Things were definitely not going well at all for Gordon, Rarity, Twilight, and Spike at Zesty Gourmand's new restaurant in Canterlot. After being given the cold shoulder by Zesty herself and seeing the poor restaurant color scheme that seemed to be driving away customers, the four decided to try the food. Their first dishes ended in complete disaster as Gordon and Rarity found their food to not only be over beaten but also overcooked. Princess Twilight and Spike got the worst of it as the dishes they ordered were so hard to chew that they nearly choked had Gordon and their waitress Senko had not quickly intervened. After the crisis had been averted, Gordon inspected his first dish even further and found clumps of charcoal accidentally mixed into the food. When Lemon Drop and her boss Zesty Gourmand found out about this, they were absolutely livid with their cooking staff.
"He found clumps of what looks like charcoal in his food. CHARCOAL!" Lemon Drop angrily said to the cooks. "It made the food all grungy and nasty!"
"I am not usually willing to speak candidly like this in most situations, but since Her Majesty Princess Luna commanded that we speak with you, I suppose there is no hiding anything Monsieur interviewer," Zesty said to the cameramen interviewing her. "I will give them another chance with this next round of dishes. However, if I see another bungle of that magnitude from them, I will make it my life's work to ruin their lives.
In the kitchen, the head chef Flambe Briquette and his right-hand sous chef Slap Chop were in the process of completing the next dishes for their prestigious guests to taste and hopefully give high praises to. The rest of their staff were keeping busy with dishes for the few other high-class and well-off middle-class customers that bothered to come to Zesty's restaurant.
Lemon Drop quickly came back out with their dishes and proceeded to place them on each side of the table.
"Chef Ramsey and Miss Rarity, here we have a Petite Tarte à l'ail et aux agrumes avec Pesto for you, and for you my Lord Spike and my Lady Twilight, we have a Tarte Jonquille et Lilly à la vinaigrette aux mûres."
"Finally! Something recognizable!" Spike exclaimed annoyed.
"Well with ours, that is up for debate Spike, my lad." Gordon dryly retorted.
There were two distinct things that he noticed about this dish when he laid his eyes upon it, the first being that he found a few little pieces of an unknown substance that he tossed into his napkin.
"Little yellow bits and crap like that..." he muttered.
The second being that his dish was swimming in an unnecessary amount of whatever sauce the chefs poured all over it.
"Why is it absolutely drowning in this fucking sauce? Sweet shit!" he exclaimed.
"The last time I had this much sauce on my plate it was at Twilight's parents' house!" Rarity added. "Velvet's pasta primavera is to die for, but it's a little overwhelming with its portions."
Lemon noticed it too as she put on a morose face.
"Ugh, I'm afraid I'm unable to answer that present chef," she replied sadly.
Gordon tried to see if the taste would mask the bad overall appearance of the dish as he cut off a piece of the food with his knife and proceeded to chew on it. His face contorted into a look that Lemon immediately knew was bad.
"Ugh, shit. It tastes like baby vomit mixed with sour candy! That is all just gross. Does the chef not cook all this themselves?"
"We have.....inconsistencies." Lemon Drop admitted.
Back in the kitchen, one of the chefs realized that he had made a grave mistake when it came to prepping their dishes.
"Hey Slap Chop, I think I should have grabbed the Tarte Pesto that we cooked this morning."
"Why do you say that?"
"The one I just grabbed that was sitting there fresh wasn't even properly oiled yet," he replied.
"Which one did you give Lemon?"
"....The one from yesterday," he replied embarrassed.
She grabbed the plate that didn't go out and started munching on the leftover food. She shrugged her shoulders with indifference as she devoured the food.
"It still tastes good!"
Lemon walked in with a tired look and went towards Zesty Gourmand who stood there waiting for her answer.
"What, he didn't like the taste?"
"I'm sorry ma'am, he didn't like the taste" she replied. "It was awful. He said it was like eating baby vomit."
The entire kitchen staff dropped their jaws in surprise and fear as they watched and waited for Zesty's explosive reaction.
Zesty Gourmand's shade of grey-blue turned a bright shade of red as she was seething with anger and vainly trying with all of her might contain it
"That is quite...the opinion" she breathed out trying to cool off. "I'll.....be......right back. Come Lemon, we shall see what other insulting issues this Gordon Ramsay has."
"Yes ma'am," she sighed as she followed closely behind.
Lemon Drop and Zesty Gourmand came out to the dining room to meet Gordon and the others to try to resolve their problems.
"Oh, hi there. You must be the chef," Gordon greeted as politely as he was able to muster. "Come over here!"
Lemon Drop carefully made her way over to the table feeling an immense amount of dread radiating from the mare behind her.
Gordon just handed the elderly mare a fork with a piece of the tart jammed onto it.
"Apart from being just, completely drowned in sauce like it's the fucking Green Sea or something, the tart is just mush; Would you mind?"
Zesty Gourmand began gingerly chewing on the piece of tart tiny bite after tiny bite taking ten seconds at a time before swallowing as if she was trying to maintain some odd custom.
'Jeez, this mare looks crazier than Pinkie made her out to be," Spike thought.
'Ugh, I'm usually able to restrain myself, but even when she moves, this mare does nothing but infuriate me now,' Rarity thought. 'I can't believe I ever had her endorse my business'.
"It's like it's overcooked or something, disgusting," Gordon added.
"The flavor is not...as terrible as you make it out to be Chef Ramsay," Zesty replied defensively with an angry tone.
"Oh, I disagree," Gordon bluntly retorted.
"You disagree with me you say?"
Lemon was beginning to sweat profusely as she worried that her boss might snap at any moment and try to attack Gordon and the royalty accompanying him.
"The sauce is bland, there are no seasonings at all in the tart or the sauces to speak of, regardless of your "small amount" motto that this beyond strange restaurant seems to go by. The big fundamental problem here is that you deliberately made a tiny tart with little flavor. Especially since tarts are meant to create an explosion of flavors in your mouth. That's the strangely embarrassing part. Just go and take this back to the chef and have him taste that, or at least attempt to."
"Take ours too, I have no idea how or why a chef would ever cook a flower, but yours definitely found a way," Twilight said in an annoyed tone.
She ignited her horn and levitated their plates over to Zesty who stepped out of the way and forced her manager Lemon Drop to catch them.
"Can you just get the chefs to taste those? And see if he can't actually make a good assessment off of them for once."
Zesty made an audible "humph" as she moved off to the kitchen with Lemon as she followed behind with her head hung low. The group sat there for a few seconds until they knew they were out of earshot.
"Jesus, how the fuck does that happen?" Gordon asked. "I'm no expert on this world yet, but from what I understand, don't you grind them up if you want to cook them into something or eat them fresh and whole after you've washed them?
"I have absolutely no idea," Spike shrugged.
"Why yes Gordon, that is exactly how it is done," Rarity replied. "I thought usually when I am at home and not eating out, restrict myself to boiling flowers to make herbal tea. A practice that I am glad is apparent in your world as well."
Back in the kitchen, things were becoming worse and worse by the minute as Lemon once again presented the failed dishes to their chef Flambe, and Zesty Gourmand herself barely restrained her anger.
"He said it was drowned in sauce, the flavor is bland, and it tastes overcooked," Lemon stated bluntly.
"WHAT?? OVERCOOKED???" Flambe growled.
He used a clean fork to saw off a small piece and popped it into his mouth. After two seconds, he spat it out into a trash can.
"SLAP CHOP! Get your skinny plot in here and you better make the third dish right! Or do you want to man the tail cleaning booth outside again?"
Quicker than their eyes could track, the sous chef in question quickly got to work as she began cooking their guest's third round of dishes and hopefully the round that they will like this time around.
"This lady is supposed to be a food expert?" Gordon asked the others with disbelief. "She is really leaving a lot to be desired in that department."
"Ugh, I'm really hungry, and we've gone through two things already that we can't even eat," Spike whined.
"Oh, don't worry Spike, if these schmucks can clean up their act by the time I'm done with this Nightmare, I'll personally make another large banquet for all of you later back at the castle," Gordon replied.
"Well, we certainly would love that," Twilight added.
After another fifteen minutes had passed, Lemon brought out the third round of dishes which all happened to be the same thing this time around so they could save up on time.
The moment Gordon saw what the dish was comprised of, he was immediately confused. It appeared to be a tiny fish cake with bits of parsley and oregano, a mussel sticking out the top, and all covered in marinara sauce.
"Wait a minute. I thought ponies were vegetarian," Gordon questioned.
"Oh, we are for the most part," Twilight replied. "However, we ARE omnivorous and can stomach down certain kinds of protein such as fish, shellfish and on exceedingly rare occasion....other.....meats, but that's still pretty rare. Only ones in our group who can eat meats completely are Spike for obvious reasons, and Rainbow who's hung around her griffin friend Gilda long enough to develop a Human-like constitution for most kinds of foods."
"And Fluttershy?..." he asked.
"Oh, she will be fine with it soon enough," Rarity added. "She feeds meat to some of her animals, so I wouldn't be surprised if she can as well."
They then went on to try their dishes, and the immediate moment Gordon bit into the fish cake, Gordon's taste buds were assaulted with an unexpected sour taste that made his eyes water. The second thing he immediately noticed about the dish as he chewed into it was that it was far too chewy. Especially the mussel that had come with it. He struggled but managed to swallow down the bite of food as he noticed the others occupying the table had gained the same reaction from the dish.
"Fuck man, what the hell was in that?" Gordon exclaimed. "That was like so fucking overwhelmingly sour!!! They just taste so frozen. Can you just check with your chef, cause they are so chewy?"
"Absolutely Chef," she replied.
Lemon sulked back into the kitchen as she prepared for the verbal onslaught that she was expecting from the staff.
"Are the mussels frozen?" Lemon asked Flambe.
"Yep, why?"
Lemon simply walked off back into the dining room as Zesty looked as if she was about to reach a boiling point.
"You imbeciles do not use fresh mussels? I put that foul commoner's dish on my menu so that we could bring in more customers and you morons can't even get a simple dish right?" Zesty snapped.
"Boss, we cannot use fresh mussels all the time with a menu that has insanely expensive ingredients!" he retorted.
Lemon then walked back into the dining room to give their esteemed guests another piece of bad news.
"Yes Chef, unfortunately, they are frozen," she said ashamed.
The entire group sighed heavily as Gordon rubbed his eyes and got up out of his chair.
"Can you come on in to the kitchen? You three follow me as well, this might be educational for you. Cause I feel like after all of this I'm gonna start knockin' some heads in, I swear to fuckin God."