Dan's Papers - November 23, 2007

Last Wednesday "Kitchen Nightmares" with Chef Gordon Ramsey aired on Fox featuring Finn McCool's restaurant in Westhampton. "Kitchen Nightmares" is a nationally broadcast television show about celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey and his ability to walk into a struggling restaurant, where the food and the business are not doing well, and through a lot of cursing and yelling, turn it into a well-run, well-managed, successful restaurant.

This particular episode of "Kitchen Nightmares" was of real interest to me because I, along with three of my colleagues, were invited there by the producers of the show to review the restaurant for its grand re-opening as a newly renovated restaurant with a new menu.

All four of us, myself, Sabrina Mashburn who used to work here as an editor last year and now attends school full time at Stony Brook Southampton, Victoria Cooper, our Coordinating Editor and Kelly Merritt, our Art Director, at the time were very excited to do the review. After all, being on television is certainly a thrill.

We arrived at the restaurant really excited, but as the night progressed we became more and more disappointed. The restaurant was crowded because, like us, most of Westhampton wanted to be on television. And to add drama to the show, the producers decided to make us wait over two hours for our table. We politely asked them if we could just review the restaurant another day, but were encouraged to act irritated. The cameras were rolling and all of us signed a waiver saying we wouldn't sue the show if they portrayed us as idiots.

Needless to say, when the show aired, I was both excited and nervous. I sat on the couch watching myself eat a chicken wing, which according to the show, had fallen on the floor in the kitchen. Of course, that scene had been shot a week before I ever received a chicken wing, but I got telephone calls from people I hadn't heard from in years, "DUDE, YOU JUST ATE A CHICKEN WING THAT WAS ON THE FLOOR!"

And my cell phone just kept ringing. It was as if the whole world was watching this reality television show, and when I thought about it, much of America actually was. When Chef Gordon Ramsey gave a shout out saying, "A reviewer from Dan's Papers is here, so let's make this dish extra special," I felt a real sense of pride. They just said Dan's Papers on national television, I thought. Then I did a little happy dance knowing my Dad was going to be happy with me helping get the paper national exposure.

But I was still on thin ice. How was the world of reality television going to portray the gang from Dan's Papers? As we all know, somebody almost always looks like a complete jerk on every episode of reality television. It is not because these people are actually jerks, but because they are literally directed by a producer to act a certain way and they agree to act that way and many times they put things on the television that are out of context to make for a better show. Is that acting or is that reality? You be the judge.

I couldn't remember saying really anything that was rude on camera, but I did mention to Victoria in private how angry I was that the wait was so long and that I thought we should leave. Of course, a camera snuck up behind me as I addressed Vicky and I'm pretty sure they got the tail end of our conversation, which included quite a bit of cursing.

I sat in terror, knowing that my chances of ever having a political career would be over if I was on television saying curse words. Lucky for me, they didn't catch me cursing on camera. Whew.

They did get Sabrina complaining. She came across as being the rude food critic, when in fact, she was acting rude because the producer had asked her to act that way.

The show ended, of course, with Sabrina liking the food, which she actually did not at the time. That really made me angry as I watched. All of us were making comments at the ridiculousness of everything, and at the table, I remember saying to everyone that it was a real shame how bad the TV people were making everything look. They had Sabrina on camera say something like, "There are only six places in the country you can get food like this," which at the time was a sarcastic remark, but on television came across as a sincere remark. This was bologna television, not reality television! I was jumping up and down on the couch.

The owners of Finn McCool's are nice people and this entire operation with the television producers made it an awful place to be that evening. We all promised ourselves to come back another time to see how things really are, and not with all of the hoopla.

The day after the TV show ran, we had hundreds of e-mails from people all across the country, many of them angry at Sabrina for being rude. I spent the day responding to every single one, explaining that reality television is one half reality and one half staged.

The more I thought about how much of that particular reality television show wasn't completely real, the more I thought about how many other things in life most likely have a twist to make for a more interesting story. And then I thought, what difference does it make? Finn McCool's gets a lot of exposure for their restaurant, which is good, they are genuinely nice people there and although my experience was awful because the producers wanted it to be, I've heard that they do have a nice menu and have figured out how to cook the food that Ramsey forced onto them in practically one evening. So good for them. We here at Dan's Papers wish the best for any business in the Hamptons. Nobody was really hurt just because there are some non-truths in the show. So what if that's how reality television works. And then I thought, wait a second, isn't that what Dan's Papers is pretty much all about?