Longtime Oakland County eatery Boodles Restaurant is center stage on the Tuesday, Aug. 18, episode of Gordon Ramsay’s "Kitchen Nightmares" on the Fox network, and the owner's son, Kevin Ferguson, said the experience was “intense.”
Ferguson is the front-of-house manager and mostly works as the sommelier, but said he was the main focus of the show.
"It was intense," he said. “It's called nightmares for a reason. It is a challenging and difficult experience.”
During the show's filming last summer, the restaurant, he said, was understanding and that a “few people didn’t want to be on.”
Working with the show's host, Gordon Ramsay, who often shouts and appears frustrated, Ferguson said, is not like “you’re getting to know him; he’s there for the show.
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“He was tough with the kitchen staff. He was pretty tough with me,” Ferguson said. “They put you through the wringer.”
But Ferguson also called the show a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“I am just some kid from the Midwest that can’t often say I’ve been on national television. “That’s the thing. It’s one of those once in a lifetime … hey, I did a thing, kind of situations, he said. “It was a very unique opportunity to work with master chefs, actual, bona fide, like chef Rich is a literal master chef. We were in rarefied air,” Ferguson said. “These people had some pretty extraordinary skills.”
While customers may have noticed favorite menu items missing at first, Ferguson said some are back on the menu.
“(The show) changed my lens, my perspective as far as what’s good, what isn’t good,” he said. “
Since the filming, Ferguson said they have been moving forward with a focus on more fresh ingredients.
“Nothing out of a can, nothing frozen in a box,” he said. “Everything we get in now, we are making fresh. We are making our sauces fresh, all the dressing fresh. I think we’ve upgraded our food.”
Ferguson said the tableside Caesar has been back, as is the chicken Parmesan.
“I've tried to bring back as much of the classic experience with the angle and lens that the show provided us,” Ferguson said. “We are just doing it from kind of just a fresher perspective, but we couldn't completely abandon that old school flair because that was just kind of the thing that makes Boodles Boodles.”
The Kitchen Nightmares episode featuring Boodles airs on the Fox Network at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 18.
Contact Detroit Free Press food and restaurant writer Susan Selasky and send food and restaurant news and tips to: sselasky@freepress.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @SusanMariecooks. Subscribe to the Eat Drink Freep newsletter for insider scoops on food and dining in metro Detroit.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Boodles Restaurant manager calls Kitchen Nightmares show ‘Intense’
