Reality TV Humor: I’ll Bet “Restaurant Impossible” Never Thought of THIS Approach
In the repetitive, follow-the-leader space that is ç programming, any idea that succeeds is bound to be copied, far and wide. That’s probably why there’s roughly 800,000 reality TV shows that involve cooking in some fashion, be it a cooking competition, an effort to save a failing restaurant, or whatever the hell happens on The Great British Bake Off.
Still, for as many reality shows as there are about cooking and restaurants, even the most thoroughly-mined genre will leave some territory uncovered. So, while there must be a hundred episodes of reality shows in which some obnoxious “celebrity” chef barks criticism at a hapless restaurateur, Calico thinks it highly unlikely any of those celeb chefs have ever advised a business owner to take the approach recently adopted by the Tampa, Florida-based Nazca Bar & Grill.
What did Nazca do to drive business to their eatery? Did anyone with an English accent tell them to do it? Would they have followed the same instruction from an Australian, or would they be afraid the guy was a double-agent planted by The Outback? Outlandish considerations like these might seem more reasonable once you’ve read Calico’s latest post, “I’ll Bet Restaurant Impossible Never Thought of THIS Approach.”
by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Reality Porn For Women
Read on…
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not much of a reality television fan. Most of the reality shows I’ve tried lost me immediately after the opening credits, pretty much as soon as I’d met some of the central personalities and found them either completely uninteresting, modern-presidentially-obnoxious, or both.
The big exception to my general reality TV embargo, I’m embarrassed to admit, is an occasional penchant for watching reality TV shows that involve cooking.
I don’t know whether this is because I’m such a lousy cook myself and for some reason I enjoy reminding myself I have very little clue what I’m doing while at the stove, or if I’m hoping to absorb some culinary knowledge through visual osmosis, but I will admit that I’ve watched more than one season of Top Chef from end to end.
Maybe More People Would Come to Your Restaurant if There Wasn’t Some Screaming British Guy There
One curious sub-genre of the reality cooking show is the ‘saving troubled restaurants’ variety. As near as I can tell, this variety of reality cooking show necessarily involves bringing in an overbearing British guy to yell at people about needing to clean their kitchens, or clean their ice-making machine and to maybe try, you know, marketing and advertising your business instead of simply counting on people to show up?
I have zero idea how legitimate these restaurant-saving shows are. I don’t know whether they’re made by simply showing up with the host and film crew and letting things unfold as they will, or if they’re largely scripted and contrived. Hell, for that matter, other than that Gordon Ramsey character, I’m not even sure if the Brits hired to yell at people are truly British!
Either way, I’m not sure a shrieking limey is the draw these shows think it is. Have any of these restaurants considered being criticized by someone with a more pleasant accent? How about a belligerent Belgian or a salty Swede, instead?
Come for the Paella, Stay for the Indica
At any rate, while I haven’t watched many episodes of such shows, I do feel confident about one thing: In all their advising, cajoling, berating and order-giving, they’ve never advised a restaurant to improve its business prospects by (a) pretending to follow local orders and regulations involving a pandemic (b) opening up when they’re supposed to be closed and (c) offering “cash-only sales of alcohol along with edibles for a night of drinks, weed and sex.”
According to the Tampa Bay Times, when authorities showed up to check on reports that Nazca Bar & Grill was operating outside of the rules, “most of the 50 to 70 people inside ran out the back door clutching duffel bags and coolers while others hid in an upstairs storage area where more weed and $10,000 in cash were found.”
On the one hand, if there weren’t a pandemic going on, this would sound like my kinda restaurant. On the other hand… well, there IS a pandemic going on, which makes it maybe not the best time to congregate to get your smoke, drink and freak on? Just a thought.
More Questions than Answers; Reality Show Needed?
Given that they aren’t on TV, one thing I’d like to know is how Nazca got the word out about their business, particularly where their “expanded menu” is concerned.
Presumably they didn’t go on social media and post something like: “We sincerely appreciate the support we’ve had from the community – including the kilo of kind bud and massive pile of cannabis edibles someone dropped off the other day, in which we hereby cordially invite you to partake, this Wednesday at 9pm, perhaps while boning another patron in our upstairs offices.”
My other question is how the cops determined there was a “night of drinks, weed and sex” going on, as opposed to a night of drinks and weed at which one pair of people also decided to have sex.
Again from the Times, while the cops searched the bar, “two employees and three patrons came down from an upstairs storage area… Several of them told police they hid when they heard someone yell ‘cops.’ One man told police he was having sex with another patron, got scared and hid.”
Look, folks, one couple sneaking off to fuck is hardly a “night of sex” – at least for those who didn’t join in. For that matter, this sort of exaggeration makes me wonder how many of these patrons were lighting up, too! (I’m comfortable with the assumption there was plenty of drinking going on, on the other hand; Nazca is a BAR & Grill, after all.)
I think the only answer here might be another reality show, this one centered on the comings and goings (and other cummings) of the crew at Nazca. Among other things, it sounds like in addition to a Restaurant Impossible-type angle, this place would be positively ideal for a Restaurant Stakeout!
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