Robert Irvine and "On board food"

Recently, I wrote a "reply" re onboard food

http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/34384-bringing-food-and-drinks-onto-the-train/page-2&do=findComment&comment=556597

one item of which was

Don't go to the diner expecting to see Robert Irvine doing a makeover of the food and decor for "Restaurant Impossible".

It made me think What if Robert Irvine did a makeover of an Amtrak Diner? What would it look like? Better yet, what if Saturday Night Live did a sketch on such a makeover?

• Robert would show up in his "advertiser placed" car (use the Auto Train?) and meet the staff while describing that Amtrak is losing tons of money daily in the Diners.
• Robert would invite customers for a meal so he could observe the service. He'd have a cow when he sees it.
• Invited customers would not all be passengers but all would criticize the food and the service.
• Robert would then order and try selected items including the pancakes, RR french toast, Black Angus burger, Veggie burger, pasta, and chicken dinner. He would spit out half of it and describe the rest as tasteless and cold except for the french toast which he would say is not half bad. His worst criticism would be reserved for the pasta which he would describe as mushy noodles with tomato soup.

The following changes would be made

• New multi-color ceiling in red, blue and brown emphasizing soaring transportation.
• New seats in the car custom made from nearby junkyard all of which are located along Amtrak routes.
• "New" hanging lights in old RR motif found in a local downtown hardware store.
• Portion of one side of the car would be cut out, replaced with fence made from old RR ties to provide patio seating.
• Remainder of walls would be covered with stressed paneling to give that "Hobo Boxcar" look.
• There would be a new sign at entry "Lou's Amtrak Cafe" named after the OBS and changeable for each OBS for that day
• No frozen ingredients would be used any more per Robert.
• Servers would be "fired" until the next day when they would all promise to support Amtrak by working harder.
• OBS would receive a dressing down from Robert, would cry then would promise to have "new passion" for the Diner Car.
• Robert would use his signature sledgehammer to break out one of the windows to be removed, would discover it to be impossible and then his construction chief would simply pull out the emergency-exit rubber with handle and remove the glass. The crew would clean up the mess.
• Robert would teach the cook some new menu items - lox and bagels with fresh fruit souffle for breakfast; caprese sandwich on crisp Italian bread with fresh mozzarella and on-board made pesto sauce for lunch; Cajun mussels with spicy, garlicky shrimp for dinner. Robert would jump up and down with joy as he tried his own food and the cook would pretend to be happy describing it as "the best I have ever eaten".
• Prices would be increased.

Of course, the Diner Car would be closed for two days during renovation but would continue as the sole diner on the train.

Passengers would be lining up in adjacent cars waiting for the grand re-opening. Robert would describe how much money Amtrak would make from now on.

A month late, the makeover would be shown on "Restaurant Impossible".

The new menu, "no frozen ingredients" rule and the staff's new-found enthusiasm would be gone the following week.

A month after the changes, the Diner Car would be sold to a new owner because Amtrak had Robert come in just to get a free makeover.

Excellent. Follow that up with Boardman on Undercover Boss

Uhm, Gordon Ramsey would be filing all kinds of copyright lawsuits. This is his shtick not Robert.

Irvine would cook a delicious, nutritious, 7 course gourmet meal to feed 500+ passengers and crew on the auto train using only what's available in the cafe , diner, beef stew reserves, and what he can beg from passengers who brought their own food on board.

I always rode the Southern said:

Uhm, Gordon Ramsey would be filing all kinds of copyright lawsuits. This is his shtick not Robert.

Irvine would cook a delicious, nutritious, 7 course gourmet meal to feed 500+ passengers and crew on the auto train using only what's available in the cafe , diner, beef stew reserves, and what he can beg from passengers who brought their own food on board.

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Robert has multiple shows. The OP did a great description of restaurant impossible. The show you describe is dinner impossible.

amamba said:

I always rode the Southern said:

Uhm, Gordon Ramsey would be filing all kinds of copyright lawsuits. This is his shtick not Robert.

Irvine would cook a delicious, nutritious, 7 course gourmet meal to feed 500+ passengers and crew on the auto train using only what's available in the cafe , diner, beef stew reserves, and what he can beg from passengers who brought their own food on board.

Click to expand...

Robert has multiple shows. The OP did a great description of restaurant impossible. The show you describe is dinner impossible.

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Yes I know it is dinner impossible, and I know Robert does restaurant impossible,but he is so very gracious, gentler and kinder compared to Ramsey. So to me the show the OP describes sounds more of classic Gordon Ramsey Kitchen nightmares scripts down to the ordering food,spitting it out, with much more screaming and use of the F word, though he is kinder and gentler than in Hell's Kitchen.

I was just playing off the dinner impossible concept for Amtrak, considering what they are stocking now.

In all seriousness I think the culinary advisory team and menus they developed had improved things a lot. And the tossing out of those menus implies a lot about what direction things are headed in.

I always rode the Southern said:

In all seriousness I think the culinary advisory team and menus they developed had improved things a lot. And the tossing out of those menus implies a lot about what direction things are headed in.

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Yeah... the direction of "penny wise pound foolish". :-( You can do nice menus with cheap ingredients, and the culinary advisory team seemed to understand that; worsening the menu selection doesn't save you anything, it just loses revenue...

I always thought Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares was better than Irvine's Restaurant Impossible (a Kitchen Nightmares ripoff) and Ramsay's resume as a chef is better too. Irvine was accused of faking several things on it. That said the premise of the OP was pretty funny.

Ramsey and Irvine are almost the same. Except Ramsey uses his hands a whole lot more and half his show is bleeped.

Excellent staging... Wonder if AMTRAK could arrange this? Seriously, might get people interested in train travel....

I think in this case, Robert Irvine would be better off than Gordon Ramsey. I'm not saying that Ramsey isn't a saavy business person, but Irvine actually has a show where he not only helps the restaurant with the food, but also looks to invest in them. That requires investigating the business model. Think Amtrak would let any prole near their sacred accounting books?

He'd probably totally destroy it like he and others of that ilk do to the restaurants on their show. A really good Italian restaurant that needed a better wait staff and some new carpet got itself destroyed (homey decor destroyed, menu gutted and turned into a steak house in an area where steakhouses don't last 6 months, prices jacked, incompetent waitstaff and manager retained) by Gordon Ramsey.

Why don't you do a follow up on those restaurants? There's a reason those shows don't.

Green Maned Lion said:

He'd probably totally destroy it like he and others of that ilk do to the restaurants on their show. A really good Italian restaurant that needed a better wait staff and some new carpet got itself destroyed (homey decor destroyed, menu gutted and turned into a steak house in an area where steakhouses don't last 6 months, prices jacked, incompetent waitstaff and manager retained) by Gordon Ramsey.

Why don't you do a follow up on those restaurants? There's a reason those shows don't.

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Kitchen Nightmares has done followups and, as I recall, typically if they fail its because of prior debt. Given that these are all failing restaurants that he intervenes with, and that he can't replace the owners, even a failure rate higher than the norm isn't unexpected or an indication that he is doing something wrong.

Trust me, what he did to that restaurant indicates extraordinary lack of care in what he did. It had serious problems, no question. The biggest was that it was a father/Son team, with the father being the manager and the son being the cook. The father died, and the son couldn't manage his way out of a paper bag.

However, along that section of road on which it was located, over ten years time, was a Ruth's Chris, a Morton's, a Manhattan Steakhouse, a Lone Star, and four local players in the steak house game. None kept there doors open more than a year and a half. The area is full of home owners with backyards and barbecues and a tendency to throw backyard steak parties. The market isn't there for a pure steakhouse, any fool could see.

The man orders things against the recommendations of the kitchen, and pronounces the food bad. Then he goes into the kitchen and derides their various practices, most of which are industry standard. And then repositions them in the worst possible way.

I never ate the steaks after opening. The prices were, as recommended, insane. About the same that I paid at Spark's in New York, in fact. I assume they were excellent, because they always were before Ramsey moved his vapid idiocy through it. I am not paying $100 a plate for a meal I paid $39 for a few months before. A price increase I understand, a tripling not so much.

Attempting to pull New York steakhouse pricing at an Italian restaurant is simply ludicrous. A 10 year veteran of the take out pizza business should know better, let alone a "celebrity" who makes it his business to go around telling people how to run restaurants!