"Kitchen Nightmares" - September 4, 2008 episode - season premiere

"Kitchen Nightmares" is back for another season, and this season's opener involved re-visiting six restaurants from last year, to see what has happened to the restaurants in the year that has gone by. Have the restaurants survived? Have they thrived? Or did they revert back to their old ways?

The first restaurant was Finn McCool's, the Irish pub. Ramsay's family recipe of shepherd's pie that he gave to the chef has been a huge hit. The spring rolls that Ramsay hated so much have made their way back to the menu due to popular demand, but it's all made with fresh ingredients now, and when Ramsay is served the new spring rolls, he gives them a thumbs up.

The next restaurant was The Olde Stone Mill Steakhouse. It's a thriving business, and they even got a terrific review from The New York Times.

After that, it was back to the Mixing Bowl Eatery, where the manager was giving huge discounts to people and having outrageous signs on the front of the restaurant. The restaurant is thriving, so no gimmicky promotions are needed to draw customers in. I still hate that "eatery" is in the name of the restaurant.

Next up was Dillon's Restaurant, which was renamed Purnima and turned into an Indian restaurant. This was the restaurant where Martin, the General Manager, was completely ineffective and ended up quitting, later suing the show. The case was sent to arbitration, but I can't find any kind of update about what happened. The restaurant is now doing quite well, and the consultant chef is still with the restaurant.

The next visit was back to Campania, where they were serving huge portions of food so that everyone had leftovers. They were also keeping too many supplies on hand, which would go bad before they could use them, wasting lots of money. Ramsay had taught them to cut down on the portions and use fresher ingredients and introduced a signature dish of meatballs, which are now hot sellers.

Last was a visit to Peter's Italian restaurant. Manager Peter had been using the restaurant's money to spend on himself, even though the restaurant wasn't doing well, but his turnaround has stuck, and the restaurant is doing very well. Odd that the restaurant doesn't have its own website, but odder still was that this was the one place that Gordon Ramsay didn't return to himself. It was just clips of the restaurant staff talking about the changes.

It was nice to see how the restaurants had maintained their new habits and thrived. I would have liked to have seen one or two that didn't, as there had to be those, but I figured those restaurants wouldn't have allowed them to come back to show what they're like now. The husband also reminded me that at the end of a couple episodes last year, we were told if a restaurant reverted back and didn't make it.