Tim Gray is 21. He's the Head Chef at Bonapartes in Silsden, West Yorkshire and he specialises in 'fine dining'. He has ambitions to be a TV chef and one day hopes to open restaurants in London, Paris and New York. Unfortunately, as Gordon Ramsay discovers, Tim can't even cook an omelette and when he attempts to make dinner for his parents at home he manages to set the cooker alight. A true kitchen nightmare if ever you saw one.

Saturday night at the Glass House Restaurant in Ambleside is a nightmare. Orders in the kitchen are mixed up, food's not cooked properly and the customers are complaining. Not only is the chef in tears, but the owners on the brink as well. Neil Farrell's owned the Lake District restaurant for 3 years and he's up to this eyes in debt. The business won't survive if the restaurant's only busy on a Saturday night but with only 3,000 residents in the town, Neil has to attract the influx of visitors if he's going to fill the 90-seats every night.

Ramsay meets Francesco Mattioli, the owner of The Walnut Tree Inn in South Wales, who's broke, chef-less and desperate to restore the restaurant's former reputation.

Nick and Richard are self-confessed restaurant virgins. They've both had successful careers in the brewery business so when they bought Moore Place they thought their dream had come true. What they hadn't fathomed was just how difficult it would be to fill the 90-seater oak-paneled restaurant or find a chef who could cook decent food. Their first mistake was to paint the building purple. The wealthy Surrey residents hated it and refused to enter the building. Ramsay discovers some fundamental problems - a chef who can't cook, a bunch of sultry waiters and a building that looks more like a funeral parlor than a restaurant.

The venue is La Lanterna in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. Twenty-eight-year-old owner and head chef Alex offers modern Italian cuisine, a taste of Little Italy in England's first garden city, and the restaurant is run by his best mate maitre d' Gavin, helped by his ex-air hostess girlfriend Emily. But Alex has no customers, cookers that don't work and an expensive menu that's about as authentically Italian as a spag bol. He re-mortgaged his house to buy the business, it's losing £1,000 a week, he hasn't slept for months but still runs round town in a flash car that's worth more than the restaurant. Running out of money, inspiration and energy, Alex is on the verge of losing everything. Gordon rolls up his sleeves and sets to work on the encrusted kitchen cookers and hapless front-of-house staff. Can a strict diet of brutal honesty, radical food surgery and undiluted energy turn things round, or is it only a matter of time before the lights go out at La Lanterna for good?

The venue for the second programme is D-Place in Chelmsford, Essex run by Mexican-born Israel and his English partner Tara. They've sunk £150,000 of their own money into their trendy cafe bar which offers a vast selection of fusion cuisine. In charge is Executive Chef Philippe, producing everything from all-day breakfasts to hoi sin noodles with an astounding lack of flair; the plastic food is dire and boomerangs back from the dining room as soon as it's cooked. Restaurant manager, spunky Essex boy Dave, loathes his chef, and their mutual hatred spills over into permanent running battles. Faced with dysfunctional staff and a disastrous menu, Gordon is about to face the longest week of his professional life. Can he quell the panic, banish the deep fat fryer and bring D-Place back from the dead, or will it disappear forever?