THE RESTAURANT: ROAD TO NOWHERE

Last week wasn’t as much fun as the first, hence my tardy recapping. To begin with, Raymond gives tips on how to charge more for a meal – like if you have a bowl of super-noodles you could garnish it with some grated cheddar and call it super-noodle deluxe or something (he used different ingredients tho…) Awesome!

Then the couples have to do a “customer only pays what they think the meal is worth” night and it generally goes better than the first night. Team Father/Daughter try to avoid their opening night service meltdown by only taking about two bookings for the whole day. Team Twee take too many bookings and have to get people to wait hours for their tables, also the food quality suffers a bit. Team Sino-Cymru can’t cook rice, which I would think is a bit of a drawback for Chinese food. Team Gay can’t be bothered to make any of the changes suggested by Raymond, sigh. Team Sourcing Shambles don’t order enough food and reduce portion size, so by the end of the evening the punters are just getting 1/256th of a scallop each.

Team LOL have their belated opening night and it all seems to go well, with our heroes bickering adorably about the presentation of sliced bread. Sarah turns up and likes the look of the food, but isn’t actually given any cutlery to eat it with. When she finally does, she says it’s very good but that the menu isn’t descriptive enough.

Everyone gets about ½ - 2/3 of what they would have charged. Mean mean customers!

(BTW, there are two teams who haven’t featured much, so I haven’t given them stupid nicknames yet – they will be Team Engerland, who are obsessed with English food, and Team Brood, who have a zillion kids and want to open a restaurant where other people can go with a zillion kids and not be judged)

Team Brood are deemed to be the best restaurant of the week, mainly because of Mr Brood’s sparkling front of house personality.

Raymond gives every couple some feedback, then announces the other couples who must “fart to keep their restaurant” along with Team Father/Daughter. It’s Team Gay, who are generally rubbish, and Team Twee - gasp! - who should have done better and let themselves down. You can’t boot them out! Husband Twee is the only vaguely good looking man on the show!

For their task, each couple must team up with some non-losers to create dishes and serve for the lunch shift at a busy motorway service station. The last time I ate at a service station I ended up vomiting profusely by the side of the M6. Anyway, I missed most of this as I was late home and forgot to tape it, but basically…

Team Father/Daughter do the best, financially, but get told off for not doing a meat dish and then taking a photo of some shop chocolate brownies and passing it off as their own food. Apparently this is a CRIME!!!! Sarah says their fish pie is v nice, but their fishcakes are like rocks – there is a funny shot of her eating a bit, then making a pained expression and wondering how she’s going to swallow it. Team LOL are helping them, and the mild mannered one has to wear a comedy ostrich outfit to lure in the kiddies.

Team Twee make the best food but they take ages to get it together and don’t have time to take proper photos. Instead they have shitty hand felt-tipped posters. Mrs Twee’s idea of promotion is to make some “Cheerful Soul” stickers (that’s the name of their restaurant. Vom) and chase irate motorists round the service station. They do second best and are praised for the food, but totally lambasted for the dreadful promotion. Mrs Twee runs off to cry somewhere and I shout “Where’s your cheerful soul now, eh?” at the telly.

Team Gay make decent food but have a disaster with the humungous carrot cake they try to make. It takes EONS to bake, so eventually everyone forgets about it and it burns. Heh. Cue shots of various cooks trying to scrape the black bits off, but in the end it is deemed unsellable. They do the rubbisherest and are fired basically, which is not surprising as they didn’t bother to follow any advice, had no clue, no drive and no sorbets. There is a ‘poignant’ shot of them wandering the empty halls of “Sorbets and Seasons” (tee hee) saying that they were surprised how hard it was to run a restaurant, what with all the late nights and early starts, etc. What did you expect, fool? I pity the fool, etc etc.

Next week! More cooking and more crying, I expect.