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Robert Irvine's spokesman claimed the restaurant closing had nothing to do with profits. His spokesman stated:
"He's too busy to be as personally involved as he wants to be. He coaches businesses and tells them if you want to be successful you have to be personally invested in the business. When you're not living here, and you're on the road 340 days a year, it's hard to do that."He also added:
"It's hard to grow a restaurant when you never have time to go visit it. His restaurants were successful, but they weren't as profitable as maybe they could have been ... just because he's not there. He felt he wasn't doing the restaurants the justice they deserved."His spokesman then pretty much contradicts the above quotes by stating that Robert Irvine is opening a restaurant in the Pentagon, and has plans to open others in Las Vegas and the Foxwoods Resort in Connecticut. That makes me think it had everything to do with profits.
I'd love to see Nosh on restaurant impossible and him yelling at a mirror and the staff. Awesome TV right there.
ReplyDeleteOr tasting the food and gagging then saying disgusting.
ReplyDeleteWe live here and I've only been to eat there once-that was enough. It took the kitchen three tries to get a plain cheeseburger right so that was enough for me. I have been told though that during inspections it is incredibly clean. The outlets the restaurant is located in are quite busy but the "regular" places like Longhorn Steakhouse and Olive Garden manage to stay consistently busy while Nosh always has an abundance of tables available in a much smaller venue. I quit watching RI a while ago after eating at his restaurant knowing things he was telling other people weren't happening in his own restaurant (& I did make an effort to reach out to him to let him know about the issues during my visit with no response).
ReplyDeletemaybe he needed Lenny to run the place!
ReplyDeleteSounds like he lost his passion.
ReplyDeleteGot yelled at for criticizing Robert Irvine before, but this just proves my point. Yes, he padded his resume and I well remember that and lost all respect for him back then. I shouldn't have criticized Irvine on the post I did criticize him on, because I didn't watch that episode. My criticism is of him, not the restaurants involved, and it's purely personal because I don't care for his persona with the too-tight black t-shirts and bulging muscles. It's just grown old for me, but that is just my opinion, and I know some others do not share it.
ReplyDeleteRobert Irvine got his stripes on Dinner Impossible where he proved he could actually execute as a good, energetic banquet chef. That was fun.
ReplyDeleteThen he got Restaurant Impossible, which was about food and decor, until it became about family dysfunction and cheap produced drama.
Now he is no longer about the food, he is about being a Food Network personality. That means that any ventures that are about food and not celebrity have to come to an end.
The new deals are not Irvine as food guy but about him as celebrity. Let someone else put together a project and he will front it, just like Giardia in Las Vegas or Guy in Times Square or Paula in a casino or whatever.
It's his image and he has the right to sell it.
I just don't have to follow him any more, don't have to watch what he turned into or be one of his sheep. It's OK. Bob Tuschman understands; Food Network hasn't been about food in a long time. It's about TV.
But sometimes I do miss seeing Robert Irvine actually do something rather than just prance around as a figurehead. That used to be fun.
I loved Dinner Impossible. He really was in his element there. Restaurant Impossible is just a mess.
ReplyDeleteMention the closing over on any of the Irvine show comment sections and watch the fanboys and girls go bananas. The next few days could be good for a few laughs over there.
ReplyDelete"He's too busy to be as personally involved as he wants to be. He coaches businesses and tells them if you want to be successful you have to be personally invested in the business. When you're not living here, and you're on the road 340 days a year,"
ReplyDeleteMaybe he should have talked to Bobby Flay, Wolfgang Puck, Guy Fieri and all the rest of the FN celeb chefs who somehow manage to have many success restaurants while still doing all of their shows and outside activities to see how they do it.
When you take into account his failed restaurants and his evermore dismal R:I closure record, I don't see how anyone can even remotely take him seriously as a restaurant rescuer anymore.
"He's too busy to be as personally involved as he wants to be," adding that despite the restaurant's closure, Irvine is "very much still qualified" to help struggling restaurants."
ReplyDeleteBwahahahahahaha!!!!!
"That crazy filming and travel schedule of his hasn't stopped the brawny Brit from opening new restaurants, however. In May, Irvine revealed that he is opening a restaurant inside the Pentagoncalled Robert Irvine Fresh Kitchen. The State notes that the musclebound man also plans to open restaurants in Las Vegas and the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut."
ReplyDeleteUh...he closed one restaurant, Nosh because "He's too busy to be as personally involved as he wants to be,", yet he's opening at least 3 more. Alrighty then. smh
"Seriously?" Do you really think you are supposed to take anything you see on Television Food Network seriously? And do you believe in the WWF too? It's all entertainment. Just ask Bob Tuschman.
ReplyDeleteFlay and Puck made their reps as restaurant guys. They really know how to run an operation as managers, with staff that can do the work. Does Irvine strike you as the kind of manager who can helm that way? To me, he looks much more like a supervisor than a manager, without a real big picture view.
That doesn't mean that someone can't put together an operation and then go looking for a personality to brand it, which is what the new ventures look like to me.
Irvine has never been a successful restaurateur, unlike Flay, Batali and so on. He used to be a good cook, but now he is just the face of a brand. His energy has to be on building the brand, not learning to operate restaurants.
Building a brand is serious business, but one of the first rules is never let the suckers know they are being taken for a ride.
Quite a few successful and highly regarded celebrity chefs have experienced a failed restaurant. Many of them have been very honest and forthcoming about their failures. I recall Gordon Ramsay talking about one of his restaurants failing while working with a chef on the UK version of Kitchen Nightmares. I would much more respect for Robert Irvine if he was more forthcoming about the closing of this restaurant and say that he would use the lessons learned from his own failure in his work on a Restaurant Imposdible. Instead he's choosing to spin and blow smoke about his restaurant closing to maintain his "image."
ReplyDeleteWhat a shame. I'd be more willing to accept advice and direction from someone who had experienced failure, learned from it and use what he's learned to his benefit than take advice from someone who is trying to present himself as infallible.
Well said!
ReplyDeleteI wish Robert would mention things like this in his show. Hell, Ramsay mentioned he shut down a restaurant both in the UK (mentioned in name) and US (he just mentions he closed a restaurant). Sadly, Robert seems to have too much of a big head to even admit he has had failure in his life. If this sort of thing keeps up, I think he'll be out of a show.
ReplyDeleteInteresting comments from someone right there. Thanks for that information, Lynn! Always good to know from people in the area that have gone there. I would imagine the lack of supervision, knowing the big boss could drop in anytime, made a big difference to the staff. He must be making more money from TV otherwise he'd have made time to be there at his restaurant.
ReplyDeletePretty contradictory. It will be interesting to see how these new ones do.
ReplyDeleteWe're all entitled to our own opinions & you shouldn't have gotten grief for critizing him (or anyone). This is a place for our ideas & opinions. Sorry that happened. I, too, remember the resume padding aka outright lies and rightly or wrongly, it affects the opinion I have of him.
ReplyDeleteI agree with ou Katherine. Many successful chefs have experienced a restaurant failing. The ones that are successful learn from it & move on from there. With the spin we're reading, I doubt Irvine has learned anything.
ReplyDelete""Seriously?" Do you really think you are supposed to take anything you see on Television Food Network seriously? And do you believe in the WWE too? It's all entertainment. Just ask Bob Tuschman."
ReplyDeleteRead the quote again, particularly the part about him being a business coach. He does that outside his FN R:I and other shows.
Agreed.
ReplyDeleteAnd I still say he should go back to doing what he did best, Dinner:Impossible. As a working Chef, he's among the best.
I wonder why the original poster's message was deleted. It was just a link to a story. I clicked on it and quoted from it. The story was a little snarky, but there was nothing wrong with it.
ReplyDeleteIf he still going to be hands off 340 days a year* and hasn't learn how to hire the right people to run them, not well.
ReplyDelete* In the article he said he was on the road (or something to that effect) 340 days a year.
I agree! Dinner Impossible was far superior to Restaurant Impossible! Every episode offered something different, while RI has become the same thing warmed over episode after episode.
ReplyDeleteThanks Hoppy.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome. I know I've been guilty of that in the past, being a little harsh to people that loved a certain wannabe cowboy. I decided I have to stop & think first before hitting post because I'm not really a jerk IRL.
ReplyDeleteThis is the beauty of this site. We can talk about Food Network—and related topics— without fearing a backlash from the network if we have something less than positive to say. We have a lot to thank Matt for in this regard.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it's always better when we discuss our opinions and differences like adults and don't resort to personally insulting other posters or calling them names.
Ramsay's first restaurant, Aubergine, was a failure, and he not only talks about it, but he embraces it and uses it as an example of learning from one's mistakes and using them to become stronger.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Flay, Fieri, and Ramsay own restaurant empires and still manage to maintain a strong television presence and massive touring schedules. Irvine had two restaurants and couldn't keep either of them open. Maybe he needs to work on his time-management skills.
ReplyDeleteI believe you mean, Amaryllis. That was his first, closed in 2004, and I know he speaks about that one often in the first few seasons of UK KN. Aubergine, closed in 2010, and that was his second restaurant.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I forgot about Amaryllis since he generally talks about Aubergine these days.
ReplyDeleteDag gummit! Well I'll be et for a tater....seems the preacher outa be preachin into the mirror!
ReplyDeleteAh, I haven't heard about Aubergine yet. Goes to show how up to date I am.
ReplyDeleteI just saw a commercial for "Robert Irvine Live" at a nearby casino in March. Should I go?! lol
ReplyDeleteIt looks like a real hoot! http://chefirvine.com/ri-live
$40-60 for tickets.
Pass.
Hm, I was poking around online doing some research on Robert Irvine's other show Restaurant Express, and found out he's closed his other restaurant "eat!". That place closed in 2013 and now this place is closing, he has only owned two restaurants.I know I'm probably going to get flack for this but I don't think he should be asked to be a restaurant consultant on rescuing restaurants. If he can't maintain his own places, why should he be giving advice on running restaurants?
ReplyDeleteYikes, that is quite a bit of money. I don't even think concert tickets cost that much.
ReplyDeleteIf the average fail rate of restaurants is 50% and his actual "success" rate is 50% then I guess it shows that RI basically has zero impact as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if the first stat is accurate, but since RI is only involved with failing restaurants, a 50% success rate sounds good. After all, without RI the failure rate would be close to 100%.
ReplyDeleteThat actually looks like it would be a lot of fun to watch.
ReplyDeleteYou'd get flack for saying it on other sites, but not here. I think a lot of people would agree with you. I sure do. Even those who don't agree would be respectful of your opinion.
ReplyDeleteThe first concert ticket I bought was back in 1973 and was $3.50. The first Jimmy Buffett concert I went to was in 1977 and was $7.50. That was then.
ReplyDeleteNow, tickets to the $3.50 show are $35, the tickets to the last Buffett concert here were $125 for main floor (I refuse to spend that kind of money on anyone) and Robert Irvine is charging $60 to watch him sling hash whole jumping up and down with glee over how good it tastes and give the crowd a chance to cut a finger off.
When did we take that left turn into a wall, entertainment value wise?!
I think you should go so you can tell us all about it! Maybe Matt would let you guest host the blog for a day!
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've heard here in town, his wife came with him both times he did restaurants here in Albuquerque. She may travel with him a fair bit. I don't know, just throwing out what I heard.
ReplyDeleteI agree & I'd feel he was being more honest if he told owners that he's trying to help something like, "I had a restaurant named 'eat' or 'nosh' & I had to close & this is why. Learn from my mistakes."
ReplyDelete