“He’s British. He doesn’t f—ing know anything about pizza.” – CeCe
Like many native New Yorkers – including a bunch in my own family – CeCe and her husband Michael moved down to Florida. They opened Anna Vincenzo’s Ristorante Italiano in what looks like a strip mall back in 2001.
CeCe explains that her father, Angelo, a lifelong restaurateur, gave her $300,000 to open Anna Vincenzo’s. Her qualifications include “being around a kitchen” her entire life. She’s a self-taught chef who believes “there aren’t any rules” when it comes to cooking.
Things were going well, CeCe says, but “something went wrong” over the last few years, and she’s lost her passion for the restaurant business. A server corroborates that CeCe will “just serve crap out” to the diners. A ringing endorsem*nt of Anna Vincenzo’s cuisine, then.
Also: CeCe will get “aggressive and angry” often.
The current state of Anna Vincenzo’s finances: CeCe is “in debt about $190,000” to her father.
So, doing the math, add up the $300,000 initial investment with the $190,000 in debt, and the restaurant is about half a million bucks underwater.
Gordon Ramsay enters the fray, and immediately orders one of everything on the menu to get a sense of what’s doing. Ashton the server freaks out a bit at this request because it turns out that the menu is massive. Of course, Ramsay surely knew this before he asked, but that’s the game we’re in with these sorts of “unscripted” television shows, you know?
When Ramsay points out that there “must be hundreds of items on the menu,” he relents and selects a few dishes, such as the Salmon DiVino and Snapper de Ana.
Ramsay immediately declares upon being served that the Salmon DiVino looks like “the f—ed up version of a science lab.” It’s also dry and overcooked. Then there’s yet another instant fail when CeCe lies and relays that the salmon is fresh when Ramsay easily figures out that it’s frozen.
And if you had a “dog’s dinner” reference on your Bingo card, you’re a winner as that comes out when Gordon samples the snapper.
When CeCe gets this feedback, she immediately melts down, and resorts to ranting about how there are starving people in the world, and she doesn’t want to continue to cook food for Ramsay if he’s only going to “send it back.”
Meanwhile, Angelo chimes in with, “F— Ramsay,” and “I’m surprised nobody broke his legs yet.” And CeCe is on a roll with, “I don’t care how many stars he has. He can f—ing kiss my stars.”
That last bit is actually pretty funny. Also genuinely funny: “He’s British. He doesn’t f—ing know anything about pizza.”
Ramsay finally breaks down how terrible his experience was. Example: the snapper was “macerated in crap and mozzarella.” And: “it didn’t even taste like snapper.”
CeCe then says, “I don’t like being criticized” and every lie detector on the planet returned TRUE to that statement simultaneously.
CeCe goes onto tell Ramsay that “you’re pissing me the f— off” and in a strange way it’s a bit refreshing that she is not intimidated by the often belligerent Ramsay in the slightest, even if she’s entirely in the wrong in terms of her inability to take any kind of feedback.
Gordon tells CeCe that he’s not sure what’s worse, her attitude or her food.
“He’s lucky I didn’t hit him with something, I was that close,” is her response.
Nonetheless, things move forward to prep for the night’s dinner service. Highlights include Ramsay telling CeCe that the frozen meatballs smell like cat food.
During dinner service, the food gets fired out of the kitchen quickly… but then comes roaring back, with consistently complaints about how bland everything is. Meanwhile, CeCe spits out a steady stream of things such as:
- “Can I get some f—ing servers back here?”
- “Get that s— out of the window please?”
Eventually, Ramsay is reduced to simply saying, “wow…” And cut to CeCe finally melting down to the point where she wanders out of the back of Anna Vincenzo’s and starts bawling. She returns quickly but then bizarrely has no desire to get back to work. Her husband Michael tries to take over but by then it’s too late and diners start to bail out without having eaten their full meals.
It’s time for a tough love one-on-one session with Ramsay and CeCe, but the latter still won’t admit that “there’s a huge problem with the food,” as Gordon puts it.
Finally, CeCe says, “Fine, the food sucks. You happy?”
Ramsay then turns the corner and gives a little talk about how “tomorrow’s a new day.”
The next day, Ramsay conspires with the kitchen staff, minus CeCe, to cook all 181 items that are currently on the Anna Vincenzo’s menu. Who knows how many hours that would have taken to put together, but those little details are not needed in the midst of fast moving reality television such as Kitchen Nightmares, yes?
After a dumb little game that helps the team focus on the fact that the menu has to be cut down considerably, we cut to relaunch day and the revamped décor of Anna Vincenzo’s, and by now CeCe is bawling but out of happiness and gratitude for Ramsay’s help. Even poppa has gone from talking about breaking legs to tearing up over his joy and hopefulness for the restaurant’s future.
Ramsay will also pay for Daniel Serfer, a restaurant consultant, to help out at Anna Vincenzo’s for a month.
For the day’s service, Gordon has also arranged to have five local radio stations show up to cover a pizza making contest at the restaurant. Sounds pretty gimmicky to me, but whatever gets the customers in the door, right?
What’s more, members of the Miami Dolphins, Miami Heat, and Florida Panthers will be partaking in the pizza making contest. This sends CeCe into another round of happy sobbing.
The deal with the pizza making contest is that the teams have to make their pizza in under three minutes, and then the judges select the winner. The weird thing about the gimmick is that it’s too gimmicky – it doesn’t actually have to do with how (theoretically) good the food at Anna Vincenzo’s is.
Nonetheless, the Heat squad is declared victorious. I didn’t recognize anyone from that team during the quick clip, but assuming that it’s the 2009 roster, that’s the pre-Lebron and Chris Bosh super team Heat that features Dwayne Wade, Udonis Haslem, and Mario Chalmers.
Ramsay later reveals the new menu to the staff, which includes baby meatballs in marinara sauce, shrimp scampi, fresh baked clams, eggplant parmigiana, pizza, and fried calamari – all served family style.
This part of Kitchen Nightmares is always very brief but it seems to me the actual food selections and updates would theoretically be one of the most critical factors in the restaurant’s resurrection and success. I’d also think that the new menu would take careful study, not to mention a nice amount of training and honing with the kitchen staff. But, oh well, new menu, bam! And here we go.
Relaunch night starts out well enough, but then things weirdly fly off the rails – at least by way of the edit – with CeCe sending poorly prepared dishes out of the kitchen, and Ramsay flying into a rage. Things settle back down again quickly though… so quickly, in fact, that it feels more contrived and staged just here (at least) versus “real.”
Nonetheless, the evening’s service seems to go well overall, and the customers appear happy with the food and atmosphere.
And CeCe even (tearfully) tells the camera that she’s sorry to see Gordon Ramsay head down the road for another kitchen nightmare.
Kitchen Nightmares, “Anna Vincenzo’s”: is it still open?
Gordon Ramsay and Kitchen Nightmares returns to Anna Vincenzo’s just one year later to find it closed! And not only that, but we learn the following:
- CeCe had returned to her “old ways,” via Ashton the server.
- “Cece raised the prices and made the portions smaller.”
- Cece and Michael had separated, and Cece also lost a lot of weight.
- Cece had sold Anna Vincenzo’s to “focus on her family.”
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Anna Vincenzo’s”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 8
AIRED ON – March 18th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Docuseries, Office Culture, Trashtastic TV, Food Shows
CAST – Gordon Ramsay
