
Gordon creates his own menu and has it ready for use and it is to be tested against Lawrence’s menu.
Lawrence, using his old menu, falls behind with food orders and much of the food is sent back.
Much later, he agrees to swap over for Gordon’s simplified menu but it's too late to save the service.
Norm is confused as the servers are serving empty tables.
Customers wait hours so refunds are handed out at the end of the night.
Lawrence blames the night on Gordon’s menu.
However, they were already overwhelmed by the time he finally agreed to swap to it.
Gordon is upset with their excuses and walks out of the kitchen in frustration.
The next day they find out there has been a break in.
They have been robbed of £4000, about 5,500 Euros.
Gordon asks to see the safe that the money in but there isn’t one.
The takings were just in a money box in a filing cabinet.
The money wasn't even put in a bank or any type of secure storage!
Lawrence says he is tired and might just go back home.
Gordon takes Lawrence to a Matador class to show he needs instruction before jousting with a bull.
Lawrence stumbles but does not give up and wins a round finally.
He feels better after the exercise and ready to make changes at the restaurant.
Gordon then shows him how his lazy cooking is taking too much time.
He could use pots and pans and get food cooked faster.
He shows him that he is working harder but not smarter.
Lawrence finally caves into Gordon's help and they change the menu.
He admits it feels great cooking fresh in pots and pans rather than on the grill.
On the relaunch Gordon moves Norm into the kitchen to back up Lawrence.
Pot washer Tom goes on the grill.
More is on the line as the British expat community is coming to try the restaurant out again.
It starts off well until Alex forgets to serve wine before the starters.
Soon there is a backlog of customers waiting for tables.
Alex has double booked tables within an hour without informing the kitchen.
There is a rush to get food out and sit customers.
Alex is flustered but is given a pep talk to keep working.
Service is overwhelmed, customers are left waiting but Lawrence is sending out good food.
Alex is asked to apologise to Lawrence.
The good news is the charity say they will come back, despite the poor service.
Gordon leaves them with 4 weeks of holiday season left.
He gives them a Donkey statue to remind them not to make an ass of themselves.
What Happened Next at La Parra de Burriana?
Gordon revisits a few weeks later and the Spanish food is still on the menu.
Gordon orders some of the new dishes and he is happy with the food and flavours.
He is making a profit and has managed to pay off 13,000 Euros of his debts.
Gordon revisited a year later.
They were back to serving average, disappointing food.
The locals were coming back but the tourists still weren't coming in for lunch.
Gordon took him to the beach for a cook off of his Pesto Pasta vs Paella.
They loved the paella and would visit the restaurant to try it.
La Parra de Burriana closed in August 2008.
Trip Advisor reviews prior to closure were mixed.
Lawrence now runs the The Leicester Arms in Penshurst, Tonbridge.
The pub / bed and breakfast appeared on Four in a Bed in October 2021.
La Parra de Burriana aired on November 21 2006, the episode was filmed in August 2006 and is Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares UK season 4 episode 1.
Read About More Kitchen Nightmares
Previous episode - La Gondola
Next episode - The Fenwick Arms
Hurray for the Gordon Ramsay Donkey rescue team. My wife and I have been watching the series, and we just watched this episode. It is such a surprise that most of the restaurants go back to their bad habits after being shown how to do it properly. Old habits die hard...
ReplyDeleteIt is funny that you say it is surprising the restaurants go back to their old ways, but then use a figure of speech that exists solely to point out that people tend to go back to their old ways.
DeleteChanging someone's behavior is not something that is done quickly, or easily, ever. That's why kitchen nightmares has such a terrible long term success rate. It's kind of sad, really.
These people should not be allowed to call themselves chefs unless they went to school? Are you crazy? The best, and I repeat the best chefs in the world have never set foot in a cooking school unless they were being paid to give a seminar. Michelle Roux, Raymond Blanc, Pierre White, Mario Batali, Paula Dean, Guy Fieri and Rachel Ray and the big surprise- Gordon Ramsay (he did take a hotel management course). This roster has literally every UK based 3 star chef on it. And not one went to college for cooking. Half of them didn't even come up the brigade system so... Your an idiot...
DeleteRachel Ray, Guy Fieri and Paula Deen are the best chefs in the world? Just because you get a half-hour show on Food Network doesn't mean you're any good (google image search "Rachel Ray Rouladen" or look up the reviews for "Lady and Sons" or "Tex Wasabi's").
DeleteLook up the alumni of the Culinary Institute of America and then try to argue that "the best chefs don't go to cooking school."
i think the 'failure rate' is a side effect of the marketing of the show. First off, restaurants come and go all the time, its a tough business. Second if Gordon wasn't in here 100% of these places would fail. the idea that its possible to save some of them is quite remarkable.
Deletebut i think the show is about more than saving the restaurants. it is also about the possibility for some of the staff to grow and learn, which in every episode, even at the ones that close, there seems to be some cook or waiter or someone who has a lightbulb go off and understand there are better ways to do things.
they market the show as 'restaurant turnaround' but if they layed off that angle and just focused on the growth and education, and visit a few restaurants that have survived for years after, it might cut down on some of this criticism from the public.
Your not alone lol. Just came to Netflix! Never seen these episodes before.
ReplyDeleteMost of these places fail because by the time they get help from Ramsay they are too far in debt to dig their way out no matter what Ramsay does.
ReplyDeleteI don't get it. Ramsay is called to rescue a failing restaurant, he gives incredible advice, shows them what to do, even cooks the food for them, when they follow his advice they succeed, but then they get stupid and go back to their old ways that failed in the first place. THEN they blame Ramsay. Stupid, ungrateful people. No wonder they fail.
ReplyDeleteEven helps them clean up the dog poop!
DeleteGiven Spain's economy even much better restaurants probably failed during the financial crisis
ReplyDeleteThat paella that Gordon cooked on the beach was not a proper paella, it was a Brit's idea of what a paella should be. Those big slabs of chorizo would have been horrible to try and chew through and he could have left the chicken out too. Not that chicken can't be put in a paella but he should have stuck with the seafood only considering he was cooking it on the beach. I don't think it needed the sherry vinegar either.
ReplyDeleteHe is a Michelin chef. It would have been delicious.
DeletePaella is overrated as a dish anyway
DeleteHe's also lost Michelin Stars, so theres's that. Just because someone is a professional in a craft doesn't mean they know everything about it; he's from the UK and was trained in French cuisine, so it's possible that a Spanish dish would be beyond his realm of expertise, and that he would British it up. As you see in the episode, the Brits who vacation in Spain just want fish and chips.
DeleteHave you been to Ramsey's "high end" restaurants in Las Vegas or Tokyo? It's all burgers, steaks, and goat cheese, because that's what Ramsey knows and it's safe palette-wise for tourists.
I wonder what happened to the owner. Would be very interesting if someone tracked down a lot of these clowns and did a "Where are they now" feature, from both the original and far superior UK series as well as the US show. I've always wondered whatever happened to Toby from The Priory.
ReplyDeleteWatching on Amazon Prime.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely needs a follow up.
Interesting to see where they are 10 years later.
That chef is probably out of the restaurant business.
Stolen money could well have been an inside job. What thief only takes the large notes? Would be interesting to know if it was insured, if so it was a bit of extra cash the owner and sorely needed.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that the thief knew exactly where to go.
Delete