Gordon Ramsay featured several New Orleans-area restaurants on his Fox Network show “Kitchen Nightmares,” but one spot in particular really caught my eye.
Last summer, Blake’s Place in Uptown put up signs along Carrollton Avenue to advertise its brunch service, putting it on my radar.
But when I heard that a celebrity chef would come in and possibly change the menu and concept, I lept into action with friends.
I am a journalist and a foodie, so I am rightfully suspicious about these restaurant improvement shows, wondering whether the food is actually bad before it is featured as a disaster on reality TV.
So I decided to try Blake’s Place before and after Ramsay’s takeover to see how accurate “Kitchen Nightmares” is when highlighting — and repairing — local restaurants.
What ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ showed
Going to a restaurant as a diner, you don’t get to see behind the scenes in the kitchen or experience the workplace issues.
It was revealed on the Fox show that the owners of Blake’s Place had roughly $200,000 in debt, and the reality TV episode also portrayed conflict between the owner and one of the chefs.
“Kitchen Nightmares” also revealed the restaurant was using a jarred sauce instead of homemade for some pasta dishes.
From the diners’ perspective on the show, the food was over-seasoned, and the comment that the food was salty was repeated multiple times.
Ramsay’s hangups about the restaurant were the owner’s self-promotion and the quality of the menu items.
Blake Cressey opened her restaurant in 2023 after growing a following with her food truck and restaurant, Tasty Treat, which she started in 2014. Food writer Ian McNulty included Tasty Treat in a 2019 round-up of places to try, highlighting Cressey’s modern take on Creole comfort food.
While operating her food truck, Cressey launched seasoning and kitchen tool lines and shared recipes on social media.
Cressey competed on Food Network’s “Chopped” in 2023, just before opening Blake’s place. She was eliminated after the entree round with her dish of fried pork secreto with a creamy polenta. The episode’s theme was fried foods, and while the judges enjoyed her dish, they were hoping for more crunch.
Ramsay was not impressed with Cressey’s celebrity and suggested that she focus on the food quality rather than her public image and products.
“Blake looks like she is in control. Focus on the food, and the restaurant has a shot at longevity,” he said at the end of the episode.
Of the food he tried for the show, he didn’t seem to enjoy any of the dishes. He called the crab cakes soggy and dense. Ramsay also did not appreciate the salt level or presentation of the restaurant’s top-selling dish called the Dumaine treat, a catfish dish with a crawfish sauce served in a bowl atop a platform with mini Dumaine Street sign.
A closer look at Blake’s Place top-selling item before Gordon Ramsay removed it from the menu on “Kitchen Nightmares.” Taken on Sept. 20, 2024.
Chelsea Shannon’s experience at Blake’s Place
Back in September, I convinced two friends to join me in my adventure of trying a restaurant slated to be on “Kitchen Nightmares.”
The restaurant’s menu included several pasta dishes and items with personality names like the “big-back” burger.
Our table gravitated toward ordering the pasta dishes. We tried the chicken parmesan, Dumaine treat, and crab cake pasta, a special menu item that day.
Crab cake pasta
The crab cake pasta serves as a special at Blake’s Place on Sept. 20, 2024.
None of us wholly enjoyed our meal, and it wasn’t in a way that we felt sending it back would fix it. It was too salty, and the crawfish sauce on the two seafood dishes didn’t taste quite right.
So we consumed our $80 meal until we satiated and continued with our night. We did not take home our leftovers.
On my trip after the “Kitchen Nightmares” refresh, one of my dinner companions was able to join me again and we ordered enough food for three people.
We ordered the crab salad, candied pork called rillons, fried chicken and hanger steak from the new menu.
It was hard to save room as we devoured the appetizers, and it was hard to stop eating our entrees even when satiated. It was safe to say leftovers were brought home and enjoyed swiftly.
The price of our second visit, in which we ordered two appetizers and entrees, was comparable to our first visit, in which we ordered three entrees.
On our first visit, we also tried the freshly squeezed juice cocktails. They were sweet but didn’t distract from the meal. But on our second visit, we were so focused on the food that cocktails didn’t fit the vibe.
Would I go back? Yes. It takes a lot for me to knock something on the first try. The food before Gordon Ramsay’s visit wasn’t bad enough for me to write it off entirely and not give it a second chance, but the new menu items are 100% worth a second trip.
With the pared-down menu, the restaurant can retool its older menu items and has been bringing them back. My dinner companion and I were so eager to order during our second visit to the restaurant that we didn’t know until much later in our meal that we could have tried the Dumaine treat again, but that would have to wait until the next time.
