Shanty gets the Gordon Ramsay treatment
Eatery, owners got the full treatment from TV’s fiery, disguised traveling host.
Celebrity chef features Allentown restaurant on ‘24 Hours to Hell and Back.’
Gordon Ramsay blew through the doors of Allentown’s Shanty on 19th with his famously fiery temperament and cameras rolling for FOX’s prime time show dubbed “24 Hours to Hell and Back”.
The episode was filmed last fall and aired on Wednesday night.
The idea behind the series is for Ramsay to bring failing restaurants back from the brink of disaster (and trust me, the show certainly painted that picture at the Shanty). He uses a large team, a state-of-the-art mobile kitchen, and a bustling command center to make the impossible possible. In this case, Shanty on 19th received a theatrical renovation, a fresh new menu and (seemingly) hope for its future.
The transformation ended with a grand reopening, happy customers, and husband-and-wife owners one step closer to wedded bliss instead of divorce court.
Here’s what we knew about Shanty before the show, and what we know now: The Shanty on 19th was a longtime Allentown landmark that opened in 1968 in the 1900 block of Allen Street and moved to 617 N. 19th St. in 1980. It closed its doors in 2005 after nearly 40 years of business as a fine dining establishment. The latest incarnation held a soft opening back on May 22, 2014, following yearlong renovations. Its aim was to mix modern features with familiar sights of the original Shanty, which it did with custom-made booths, LED and pendant lighting, and a full 24-seat bar.
The show sold the property as
Then: Now:
dark and dingy, in need of a dramatic update to its dated decor. Emphasis was placed on turning the restaurant from down-in-the-dumps to industrial chic. Ramsay even used the phrase “bistro” multiple times, and while the restaurant got white marble table tops and plenty of new kitchen gear, it simply rearranged and relocated some of the booths. Still, it looked a lot more bright and airy post-renovation.
When the Shanty reopened in 2014, it came with another link to the past. One of the owners was Ron Pickering, who was a Shanty chef from 1979 to 1985. Pickering operated the eatery with his wife, Clarissa, and Joe Tatasciore, his business partner. Tatasciore was also a neighborof the Shanty’s original longtime owners, Don and Diane Saylor, as a child.
Tatasciore and his wife were the
Then: Now:
main focus of Wednesday’s episode, but the show framed their marriage as the opposite of domestic tranquility. In fact, it made the drama between members of the Tatasciore family — including Tatasciore’s dad, Joe Sr. — seem like a bigger problem than anything going on in the restaurant. Ramsay played the roles of therapist, marriage counselor and celebrity chef to put the seemingly fractured pieces back together (but doesn’t erase the half-million dollars in debt Tatasciore said the business is facing).
The Shanty wasn’t hated by the social media crowd, but it wasn’t loved. Prior to the show, it had a 3 stars out of 5 rating on both Yelp and Trip Advisor, and a 4 stars out of 5 rating on Google reviews. A number of the Yelp reviews mentioned the quality of the food, employees in the kitchen cursing loud enough for patrons to hear, and terribly slow service.
Then:
Ramsay’s “undercover” meal at the restaurant featured burned scallops and sour shrimp, along with behind-thescenes footage featuring moldy food, a filthy kitchen, and mouse droppings on the floor that Ramsay compared to couscous. In reality, food safety inspections by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture dating back to 2017 were a lot less nauseating. Violations included dirty can-opener blades, a lack of a chlorine chemical sanitizer in the dishwasher, and an ice scoop with the handle in contact with the ice.
A facility inspection after filming in October — just in time for the restaurant’s grand reopening — showed no critical violations noted.
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