Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Kitchen Nightmares - Amy's Baking Company

Amy practicing for her new career as a ventriloquist dummy, stress the dummy part

By now all of you Ramsay fans have probably heard about the epicness that was Friday's episode where Gordon walked out on Amy's Baking Company because the owners, Amy and Samy, are total douchebags.

The significance of this story isn't due to the fact that this is the first time Gordon Ramsay ever walked out on anyone in over 100 episodes of Kitchen Nightmares.  It's not significant because the owners are total butt pirates (even though they are).  No, instead it's because the owners took to social media to bash all of the naysayers as if they had just taken a massive dump of creamed corn in their diapers.

And that is why they have gone viral.

To enjoy the sideshow that is their Facebook page, check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/amysbakingco

I saw this coming on Friday evening after the episode aired.  It was a pleasant surprise to see something new from Gordon Ramsay.  If you've followed Greg's Gourmet you know I've been extremely critical of him for ruining Hell's Kitchen, initiating poor product placement on MasterChef, and being all wtf with Hotel Hell (why the HELL is he naked in every episode?).  I honestly thought another dreaded "to be continued" was coming as he was sitting there with Aryan look-alike Amy and Emperor Palpatine stand-in Samy.

Emperor Palpatine has taught Amy well

But then he just walked out.  Show's over.  Cameras came down, Amy and Samy went back to their "business", and Gordon went home.

Naturally every restaurant featured on Kitchen Nightmares will get a slew of Facebook likes and Yelp reviews just for being featured on the show even if said reviewers had never even been there.  Shortly after the episode had aired, Amy's Bitching Company had received a few hundred brand new one star reviews on Yelp.  In a post on their Facebook page (which had about 800 likes at the time), she wrote that she didn't feel her and Samy needed to defend their actions and they would continue to serve quality food.  Not an offense post, but still exhibited her delusional mindset.  I mean, the post got 2000 really nasty comments on it and Mike Hunt made several appearances, and it should have just ended there.

But it didn't.

Amy and Samy declared war on the people leaving hate comments, which in turn made them celebrities on Reddit, which in turn sent wave after wave after wave of new haters to their Facebook page.  Within 24 hours they had 24,000 Likes on Facebook.  24,000!  Their website was hacked, and their Yelp scores, despite their best efforts to filter them, continue to tank.  And they CONTINUE to battle with the haters.  Check out a collection of screencaps featuring their Facebook/Reddit battles here.  Note: the writer is an idiot who didn't do their research.  It's Gordon RAMSAY not Ramsey.  Moron.

Anyway, the amazing thing about this situation is that this probably WILL save their restaurant.  This has pretty much made them a sideshow attraction for the Scottsdale area and even Phoenix as a whole.  Since I started writing this post, their Facebook page has received another 3,000 Likes and they've now claimed that all of their accounts were hacked, so the nonsense you saw them posting that perfectly fits their personalities...well, that wasn't them.  Of course, we on the Internets know better.  They probably did speak to a lawyer about pressing charges against the 24,000 people calling them names and the lawyer probably just told them to play the oldest card in the book and say their account got hacked.  Generally standard etiquette for sex-crazed politicians and drug-addicted professional athletes.

Oh I get it, she's an alien - this would explain why she always acts like she's on another planet

The thing is, they probably could have used this opportunity to reach out anyway via social media but instead they broke very rule in the book and continue to do so.  Every few seconds someone posts crap on their page and as I write this sentence they're probably getting another 200 Likes or so.  I wish I could suggest this was staged but you just can't make this kind of stuff up.  So, thank you, Gordon Ramsay.  This was a very entertaining episode for more reasons than one.