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// Greta's Baking Company part 4 
// Story: Kitchen Nightmares: Equestrian Misadventures 
// by Spettro138 
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After sitting at his table for well over an hour, the first and only meal he has been served was of exceedingly poor quality. It was beginning to make Gordon rather impatient having to wait so long for meals that seemed so small. The beautiful decor and the stunning pastries that had been displayed near the front counter of the bakery seemed only an afterthought now that things were beginning to turn sour and tense as time went on. He could tell that there was poor communication between Garai and Greta every time that an order passed their counters and he could tell that it would only be a manner of time before everything breaks down into chaos.

While this was all going on, the rest of the girls had been getting just as hungry as Gordon was and many of them couldn't tell how much longer that they were going to last. Griffon food was notoriously inedible to ponies that have not trained their stomachs to accept it. Twilight didn't want to bother him, but with the lunch hours passing by quickly, the feeling of hunger was beginning to affect her and the others as well. Gordon was pressed for time in this environment and the wait time for his food was not helping his case at all. He would more than likely have to go behind the scenes if he wanted to wrap up the first day of his evaluation on schedule. Hearing that there was Equestrian royalty in town, griffins were flocking to the restaurant in droves.  The growing crowd forced Twilight and Applejack to work double-time to root out the ones who were only there to cause trouble. 

Coming out of the kitchen, Garai came back to Gordon's table to inform him of the situation with his food.

"I am sorry Chef, but I was unable to tell my hen friend how you felt about your meal," Garai stated.

Gordon was taken aback by how crass and blunt his statement was given the severity of the situation.

"You...didn't even tell her...when she made a mistake?" Gordon asked in disbelief.

"She can be a little scary sometimes even for me. I know her. She gets nervous and--"

"You get scared of telling her the truth?!"

"If YOU want to tell her then follow me back into the kitchen," he replies quickly.

"I just want her to know so she can fix it! Is there something wrong with that?" he asked the Griffon with a bit of hearing in his voice. "Now anyway, I'm an hour and a half into this and I've only had one badly cooked rack of lamb. I'm about ready to fuckin eat my napkin."

"Alright, Alright, I shall do what I can to get her to know that you are hungry and she must quicken her pace," Garai said respectfully as he sped back into the kitchen.

Soon enough, Garai came back out with Goldie who was carrying what appeared to be a delicious-looking burger at first glance. He half allowed to bring down his guard to enjoy the thought of being hopeful about what he was going to eat. As they sat the next dish down, however, everything wrong with it was made apparent right away as he went through the components of the burger.

"Hard bleu cheese, over marinated mushrooms, garlic aioli, some kind of truffle oil, bacon bits, scorched lettuce, and a bun soaked with grease," he lamented.

He opened the burger and touched the bun as it let out copious amounts of grease and oil. 

"Crap, that is just messy there."

Trying to cut the large burger in half to get a better look at the inside, he found the meat relatively tough. Pulling up one half so that he could see the meat, he saw that it was undercooked in some spots and overcooked in others. The meat was also darker and beat up inside, giving the indication that it was a bad cut of meat that Greta and Garai had used for grinding into burger meat. 

"Medium rare this is definitely not."

Trying to take a bite into the underwhelming burger, it began to dribble a lot of water and various other liquids into the plate, startling the man.

"Oh my god!"

He carefully put the burger gently back onto the plate before it made even more of a mess and pushed it away, giving the signal to Goldie to come to pick it up. She rushed over with an apologetic look on her face and took away the disappointing food.

"I'll take that away from you," she said sadly. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault my dear, you've been nothing but delightful," he said encouragingly. "It's whatever black magic those butchers are doing back there with the food. That burger has been overcomplicated. So very unnecessary."

Breathing out a sigh of anxiety, Goldie went back into the kitchen with the dish and dumped the food into the trash can before retrieving the third dish Gordon had ordered in his first round of meals. 

"Take that to him quickly if you know what's good for you," Greta growled at Goldie. "I'm on a very short fuse today."

Goldie brought his pasta dish out to Gordon where he was almost immediately bewildered by what he was served.

"Some kind of ravioli dish. With some kind of meat bits, spice, and sweet corn." he identified. "It smells bizarre."

"Your fourth dish is supposed to be coming out soon here."

"Can you go back and see how long before that will come out my darling?" Gordon asked. "I have a feeling that I won't be looking at this for very long."

"Right away chef."

After a tense moment of Greta snapping at Goldie, Gordon got his fourth and final dish in his first round of dishes to evaluate. The salmon dish he received was not only bad, but it was also so overcooked and over-spiced that he nearly vomited right on the table in full view of everyone. He had quite enough of being fed Greta's horrifying concoctions and was more than confident with his next course of action. 

It had been clear from the very start that Gilda's stellar five-star restaurant had been stolen out from underneath her and replaced with two poor owners and a lackluster menu. Now all he had to do was find out exactly what manner of mistakes they had been making with the food so he can go into the final stage of his plan for Greta's Baking Company.

Gordon walked up to Greta who was at the counter to give her his most honest assessment of the meals that he had been through. Count Le Grand was overlooking the conversation from afar just in case that things started to become violent.

"Miss Greta? That was a lot longer than I thought it was going to be." he began. "There were some pretty big, pretty major bumps in the meals that I got from you."

"What...bumps?" she asked as her face began to turn brick-red with anger. "What exactly didn't you like human?"

"First of all, cool your pretty little head. You look like you're about to explosively shit all over the floor," he replied dryly. "We can talk about all of those bumps in detail later. I'm going to go get changed into more appropriate attire for my next step. I want to see how this place functions when I get back. Then after service, we will cover all points here."

"You seem to be disappointed," Garai stated.

"I am very disappointed," Gordon replied. "But we shall go through all of that later."

"Are you sure?" Twilight asked. "We did walk all the way out here after all."

"Yeah, call the others back, we'll be back here soon enough," he affirmed. "Let's just regroup back at your friend's apartment, relax, go over a few more details of the plan, and we'll be back this evening.

"Very well," Garai replied. "We shall endeavor to get ready once again for your arrival this evening."

Garai coaxed Greta into the kitchen and into their walk-in freezer where they could talk in private.

While Gordon was leading the way out of the restaurant, he cheerfully called Goldie back over who skipped towards him.

"May I do something else for you?" she asked sweetly.

"No, but I can do something for you," he replied charmingly. "Twilight, uhhh do we have anything in the way of currency we can give Miss Pheasant here as a tip?"

"Well, I shouldn't be giving money away from my purse like this, but I guess she was nice enough to us," Twilight replied with a smile.

She pulled a large diamond out of one of her bags with her magic and handed it to Goldie who looked at it with great gratitude.

"This is for you, and for you only," Twilight said with a sideways glare at the retreating Garai. "Put it somewhere safe please."

"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you, your highness! I shall do just that."

After Count Le Grand had sent for a small platoon of guards to keep relative peace outside of the restaurant, he and Rarity followed the others out and Applejack and Fluttershy followed close behind. They all headed back to Gilda's apartment where Pinkie and Rainbow Dash were busy keeping the emotionally distraught Gilda company. They moved back across the city and entered the building without much incident where they found Pinkie and Gilda eating a tub of maple bacon pecan ice cream together while Rainbow was leaning up against the wall. Gordon could tell that she was still clearly distressed, but with Pinkie and Rainbow Dash, her mood improved at least a little bit. 

Sitting down on one side of Gilda's messed-up couch, Gordon talked over the last stages of his plan for Greta and Garai before anything drastic would be put into action. A lunch for the entire group made by himself and Applejack was most appreciated, especially by Gilda who wolfed down all of her food quickly. The human didn't notice it at the time, but while they were satisfying themselves, the young griffon hen was eyeing him hungrily with a light blush under her golden yellow eyes. 

A few hours later as evening approached rapidly, Gordon quickly washed up, dressed in his finest chef uniform and the entire group made their way back across the city towards Greta's Baking Company.  Dinner service was about to begin and Gordon wanted a better idea as to how Greta and Garai operated their restaurant from behind the counter. Fluttershy volunteered to stay behind with Rainbow and Pinkie Pie to comfort Gilda. Soon enough, they made it back where the duo was waiting rather impatiently for them. Airing on the side of safety, Gordon brought Twilight along with him. Greta was looking more and more unpleased every second that they were inside the restaurant and he figured that it would be a good idea to get everything finished promptly. 

Already a few fights had broken out outside of the restaurant, forcing Applejack to stick around outside with Count Le Grand and his platoon. Griffons were screaming and throwing things at each other as they argued over who liked and hated the restaurant.

Inside, Rarity stayed in the main lobby of the restaurant while Twilight and Gordon made their way behind the counter and into the kitchen.

"Okay, now the first order of business here is how does the linework here? Who does what?" he asked the griffon.

Garai directed the human and alicorn around the large kitchen, introducing them to the members of his kitchen staff.

"Gemma does the salads for the rare griffon who likes that sort of thing. Or the ponies who wander in. My hen friend and I are the ones who handle the meat pies and other dishes that require protein."

"Well, I can tell you that the meat I got was severely undercooked." 

"What...didn't you like about the lamb rack that we gave you?" Greta asked slowly.

"I told Garai that it was too sweet and that the meat was dangerously raw and he told me that he can't talk to you about that sort of stuff. Why is that? You are boyfriend and girlfriend, not the manager and assistant manager, so I would assume that you would be able to talk to each other civilly about "stuff like that".

"Because I know my hen friend--" he tried to start.

"Well, obviously you don't if you have to resort to sneaking around the restaurant," Twilight retorted.

"Exactly! Fucking wake up! My food was undercooked! Something that obviously shouldn't be happening!"

Greta looked like she was about to bite off her own tongue.

"I don't think your lamb rack was undercooked. I checked it after I took it out of the oven, just like I do with every dish that I take out of there, and to me, it was cooked and brown like good meat should be."

"Okay, okay," Gordon replied annoyed. "That's your fairy tale version, 'cause you didn't see it come back. However, the lamb was pink as my earth pony friend's fuzzy arse, and my burger was soggy as hell in the bun and all of those ingredients. The bacon bits, the bleu cheese, the marinated mushrooms, the white truffle oil. Those first three things are amazing on more successful burger recipes, but the fourth thing completely ruins the rest. Who comes up with those ideas?"

"I did," Greta said through a gritted beak.

"Cause there are certain things that just do not go together at all."

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"This human and that precious, perfect little princess are standing there, riding my ass about my ingredients, as they've never heard of any flavor profile in the world."

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"I can tell you that I've never had any problem with that burger from anybody."

"Probably because your own boyfriend can't even bear to tell you about the problems people have with it," Twilight remarked.

"Not only that, that weird salmon burger I got there right around the end, it was like a dry fish patty put in between two buns. I've had fast food fish burgers that tasted better than that!"

"Was it a dry or a soggy bun?" Garai asked.

"What does that matter?" Twilight asked in disbelief.

"Dry, like patte dry."

"We have people tell us that it's good like that."

"Probably because you threaten their lives if they don't compliment your food," Twilight snidely said out of the side of her mouth.

"Whatever bitch," Greta replied bitterly.

Moving over to one of the prep tables, Gordon observed the way some of the cooks were preparing the dishes.

"The ravioli dish, do you cook those from frozen?"

"Yes?...."

"Do you know how you can make those better?"

"I could probably make them from scratch but--"

"No, take them the hell off"

"Of course!" Greta sarcastically replied. "Why don't I just start taking everything off of my fucking menu? And then just close my doors. What the hell do you want me to sell exactly?"

"These are frozen, crap, store-bought ravioli and you shouldn't be--"

"I've tried them myself, and they are delicious! Did you even taste that one?"

"I can't even get feedback most of the time from here! They were disgusting!"

"And let me guess? People usually love them?" Twilight asked.

"Yes, actual customers, not people coming here to make a fucking problem for me,"

"Oh come on Greta...."

Unfortunately for him, Greta wasn't listening to him and just went back to cooking like normally. Gordon had enough of her foolishness and decided to attempt the shame angle to see if he can't get the whole of the restaurant to turn on her methods. Twilight and Garai followed him out into the lobby where he got every customers' attention.

"Ladies and gentlemen! May I have your attention for a few seconds please?"

Every griffon and pony in the restaurant turned their attention to the strange creature in the center of the room, wearing eye-catching white clothes.

"The owner is trying to pull the wool over your eyes, by offering you frozen ravioli that aren't even made within hundreds of miles of this damn place. So would you mind personally if I eighty-sixed them? Just so I can stop you from eating complete crap?"

Many of the patrons had vengeful and entertained looks in their eyes.

"Sure, go ahead." one of the griffons allowed. "This might be entertaining."

"Well the language might not have been called for, but I am for anything being made for me fresh." Rarity said with confidence."

"Alright then," Gordon said as he turned to Garai. "86 those ravioli. Will you tell your damn girlfriend or should I?"

Garai simply looked back at him like he was going to his grave.

Next Time: Greta's Baking Company Explosive Finale