Colin Fassnidge forced to defend Kitchen Nightmare makeover

A Sydney café owner has accused Colin Fassnidge and reality show Kitchen Nightmares of turning her business into a laughing stock.

Owner Virginia Cheong says that following the reality show makeover, the café is now losing $4000 a week.

Fassnidge has defended the show, saying Cheong needs to take ownership for her restaurant woes.

The Homebush cafe owner who featured in a recent episode says that since her appearance and rebranding from Cafe de Vie to Cafe Toubouli her customers think the business is a joke.

“She (claims she has) lost four grand a week from us moving a coffee machine … she wasn’t even making that much when we were there,” Fassnidge told Confidential.

“We filmed the show in May, so it has taken her until November to realise that the coffee machine, she could move it back. She can do whatever she wants, it is her joint. She could have changed the name back and moved the coffee machine, it doesn’t take six months to work that out.”

“It is her business. They asked us in to help, you have got to take some ownership. That is the nature of the business.”

Producers turned the café into a Lebanese eatery, which Cheong claims affected sales, not least because she is Chinese and has no background in Lebanese cuisine.

“It instantly killed our coffee business. We were doing 30kg of coffee a week and now we are down to 15kg. And when people order coffee, they usually order a bacon and egg roll or muffin. That’s gone too,” she said.

Fassnidge responded: “She is a Chinese lady in an Italian cafe but the chef was from Iraq and her husband is Middle Eastern and they already served manoush, that was on the menu and was in the episode. So they went down the road of something they already sold that they couldn’t make work.”

Fassnidge defended the approach to Nova FM radio hosts Fitzy and Wippa.

“It was a Chinese owned café serving terrible Middle Eastern bread and Italian food. It was also losing,” Fassnidge said.

“(Her) husband is a tiler and his wage was keeping the cafe going. So this thing of they’re losing all this money because we moved the coffee machine, mate – move the coffee machine back.

“The way that the restaurant world is at the minute like you can come in, you can do a paint job you can do a new menu.

“But not everyone’s gonna survive, that’s the brutality of the industry we’re in.

“I feel sad that Virginia has to close, but she was closing anyway. You know, it’s not the outcome we want and I really liked Virginia and it’s a shame.”

Cheong said Fassnidge was helpful, but the experience wasn’t.

Cheong has taken initiative by enrolling in cooking classes with a London-based Lebanese chef and hiring a Lebanese food consultant.

“If I sell, I feel like I’ve let everyone down. I’ve got everyone telling me, I shouldn’t have gone on the show and how it destroyed us but, in a way, I don’t want to give up. I want something good to came out of it,” she said.

Jonathan Jackson - 16-11-22