This week I am going to say some nice things about Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, Arizona. I don’t like overzealous bad press, and on occasion I feel like going to bat for folks when they’re being kicked while down.
Who? Why? I will explain. First, I want to qualify that I have not eaten there and, as a matter of fact, have not been to Arizona. But this is a case one doesn’t have to experience to understand. Take two people trying to run a business, and sometimes one little negative thing can snowball into something out of control. In this case, the owners have become target practice for every critical eye within an arrow’s distance of Scottsdale and beyond. How it started doesn’t matter, but how it might end if this downward trend continues might be considered inhumane. Since an online reviewer allegedly wrote a bad article about this restaurant and the owners fought back, too many people have jumped on the bandwagon of bashing, and after seriously considering the evidence in this case, I figured Amy Bouzaglo and her husband Samy have been through enough public torture, and they should receive some praise from somebody.
To recap for those unfamiliar with what happened: this couple opened a restaurant and turned to the Fox reality show “Kitchen Nightmares” for help getting a positive makeover to generate better business. Chef Gordon Ramsay, the host and makeover master of the show and a man I respect (I watch most anything he does, even though I don’t cook myself), experienced only the second restaurant in the series’ history he could not help, but before he could really get to the makeover portion of the program, things went very sour very quickly because emotions got in the way. I hope you will read my comments before going online or to on demand sources to watch the show in which they appeared (it’s the season finale), because for all the bad you might see during this episode, good things did happen on the show, and I want to list them here.
First, Amy Bouzaglo is apparently a great chef when it comes to pastries and desserts. Her display case was a delightful array of yummy confections she made herself, and Chef Ramsay enjoyed his dessert and praised it lavishly.
The walk-in freezer and food storage areas were the cleanest the show and crew have ever seen. Chef Ramsay was totally blown away as he looked over food properly stored, labeled and dated. Considering the many occasions on the program in which he was closer to puking than praising, this was an event rarely seen when reality shows go out of their way to find the bad in everything.
The kitchen was run efficiently, with no dirty pans sitting around, pristine floors and attention to detail all around. The Bouzaglos put a hefty sum (allegedly a million dollars) into the place, so it’s up to date, clean and kept clean.
Unfortunately, reality shows tend to focus on what is wrong, so the good things on the program required waiting for a surprising chain of events which happened a day before Ramsay arrived, and only lasted about ten minutes. I won’t go into detail about what followed, because I don’t want to be judgmental. Whether some people are more sensitive to events happening around them, or whether the right way to fix a problem is to let a reality television crew into their lives, is not my call. However, now an average person would think that Amy and Samy were minions of some evil being based on the way they have been treated by the online media. I understand what Amy means by “online bullies,” and I don’t like to see some of the ugly things that appear on the world’s computers, especially when they don’t offer helpful advice or positive feedback when a problem exists.
I would like to see Amy turn her restaurant into a classy desert oasis and maybe forget the other food (for now). And if I could inject one piece of constructive criticism, maybe it would be beneficial to find a qualified counselor to help this couple cope with the slings and arrows that life has flung at them. Now that this is June, maybe the fifteen minutes of infamy have almost run their course anyway.
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