On the heels of Kitchen Nightmares receiving the positive news from FOX that they will be around for a couple of years and my week after week ranting that the US show just doesn’t live up to its UK predecessor, I was pleasantly surprised to find this week’s episode good enough to put it right up there with its English kin.

At first it did not seem that Ramsay was going to a restaurant that needed a lot of work as the Olde Stone Mill was an examination in beauty. A beautiful facility in a wonderful affluent location owned and run by a man who literally restored the property by his own hand. This is where Gordon comes in and this is what made this the best US Kitchen Nightmares yet.
This week we finally got to see the UK’s Gordon come in, observe the service, research the community, confront the owner and staff, devise an entirely new menu…and throw them all to the wolves. There seemed to be a whole lot more wrong with The Olde Stone Mill than any of the previous US Kitchen Nightmares exhibited and the shock was kept to a minimum while Ramsay steered things right.

One big omission is that we still can’t get the UK’s follow-up segment and here we really needed and deserved one. For the first time on the US show, I really want to see how these folks turn out down the road. I have suggested that FOX consider a special “Revisited” episode (I know the name is used in the UK version) later in the season, but now I’m demanding one.
I think Kitchen Nightmares has proven it CAN get it right and I can now confidently recommend it to fans of the original.
Catch it Wednesdays at 9CT on FOX.

This post was Authored by Rob Walley, Our Resident Authority on all things Kitchen Nightmares