By Hayley Ringle | Phoenix Business Journal
We went in with an open mind Friday night to try Amy’s Baking Company for the first time, but our quartet was kicked out after pointing out bugs in not one, not two, but three versions of one simple vodka martini.
After Tuesday’s cancellation of a press conference and media interviews, I really wanted to get a firsthand account of the restaurant and the owners Amy and Samy Bouzaglo.
If you’ve seen the TV show “Kitchen Nightmares,” which featured the restaurant in its May 10 finale with an exasperated celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay walking out on the couple, Samy turned out to be just like he was portrayed on the show. (I did see Amy behind the counter when I walked in, but not again during our visit.)
Never mind the slow, inexperienced staff, the tense atmosphere in the restaurant and the empty tables which made me wonder where the publicized 1,000 reservations were on a Friday night, there were bugs in one of our drinks. Well, three actually.
Phoenix Business Journal Digital Editor Adam Kress ordered a vodka martini on the rocks with a twist of lemon. The first warning sign was repeating the drink order a couple of times to our waitress. “I don’t drink,” the middle-aged woman said, who also told us “sorry” every single time she came back to the table. This is not an exaggeration. She said sorry whether she had anything to apologize for or not.
Samy finally came over about 10 minutes later to retake the drink order from Kress. Shortly after he delivered the drink, which wasn’t on the rocks and merely had a lemon wedge floating in it, we immediately noticed a small fruit fly in it.
We called Samy over and told him, showing him the bug on a spoon. He cordially offered to bring us another drink.
