That’s a lot of shows that need to feature restaurants!

It should come as little surprise to learn that getting your restaurant featured on Food Network, the Travel Channel, or any of the other endless networks that feature food programming practically guarantees a surge in new business. But is that always a good thing? Grub Street talked to the owners of some featured restaurants to find out what goes down after the TV crew moves on, and the crowds roll in.

Lynn Archer, whose Rockland, Maine, restaurant Brass Compass was on Throwdown in 2009, says her restaurant was already “very solid with locals” before Bobby Flay paid her a visit. But adjusting to the new level of fame was no picnic: “After the show aired, you couldn’t get a seat. I wasn’t prepared,” she said.

Teddy Folkman, of Granville Moore’s in Washington, D.C.: “We call it the Throwdown hangover.” Folkman, who both beat Flay on the 2008 mussels-and-fries show and appeared as a contestant on The Next Food Network Star, estimated that his business “instantly went up 10 to 15 percent,” with a bump in business anytime there’s a repeat.

If there were ever any doubt about the selling power of Guy Fieri, it’s erased when you talk to the restaurants featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. Fred Guerrero of the Oinkster in Eagle Rock, California, appeared on the show in 2010. “It was crazy,” Guerrero said. “As soon as the episode was over, the phone started ringing off the hook. The next morning, there were people waiting like an hour before we opened, and a line around the building.”

How much can a single TV appearance boost business for an owner? Guerrero and chef Nongkran Daks of Chantilly, Virginia’s Thai Basil both saw their business double. “They told us, maybe you’ll see a 40 percent increase in sales or something,” said Guerrero, “but it was upwards of a 100 percent increase.”

But what happens when your business can’t handle the crush of customers?

That’s what happened to Matt Chernus, co-creator of L.A.’s Grill ‘em All truck, which won the first season of Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race. “After the first episode aired, there were long lines and every week they got longer,” he said. By the time his victory episode had aired, a night in the truck could be pandemonium. “It got more nuts,” Chernus said. “It was panic, definitely. It was blind fear. [The lines] were like a couple hundred people deep, and honestly, for a food truck, you can’t feed that many people … it was just like, Oh man, we’re going to be in the shit. We ran out of food every shift back then.”

“When the episode was about to air, I Googled other restaurants that had appeared on [the show] and they were calling it ‘The Curse of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives,’ because it just breaks some people,” Guerrero said.

As a Times story noted earlier this year, the TV-watching hordes can also alienate regulars. “A lot of our regulars are family here. We have their birthday parties, we go to their birthday parties, it’s a great sense of community that extends outside of the restaurant,” Folkman said. “Now we’re one of those destination places that people come to from all around. So [after the show], at first some of the regulars realized that they couldn’t come to their favorite place on a Friday or Saturday anymore.”

Too many customers and sold-out weekend seatings are problems lots of struggling restaurateurs would love to have. One problem they might not want: being portrayed as a mess on national TV. It’s a recurring theme for people whose restaurants have been the subjects of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

Darryl Cortello of Zeke’s in Metairie, Louisiana, said that actually watching his episode of Nightmares in 2010 was the most difficult part of appearing on the show. “They sort of made my wife and I out to be real villains,” he said. “People have actually come in to meet us and say, ‘Aw, you’re so much better in person. On TV, you were a real ass.’” Cortello adds, “The show really gets crafty with editing.”

Colleen Gaertner, co-owner of Classic American Restaurant in West Babylon, New York, said the taping of her 2011 Nightmares episode was “very overwhelming,” adding that her teary episode was “hard to watch, because it’s your business and it’s very personal and, you know, you’re exposing yourself.”

But Cortello and Gaertner would both go through the whole ordeal all over again. “Had they not decided to use us on their show, we probably would have had to shut the doors,” Gaertner said.

More “Feeding Tube”:
The Feeding Tube: Ten Restaurants That Need to Take a Food-TV Hiatus
Sloshed TV: Grub Street’s Pitch for the First-Ever Non-Boring Booze Show
Ten Important Moments in Food-TV Recipe History
Buttered Up: A Look at Paula Deen’s Financial Empire
The Feeding Tube: Five Cooking-Competition Bad Guys Tell Us Why They’re Just Misunderstood
How Food Television Changed the Way We Eat
Eleven Real Secrets Behind TV Food Styling

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Filed Under: the feeding tube, gordon ramsay, kitchen nightmares

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

Obsess over the minutia of your meals via a Facebook group called MunchMad. Limiting messages to just seven words or fewer, the page asks its fans “What are you eating right now?” From airplane food, home lunches, and Benihana to sushi at L.A.’s Katsuya and cheese steaks at Jersey Mike’s, fans share every detail, along with photographic evidence, opening their choices to such judgments as “That looks horrible! Put it down!” from other members. Founded just last week by friends working in a Westwood marketing company to unite food obsessives scolded for Tweeting their meals, the page already has 332 fans dishing on their dishes.

What Are You Eating Right Now in 7 Words or Less [Munchmad]

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Filed Under: facebook for foodies, benihana, jersey mike’s, katsuya, munchmad, twitter

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

Death & Co. bartender Alex Day

Death & Co., the trendy mixology lounge in New York’s East Village, is coming to Downtown Los Angeles. Eater reports that co-owner Ravi DeRossi is commandeering about 2,000 square feet of space for a bar that will mostly resemble its Manhattan counter-part, whose cocktail and food menus are online. On drink duty will be bartender Alex Day, who will relocate to Los Angeles next month to help begin the business. Last month, the bar’s Brian Miller appeared at Downtown’s The Edison and quickly gained one of the longest lines to try his libations. Today however, Death & Co. looks like a strong competitor to the cocktail-centric club.

Death & Co. Coming to Downtown L.A., Headed by Mixologist Alex Day [Eater L.A.]

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Filed Under: new york imports, alex day, boze news, brian miller, death and co., downtown, new york, radio room, the edison

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

“The lines were pretty horrific, like Scarface, and I was never embarrassed by it but my children helped me become more paranoid…In L.A. it was all ‘Oh my god, when did you go through the windscreen?’ You put up with it, but then you get f***ing sick of it.” -Gordon Ramsay, celebrity chef and star of Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, on his decision to undergo cosmetic surgery. [Contact Music via Daily Mail U.K.]

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Filed Under: quote of the day, el gordo, gordon ramsay, tv land

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

Campanaro

Chef Joey Campanaro, co-owner of New York’s Market Table and Little Owl, is heading to Los Angeles, Eater L.A. confirms. Campanaro highlights seasonal cooking and sustainable seafood, making him a natural fit for our shores, and he is apparently cousins with the owner of Salute wine bar in Santa Monica, the same location for his upcoming project, Eater surmises. Currently the chef is working on opening the kitchen at Kenmare in Manhattan’s Nolita neighborhood, but we’ll let you know if and when we see him coming Cali’s way.

Joey Campanaro IS Headed to L.A.! [Eater]

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Filed Under: chef imports, joey campanaro, kenmare, little owl, market table, new york, salute, santa monica

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

Whale served in Japan

The makers of The Cove are not sitting around at home, shining their Oscar. Instead, they’re exposing The Hump, a popular sushi restaurant near the Santa Monica Airport, for serving whale meat. According to the New York Times the filmmakers began a sting operation in October after hearing rumors from friends that whale was served at The Hump, then joined with federal agents in the week leading up to the Academy Awards to catch the restaurant breaking the law. What did they discover?

Initially, Cove associate producer Charles Hambleton sent two animal activists to pose as diners for an omakase meal. The two vegans were served a dish of pink broad slices that the waitress called “whale,” a sample of which was later determined to be Sei whale by a shocked marine mammal professor at Oregon State University who had never seen the dish in the States before. The discovery helped grab the attention of federal agents, who returned with the filmmakers last week and were again served whale meat — possibly out of a Mercedes parked in the restaurant’s lot.

The government will take action against the restaurant, the U.S. Attorney’s office said. Possible penalties include a $20,000 fine and a year in prison for the guilty parties. The Hump, which is now lawyered up, explains its name as a reference to The Himalayas, but has taken on a sinister new meaning.

Oscar Winners Try to Keep Whale Off Sushi Plates [The New York Times]

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Filed Under: crime scenes, charles hambleton, kujira, santa monica, sushi, the cove, the hump, whale

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

What does it feel like to cook for 1,500 people at Hollywood’s most heavily watched awards ceremony? If you trust the diary that Oscars-caterer Wolfgang Puck kept for Esquire last night, one hardly breaks a sweat by his sixteenth year. The chef displays unbelievable cool while reporting on the progress of his dinner, wherein we learn that his son Byron is by his side shaving black truffles into pot pies, that Wolf was wearing a custom-made jacket by costume designer Jeffrey Kurland, and that he only gets one day to access the mold to make chocolate Oscar statuettes for every attendee. Puck also jams some Jacko in the kitchen, notes the glaring absence of a recently deceased Army Archerd, and rejoices over the win by his Austrian countryman Christoph Waltz. With no major freak-outs, melt-downs, or rampages, we get the sense Puck is making this “wonderful night” look a bit easy.

How I Cooked for the Oscars [Esquire]

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Filed Under: eating at the oscars, esquire, hollywood, the oscars, wolfgang puck

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

Jamie Oliver

British celeb chef Jamie Oliver is a winner of this year’s TED Prize, which grants recipients $100,000 and a platform to express “one wish to change the world.” Oliver, who recently wept when fat Americans refused his dieting advice, said this: “I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.” So how’s that going to happen?

The Naked Chef laid out a full grassroots program to attack the current “catastrophe” of obesity through community kitchens, supermarket ambassadors, and “food theater trucks” that will teach kids and families how to cook. Oliver has also posted an online petition pushing for changes in the way we eat. He plans to bring the document to the White House and take on corporate America, but only after his show, naturally called “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution“ airs on ABC.

Bad diet shortens life spans, raises health costs, says Jamie Oliver [CNN]

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Filed Under: health concerns, awards, community kitchens, food theater trucks, jamie oliver, obesity, ted award, the naked chef

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

Wine devotees and fans of demonic noise-rock finally have a reason to unite. Next week, the documentary Blood Into Wine will debut in a few small theaters, chronicling the journey of Tool and Perfect Circle front-man Maynard James Keenan after he abandoned Los Angeles to become a winemaker in Arizona. The trailer shows Keenan digging in dirt, looking intensely at his own wine bottles, Mila Jovovich, and just about everything else that could bring warmth to his tortured soul, including a quick sesh with comedians Tim and Eric. The whole show appears to portray wine-making as an earthy extreme sport dominated by sweaty men of powerful egos. Just like rock and roll! Check out the trailer here.

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Filed Under: video feed, arizona, caduceus cellars, maynard james keenan, oenophile, perfect circle, tool, wine

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

Ramsay

A cleaning and staffing company that worked at Gordon Ramsay’s eponymous London West Hollywood hotel restaurant accused the chef in a lawsuit of failing to pay $89,000 for services rendered. Ramsay’s recent money troubles are no secret — his company lost 4.32 million pounds in 2008 and the chef made drastic cuts at his restaurants after flirting with bankruptcy. This latest lawsuit was filed just over a month after Ramsay was accused of short-changing a dairy company by $101,000 for food supplied to his Manhattan restaurant. Last November, a British court ordered Ramsay to pay debts off at his London restaurants in November.

Gordon Ramsay Accused of Stiffing Restaurant Crew [Courthouse News Service]

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Filed Under: lawsuits, advanced dynamic systems, boxwood, gordon ramsay, gordon ramsay at the london, west hollywood

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

Ramsay

A cleaning and staffing company that worked at Gordon Ramsay’s eponymous London West Hollywood hotel restaurant accused the chef in a lawsuit of failing to pay $89,000 for services rendered. Ramsay’s recent money troubles are no secret — his company lost 4.32 million pounds in 2008 and the chef made drastic cuts at his restaurants after flirting with bankruptcy. This latest lawsuit was filed just over a month after Ramsay was accused of short-changing a dairy company by $101,000 for food supplied to his Manhattan restaurant. Last November, a British court ordered Ramsay to pay debts off at his London restaurants in November.

Gordon Ramsay Accused of Stiffing Restaurant Crew [Courthouse News Service]

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Filed Under: lawsuits, advanced dynamic systems, boxwood, gordon ramsay, gordon ramsay at the london, west hollywood

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from Grub Street Los Angeles

“You have ruined the best magazine in America,” Gourmet loyalists told Ruth Reichl when she took over the magazine in1999. The former editor joined former colleagues Jonathan Gold and his wife Laurie Ochoa last night at Zocalo Public Square to remember the magazine they revived from having “no sense of this food revolution.” Reichl encouraged writers to “follow their obsessions”, and Gold happily obliged. His goal, he said, was to “do for restaurant writing what Pauline Kael had done for movie writing.”

Gold, a critic for Gourmet, recounted the time he found a worm in his salad at one of Alain Ducasse’s restaurants. It didn’t bother him as much as it did Ducasse’s stressed-out staff — “it means the lettuce was organic.” Of course. Gourmet’s test kitchens may be a a ghost town, and the website static, but Reichl’s legacy, and the magazine’s, is lasting. Gourmet was “the voice of American food for a very long time…at the very time that American food was coming of age.”

A full video of the Zocalo panel is online.

Earlier: Gourmet Will Fold After Almost 70 Years

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Filed Under: gourmet from the grave, evan almighty, evan kleiman, gourmet magazine, jonathan gold, laurie ochoa, ruth reichl, the gold watch, the other magazines, zocalo public square

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