Even as I find myself quarantined from so many things I love, including the natural world which brings so much solace, I find myself desperately trying to be productive. I know that I’ve giving myself a Sisyphean rock to roll up an Everest of the mind, but every morning, I wake up and set new tasks before me. I may not be able to go out and do the things I want, but I tell myself I still have agency, and damn it, I intend to use it.
It’s a new world, and my new tasks have included: write a new blog post every day, read a book a day, finish my poetry book, finally launch my blog (if anyone other than Sergio is reading this, it means I’ve finally succeeded).
And while it is likely that I’ll write as much as I hope to write, read as much as I hope to read, and finally finish that poetry book, I also find that these attempts to find a wormhole out of the present reality are no escape from the weight of pure dread that daily threatens to consume me. If I dare to turn on the news, I see that more people have died from Covid-19, more have lost their jobs, and if I dare to look further beyond the dreadful headlines, I read that, despite the fact that we’ve cut back on greenhouse emissions, the natural world is still hurtling desperately toward a cliff in which we might start to see mass die-offs of the planet’s species in the next 10 to 20 years.
So many promising mornings have devolved into lazy afternoons napping on the couch, afternoons spent binge-watching Netflix specials and Kitchen Nightmares on YouTube.
And so, that brings me to Kitchen Nightmares. Kitchen Nightmares, if you haven’t been introduced, is a show in which Chef Gordon Ramsay visits a bunch of restaurants on Long Island (and elsewhere in later seasons), in an attempt to bring the restaurants back from the brink of failure and closure. Eventually, the show devolves into a bunch of Long Islanders drinking and yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. Plates are shattered on the floor. Things get burned. Fire departments get called. Occasionally, Ramsay vomits.
Why watching Chef Gordon Ramsay bitch out a bunch of failing restaurant owners gives me comfort is a deep mystery of my psyche. Actually, there’s no mystery here. Chef Ramsay hails from a time before the pandemic, a time when restaurants still existed, a time when failing restaurants could change course and re-open. Watching happy customers gush over the perfect meatballs and crisp pizza brings me nostalgic joy and sorrow. I sometimes wonder how those restaurants are doing now. Yes, I know they are closed. But I wonder if they will re-open when this madness ends. If the news is any indication, they’re all gone and the show is a time capsule, a relic of a time forever lost.
The premise of each show is exactly the same. This is also comforting. In a world where I might wake up tomorrow and find that the global food supply chain has finally shut down and where workers in New York City are digging graves in Central Park, watching a show where the premise is exactly the same every day is comforting. The premise is this: Ramsay visits failing restaurants in an attempt to discover the reasons why the restaurants have failed.
Often he begins by asking the restaurant owners directly. Rarely do the owners say: we failed because our food tastes like shit, we failed because we serve freeze-dried dog food, we failed because we serve imitation crab and call it real crab, we failed because our service sucks and our décor is from the seventies, we failed because we yell at the customers, we failed because we have three managers, one of whom is a raging alcoholic and the other of whom is fucking the waitresses in the supply closet, we failed because all the food in our refrigerator is rotting and because the lobsters are cannibalizing each other in the tank. More often, owners will say, “we’re failing because we have no customers.” Ramsay is usually patient. “Why don’t you have customers?” he’ll ask calmly. The restaurant owners never know why. In the tank behind them, the lobsters are eating one another.
Ramsay can easily see why the restaurant is failing because most of the time, anyone with eyes and ears could see why the restaurant is failing. And yet, the show reveals something about our common humanity. While the reasons for our failures may be evident to everyone around us, they are seldom evident to us.
Fortunately, most of the time, after initially resisting Chef Ramsay’s help, the restaurant owners start to listen. They see how the shitty food, shitty management, shitty chef, or shitty décor is turning people away. They make the changes they need to make. People return. They make money again.
While the restaurants might be gone, Kitchen Nightmares has a lesson to teach us. As I watched the show unfold, I started to feel a nagging worry in the pit of my stomach. For years, haven’t I been wanting to finally publish a book of poetry?
What if I was the failing owner of the restaurant, sitting on a pile of frozen hamburgers, unable to see why I had no customers? Why haven’t I done it, yet—why haven’t I published the book? I have some guesses. But I worry that these guesses are much like the restaurant owners looking into their empty dining rooms, assuming that the reasons why their restaurant is failing is purely due to the lack of customers.
We need honest feedback from other people, who have a genuine intention to help us. This is why, we not only need to seek criticism, but when we get it, we need to listen.
Today, I’m going to take a different tactic. Today I’m going to reach out to my closest friends, those I trust to give me honest feedback, and I’m going to ask them why they think I’ve failed to publish my poetry book. And when my friends answer, this time, I’m going to listen.
About the Writer
Janice Greenwood is a writer, surfer, and poet. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry and creative writing from Columbia University.