There is no denying that Nadia, the newly-promoted general manager from In The Drink, has made an impression on Kitchen Nightmares fans.
Gordon Ramsay’s show, Kitchen Nightmares, is back – and nothing has changed, in the absolute best way possible.
The first two episodes of Kitchen Nightmares’ rebooted eighth season already set the bar quite high, and this October 9, 2023, episode has brought back another beloved Kitchen Nightmares trope.
During this episode, Ramsay visited In The Drink, a restaurant which is situated in a prime spot right next to the Preakness Valley Golf Course in Wayne, New Jersey.
However, even though this is one of the busiest courses in the area, In The Drink had plunged nearly $250,000 into debt, because of its absentee owners, Jorge and Solange.
Why Nadia is everyone’s favorite
Although Jorge and Solange will unfortunately now go down in Kitchen Nightmares’ history as just one more sad case of a pair of ill-equipped owners who really had no business running a restaurant in the first place, Nadia has completely stolen the show.
Nadia had been In The Drink’s de facto manager for nine years (without a real promotion) in Jorge and Solange’s absence.
And not only did all of the In The Drink employees (and Ramsay) insist that Nadia was basically In The Drink’s only saving grace during this episode. But Kitchen Nightmares fans have come out in droves to support her efforts online.
One Reddit user commented “Nadia better get a f***ing raise now that she’s GM” under a post discussing the episode.
Moreover, In The Drink’s Facebook page has been absolutely flooded with messages like “Congratulations Nadia” and “Well deserved,” since the episode first aired.
Everyone thinks Nadia should be in charge – and they are completely right
It was pretty evident, even from the 40-minutes of chopped-down footage in this episode, that Nadia, and the rest of the In The Drink employees, have been running the business on their own for quite some time before Ramsay arrived.
These few key moments illustrate perfectly how lost Jorge and Solange were before Ramsay’s intervention:
| Nadia and the rest of the In The Drink employees | Jorge and Solange |
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How did Jorge and Solange feel about their portrayal on the show?
While Jorge and Solange clearly had a thing or two to learn about the restaurant industry, it really seemed like Jorge had seen the error of his ways after Ramsay placed him in that time-out during the final service.
And it seems like these In The Drink owners enjoyed their time filming for Kitchen Nightmares (or are at least trying to make the most of their experience), as they heavily promoted the episode on the In The Drink Facebook page.
Is In The Drink still open?
Although there have been a few rare moments in Kitchen Nightmares’ past, where restaurants closed down before the episode could even air, In The Drink is still open and it seems to be doing fairly well.
Even now, In The Drink regularly hosts musical events, which seem to be quite popular with the local country club crowd.
And the restaurant currently has a fairly good rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars on Yelp and a 4 out of 5-star rating on TripAdvisor.
However, none of these reviews were posted after Ramsay’s visit (which started on May 30, 2023), so it should be interesting to see whether these ratings improve in the next few months.
Did Ramsay’s makeover really change anything at In The Drink?
One of the main questions that fans are usually left with at the end of most Kitchen Nightmares episodes, is “Will this actually last?”
And though Ramsay insisted that he thought Jorge was “starting to get it” near the end of this episode, it seems like this may not be the case in real life.
In The Drink has faced some backlash from longtime patrons about the changes that Ramsay made to the menu, with one patron complaining that “You can’t even get the all-time favorite sampler appetizer anymore” and it seems as though Jorge may have taken this as his sign to discard some of Ramsay’s changes.
Two commenters on Facebook pointed out that there are “Still no wraps and sandwiches on the golf cart” and that news had travelled that the restaurant was “falling into back into bad habits”.
