Call-me-kevin

Amy and Samy Bouzgala, of Amy's Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro in Scottsdale, Arizona, appear on Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. Aside from the incredibly poor service and food, they lie about baking the cakes they sell, and most of the photos they use on their Facebook belong to other people. Even worse, they verbally abuse customers and staff, and they keep their employees’ tips for themselves. Ramsey gives up on them, saying, “After about 100 Kitchen Nightmares, I met two owners I could not help. It is because they are incapable of listening.”

The owners didn’t listen because they didn’t want help. They only wanted Ramsey's compliments and praise in order to show up the ‘haters’ and ‘bloggers’ on Yelp and Reddit who are obviously out to get them.

Of course, that didn’t happen and the owners had an epic meltdown on their company’s Facebook page.

( I am keeping note of all names here. We will be pursuing action against you legaly, and against reddit and yelp, for this plot you have come together on. )


The drama made it to Buzzfeed, where you can find plenty of screencaps in case their Facebook is taken down.

Amy has also been convicted of fraud for using someone else’s social security number and taking out a loan.

People swarm to their Yelp page after watching the episode but most of those reviews are removed. However, it’s easy to see from reviews left before the programme was aired that the owners have always behaved this way.

A poster on Reddit submits the theory that the whole place is actually a money laundering operation. [ETA: Post has since been deleted. I'll try to get it from my computer's cache but if anyone finds a screencap in the meantime, let me know. Found a copy of the text on another Reddit thread, copied to the comments here.]

The full episode can be found here on YouTube. This post on eater.com contains a summary as well as a couple of clips from the show.

And ONTD speculates on the most important issue: what Gordon Ramsey would be like in bed.

( Previous ETA's now under the cut )

ETAx5: This is the latest post on their Facebook:

Other Side of Amy’s Baking Company Controversy in Scottsdale To Soon Be Told

SCOTTSDALE, AZ. MAY 15, 2013 -- Amy’s Baking Company will host a Grand Re-Opening on Tuesday night, May 21, following unflattering portrayals on national television.

Customers will be able to decide who is correct: a famous celebrity chef or the marketplace that has supported the small, locally-owned business for six years.

When re-opened, a portion of proceeds will benefit a charity organized to bring awareness to cyber bullying.

Seating is limited. Reservations may be made by emailing sjones@rosemoserallynpr.com.

Diners will also have the opportunity to meet, and judge for themselves the character of owners Amy and Samy Bouzaglo, who have devoted their lives to and earn their living from their small restaurant. The Bouzaglos have been married for 10 years, after Sammy emigrated from Israel.

The owners will likely be holding a press conference before the Grand Re-Opening and answer falsehoods depicted on a reality television show, including assertions that the restaurant confiscates tips from servers.

In fact, wait staff is paid $8-$14 per hour, two and half to nearly five times the standard hourly wage for servers.

Questions will also be answered about what happened to their Facebook page.

Amy’s Baking Company was recently featured on the hit PBS show “Check Please” and has received A+ reports from CBS 5 for kitchen preparedness.

“We are very upset by what has taken place, apologize about the acrimony that has ensued but now must fight back to save our business. We hope and believe much good can result from what has transpired. We ask the public to keep an open mind as we begin to tell our side of the story,” Samy Bouzaglo said.

For more details, please contact Michael Saucier.

I can't decide whether I want Michael Saucier to be a real person or someone who is just leading them on.


In more pleasant news, Katy Cipriano, the waitress who was fired on the show, has participated in an AMA on Reddit. She does have other employment and is doing quite well.

I would like to thank the mousey over at wank_report for bringing this little nugget up. So lets revel in some actual funny here.

In Colorado the main anime convention has been Nan Desu Kan. In recent years another anime convention has been building up some steam, Animeland Wasabi.

Right after this year's Animeland Wasabi ended in the beginning of March anime company Funimation announced a lawsuit against Miller Timmons, and ten John Does for selling counterfeit items at Wasabi. (Anime News Network article) Timmons also manages the convention under his Think Art Media and Animeland businesses. There is also a nice breakdown of the lawsuit in this screencap.

A few days ago an announcement is made on the front page of Animeland Wasabi that basically decries that Funimation and Nan Desu Kan are trying to get rid of Animeland Wasabi because NDK totally got their people to find some bootleg merchandise at Wasabi to show to Funimation to get them to sue Wasabi.(Be warned of glaring green background.)

And who would doubt these claims after such strong opening statements like these:

To our anime community, Animeland would like to give details about the lawsuit between Funimation vs. Miller Timmons. The framework of this lawsuit that is pending in the Denver court system is an attempt for Funimation, Nan Desu Kan and Wasabi Anime to drive Animeland, Miller Timmons, and their fans out of the anime community in Denver because we have grown over the past six years.


At the end of that tl;dr there is a screencap of a reply from ThatGuyInTheHat who manages to Godwin himself, in German no less, to a poster on the forums.

Also in the comments to the ANN article the CEO of the site says that they did try to contact Timmons before they posted the article, which goes against Animeland Wasabi's claim that they have not been contacted for a statement. There also seems to have been some wanky comments that have been since deleted in that thread without being screen capped unfortunately.

There is a discussion on the forum (which seems to now no longer be, but there are screen caps) about the announcement where we learn that the screed went through lawyers before being posted. ThatGuyInTheHat believes that anyone who is sticking up for NDK is NDK staff. That he can only give vague hints of NDK's wrongdoings because they could be spying on their forum and use what is said against Wasabi.

Nan Desu Kan has released their own press release on the matter, where they avoid saying much of anything outside that they are not making any anime company to anything for them and are too busy with their own con to care about anyone else's.

With all this popping up shortly after the hearing to figure out the scheduling for the case one can only assume that this may be the beginning.

And in case anything else appears to go poof here are the screen caps collected so far.

( Don't worry, you don't have to pronounce it. You just have to stare and drool. )

Plus, because I can't resist, there's some extra-fierce big-pic bonus drag under the cut!

( Jinkxy isn't technically vintage, but sometimes she's close enough. XD )