CAFE HON — Neighborhood restaurant saved by the chef

TV HOST, CHEF GORDON RAMSAY,
ON 3-DAY VISIT  TO BALTIMORE,
REDESIGNS  HAMPDEN EATERY

Restaurant  owner Denise Whiting
trademarked Balto. word ‘Hon,’
incurring wrath of entire city

BY SHOW’S END, ALL IS LOVEY-DOVEY

By Alan Z. Forman

Anyone who watched the first 45 minutes Friday night of the hour-long reality-TV show “Kitchen Nightmares” would have thought Hampden’s Cafe Hon was about to be dead-and-buried.

But wonder upon wonders, in the show’s final segment, Television Chef Gordon Ramsay and his “team” of culinary experts literally snatched victory from the “mouth of defeat,” transforming the iconic 36th St. restaurant and “persuading” its insufferable proprietor Denise Whiting to give up her claim to ownership of the trademark “Hon.”

Asked if he “twisted her arm” to get Whiting to accede and relinquish her claim to the word, Ramsay said “No”; however he had all but told her in so many words throughout the first three-quarters of the show that if she didn’t agree to it, the restaurant she had put 20 years of her life into was doomed.  ............

READ THE FULL STORY HERE.