Pekidors

The restaurant & setting. We are in Michal na Ostrove on the Žitný ostrov, where the Pekidors restaurant sits by a fishing pond. On the way Martin is tempted by the idea of a romantic lakeside spot: „reštaurácia, romantika, jazero, čo viac si môžeš chcieť." Reality lets him down, the car park is deserted, the doors locked, and Mondays and Tuesdays are closed. The owner rents the premises and has run it for seven years now. The name Pekidors comes from the family: Peki is the owner Peter himself, Kira is his daughter and Dorian his son.

The people. The place is run by owner Peter, who works as both cook and waiter and has done nothing but gastronomy since leaving school, he simply loves it. At home he has a wife who is a kindergarten teacher and two children, but the family does not come to help in the restaurant. His right hand in the kitchen is the young head chef Lajoš, a Roma from a Slovak-Hungarian family who has been here almost four years and has cooked for six. Slovak and Hungarian mix in the kitchen. He is helped by Karolína, a cook and waitress in one, and the apprentice Kristóf. Lajoš dreams of his own place together with his girlfriend, who is also a cook and waitress.

Why they called Martin. Peter claims everything worked until covid arrived, but since then competition has grown and the guests have vanished. Footfall is dismal, the previous day, a Sunday, he had a single table for the whole lunch, and on weekdays it happens that no one comes at all. The restaurant survives mainly on parties, weddings and christenings, where it can seat up to fifty people. Peter hopes Martin will show him the way.

The first visit. Martin orders five dishes across the menu and the disaster is impossible to miss. Only two sounds come from the kitchen: „Píp a cink," so he concludes that „za tými lietačkami je proste centrum NASA" and the food is being warmed in a time accelerator. In the very first soup he finds a black hair and refuses to eat it. A 28-euro steak is cooked to medium well instead of medium rare and drenched in a powdered sauce, „to je proste samý glutamán sodný". Next come frozen, microwave-thawed fish that are ice cold, game drowned in half a litre of pumpkin oil „drahého jak ropa", and mushrooms oozing white water because they were frozen and badly cooked. The dessert, chestnut balls, is extremely dry. Asked whether he would return for any of the five dishes, his answer is plain: „Ani jedno."

The diagnosis. Martin gathers the whole team and spares no one. Over the steak he reminds Lajoš that he has six years in the kitchen and still cannot make a sauce, even though he has a phone, the internet and Google. The biggest shock comes in the kitchen: a filthy fryer, old oil and a freezer Martin calls „truhlica pokladov," where every day the unsold food is packed away and then simply reheated. „Tak krásne prostredie a tak dodrbaná reštaurácia." He explains to Lajoš that he is young and now is his time to work on himself, because in ten years, with a family and bad habits, he will no longer change.

The reset. Since Lajoš admits he lacks both creativity and inspiration, Martin takes him to his own restaurant Sogo to see how a real kitchen works: proper stores, clean fridges where everything has its place, clear communication during service, and a menu of just fourteen dishes, half of which change every three months. Lajoš leaves thrilled and grateful for the gesture. Meanwhile Martin's team takes care of the space itself, removing the antlers from the walls and turning the whole restaurant into a romantic, elegant venue. A reservation app and a dough roller are added, and sommelier Kristína teaches the staff how to open and taste wine properly.

New concept & menu. The vision is clear: turn Pekidors into a romantic spot where couples from near and far come for a nice dinner, for example on Valentine's Day. Martin prepares a new, more modern menu from ingredients customers know, just dressed differently: trout bliny, a creamy chestnut soup, duck breast with beetroot purée, pork tenderloin with pumpkin purée, chestnut risotto, roasted lamb cheek with a beetroot carpaccio and potato gratin, and desserts, a baked apple and a trhanec, for which Lajoš even gets the recipe.

The big night. The gala night is a test under pressure and it grinds from the start. Lajoš is stressed, does not delegate and shuffles silently around the kitchen, while Peter constantly interferes with his work and, in Martin's words, „ťahá ručnú brzdu". Martin agrees with Lajoš that he will tell Peter to let him cook. It all breaks over the chestnut soup, of which there is too little. Instead of ordering more, Peter waters it down with cream from a scraped pot to conjure six portions, and insists it is still chestnut soup though only cream remains. „Zákazníkov sa neokráda," Martin declares. Lajoš refuses to send out such a soup, and when Peter sends it to guests anyway, the chef takes off his apron and walks out of the restaurant. Martin tries to stop him, but Lajoš is decided: „Ja sa tam nevrátim."

One month later. The one-month return is missing from the recording, the big night ended with the head chef leaving mid-service and the camera captures only Peter, taking payment from guests at the till and noting glumly: „Smutný som z toho proste." From hints in an earlier testimony by the show's very first restaurateurs you can sense the makeover helped, yet the very point of the episode is precisely that the owner chose immediate profit over honesty and lost his chef in the process.

Verdict: 0 knives. Pekidors gets 0 knives for this night, because despite the beautiful transformation of the space and the new menu the place failed at the most important thing, the owner chose to deceive his own guests and let his head chef walk out rather than admit the soup had run out. (The episode recording ends shortly after the head chef leaves; the 0-knife rating is per the show's database.)