Crouched in a surveillance truck disguised as a dog-grooming business, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay critiqued 28-year-old MacGregor’s Restaurant on the Havre de Grace waterfront.
In the fourth episode of his new Fox show, “Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service,” the famously sharp-tongued Ramsay blasted the restaurant for moldy chili found in its walk-in refrigerator and about the origin of their seafood.
“This restaurant is sat on the water, but we get crabmeat from Vietnam and China?” Ramsay bemoaned on the show. “How sad is that?”
MacGregor’s owner Stephanie Golumbek, who took the business over in 2001, agreed to be on Ramsay’s show, which was filmed in early March and aired June 11.
Similar to other Ramsay shows such as “24 Hours to Hell and Back,” which featured Ellicott City in 2020, “Secret Service” features the chef giving a struggling restaurant a thorough makeover.
A Frederick restaurant, Callahan’s Seafood Bar & Grill, also will be featured on “Secret Service.”
The chef and production crew’s arrival in Harford County caused a bit of a sensation, with people swarming the restaurant and excitedly sharing photos on social media. A June 11 watch party drew about 600 people to the restaurant, Golumbek said.
The episode shows Ramsay sneaking into the kitchen/storage area early in the morning to check out how food is stored. He then sets up shop in a disguised surveillance van, using hidden cameras to spy on MacGregor’s staff going about their day.
Two customers were actually planted by the show, as the episode reveals. They are acclaimed local chef Rock Harper, who has restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area and is a Season 3 “Hell’s Kitchen” winner, and Sammi Tarantino, “one of the most sought-out private chefs in the country,” Ramsay says.
Ramsay whispered into Tarantino’s earpiece to tell the waitress that she has a shellfish allergy. Despite the waitress’s reassurances, Tarantino was served a dish that she says tasted like shrimp, and the kitchen camera showed what Ramsay described as major cross-contamination on the grill.
Harper, meanwhile, inquired whether MacGregor’s crabs are local, “Chesapeake crab,” and was told that they are. But, the camera then showed a can of imported lump crabmeat being opened in the kitchen.
Ramsay ultimately confronted the staff, accusing them of potentially endangering the life of someone with a food allergy, and not serving local crab.
“It’s like the U.N. of f*****g shellfish,” Ramsay bellowed at the employees. “We are literally 20 feet from the water. I am devastated.”
Aside from lambasting the restaurant’s operations — including head chef, and Stephanie’s boyfriend, Mike Laubner — Ramsay urged Golumbek to declutter the restaurant’s allegedly haunted interior, which was full of items left over from original owner Dan Lee, who retired to Florida.
Ramsay redesigned the menu to include local food and upgraded the restaurant’s interior, adding art deco-style touches, new seating, contemporary marbled countertops, wall art and a tufted sofa in the private niche.
Golumbek said everything on the show was real, and the staff were genuinely surprised by how events played out that day in March.
She also said she wasn’t fazed by Ramsay, and is ultimately grateful for the opportunity the show presented.
“It was in true Gordon flavor,” Golumbek said. “He’s a saucy man… I’m a restaurant person, and I have a pretty thick skin, and I’m used to this.”
Asked if she felt unfairly judged by Ramsay’s focus on the imported seafood, which the vast majority of Maryland restauranteurs use, Golumbek just said she knows they could do better.
“Things really changed, the market changed, and pricing, and customers that we need to take care of,” she explained about the crabmeat. “I think you just get stuck in patterns.”
MacGregor’s now has “local fishermen catching [crabs] right on the water,” she said, and the restaurant’s new menu has included snakehead and blue catfish as specials.
The restaurant also added Baltimore-based Chef Earl Gray to work alongside Laubner.
As for community reaction to the show, “it’s been a really mixed bag, but also, we are getting a lot of community support,” Golumbek said. Although she has a very positive attitude about the show, she’s more worried for the impact on her employees. “A lot of negativity that we are getting, I worry for them. But honestly, we are rallying.”
Perhaps more importantly, the show gave a big boost to the restaurant community, which she said “was struggling,” due to construction downtown. “The filming was really a nice catalyst” for bringing people back to downtown Havre de Grace.
Have a news tip? Contact Bryna Zumer at bzumer@baltsun.com, or on X as @brynazumer .
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