Bufet Jahodná

The restaurant & setting. Martin Novák heads to southern Slovakia, to the village of Jahodná near Dunajská Streda, right next to a petrol station. He expected a restaurant, but corrects himself on the doorstep: "I was supposed to come to a restaurant, not a snack bar." It is an ordinary roadside buffet frequented mostly by construction workers, and after one glance Martin is left "in disbelief," the kind of place where you wouldn't even dare to eat.

The people. The owner is Klaudia Broberiarová, a single mother of three who took the place over about a month after the previous owner, Mirka. Mirka (48) once owned the buffet and worked there for ten years; now she only waits tables. Anna "Anička" Molnárová helps in the kitchen ("I'm not a cook, I'm a gardener") and Týma Galkiová is extra help. The real cook was Veronika, with experience from a school canteen, but Klaudia angrily sent her away a few days before filming. "I'm here from 6 a.m., I do what I can and it still doesn't work," Klaudia admits.

Why they called Martin. Klaudia calls for help because she genuinely no longer knows what she's doing wrong. She is drowning in debt, "I don't even know how many days past due the electricity bill is," and feels like she's wading through mud with no way out. She opened the place to do something of her own, "because I've never achieved anything in my life," but now she's ready to give up without quite giving up the fight.

The first visit. Martin works across the menu and it's a disaster. Fried cheese in a semi-finished cold rubbery bun with Chinese cabbage; a gyros from which "I got two deci of oil," meat like an oily crisp. All three soups share the same base: "paprika, flour, paprika, flour." The segedín has tough, rubbery meat "like chewing cardboard" and an off-taste of old oil. Photo versus reality finishes him off. "This food is so dreadful it's like someone cooked it for me as a punishment." The best thing on his plate is bagged frozen fries.

The diagnosis. Martin calls the kitchen a chapter from the Bible: "Sodom and Gomorrah." He finds flies, cobwebs, mouse droppings, cat food stored among human groceries, and "living bacteria" on a black smear. "That counter is the gateway between Mordor and the World, and this is Mordor." He shuts the place down on the spot: "I closed it." In a tearful confrontation he tells Klaudia she bears the responsibility: she let everything slide to this level, runs from problems and just keeps repeating "it was, it was, it was." The task: radically clean up and call Veronika back.

The reset. After a long night of cleaning comes a test: Martin has the women cook goulash in a thirteen-litre pot, but deliberately gives them almost ten kilos of meat to see whether they'll be thrifty or wastefully use it all. "A kitchen isn't only about cooking well, it's about how you handle money." They then hand the goulash out among spectators at a football match and give out flyers to finally "sell" the place to the locals. Friends from Gastrokuchyne.sk supply new cookware, pots, an extractor hood and a fly repeller, and Veronika returns to the kitchen.

New concept & menu. Martin doesn't pretend he can turn the buffet into a restaurant; he honestly reframes it as an honest "good canteen." He tears down the old banners of sausages and Asian bistro, adds red tablecloths, and redesigns the serving counter so each woman has her place. The soft cheese comes from his friend Tomáš's nearby farm. The menu is traditional Slovak fare: garlic soup with homemade croutons, goulash and Frankfurt soup, segedín with dumpling, roast pork belly with cabbage and potato dumpling, znojmo-style beef roštienka, fried local cheese, and a fruit bublanina.

The big night. The test service opens with a septic truck pumping its hose right by the terrace: instead of kitchen aromas, "they smell the cesspit." The kitchen is far too "stoically calm": the pace is sluggish, Veronika plans the work badly, the dumplings run late, the meat stays tough, and the cake burns. But Klaudia improvises: she seats the guests, buys time, and replaces the burnt dessert with ice cream. Despite the chaos the customers enjoy it, come back for seconds and take food home. "Be glad it turned out fairly positively."

One month later. A month on Martin returns and is met with a cold "same as ever." The flies are still there, the dumpling is mysteriously dyed blue (not mould, but colouring), the schnitzel is damp and rubbery from being dumped in a warm holding tray, the sausages like sponge. Worst of all is the atmosphere: Veronika feels overwhelmed, complains about the "grey eminence" Milka who tells her behind her back that her food is disgusting, and the relationships among the women are poisoned. "Food precisely reflects the atmosphere that's here." Klaudia admits she comes to work an absolute wreck.

Verdict: 0 knives. Martin leaves with mixed feelings and awards 0 knives, zero. The women themselves said nothing had changed: "no step was taken for me to award any grade, any knives." A pity, he adds, had they talked it through a month earlier, it could have turned out completely differently.