Amy and Samy Bouzaglo, the Valley's reigning king and queen of denial (and two more reasons the rest of the world can make fun of Arizona) are back in the news again.
This week, the owners of the now-infamous Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale were interviewed by the Daily Mail in the UK about, well, pretty much everything -- like appearing on Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay, Samy's possible deportation to Israel, being blamed for stealing server's tips, bullies, and what the future holds.
Amy does most of the talking, and although there's the standard Looney Tunes, alleged victimization for their personal gain, and not-our-fault answers, there's probably some truth in the kinds of threats she says the two received after the Kitchen Nightmares episode aired. After all, people can be pretty terrible.
Anyhow, here's Amy catching us up on what it is.
See also: - Amy Bouzaglo of Amy's Baking Company Accuses Former Waitress of Lying, Calls Her a "Little Bitch" (VIDEO) - Chasing Amy: Overcooked Reality and the Decline of Western Civility
On the Kitchen Nightmares season finale and Gordon Ramsay:
"When Gordon was there, he tried my cakes and loved them. They filmed me making my homemade pasta and they didn't show that."
"I asked Gordon many times, 'What's wrong with the food?' He wouldn't tell me. I literally chased him around, saying, 'I know you sent everything back'. He said we would talk about it later, but at no point did he offer any constructive criticism and that was hurtful to me. I had a great deal of respect for him as a chef."
"I'm self-trained and never went to culinary school, and welcomed Gordon Ramsay coming and giving me any critique. I'm by no means perfect. But I do know the quality of my food; I never have complaints and food is rarely sent back. We have loyal customers."
"Our show was the highest they ever had, it broke all of the records, so there are no hard feelings to Fox or Gordon. We are upset about the way we were portrayed and edited, but we are focusing on our future now."
"Now we can only defend Gordon Ramsay, we support him and hope that people are not as quick to judge him and hate on him because of these accusations. Kitchen Nightmares was not doing very well and the ratings were not very strong."
On the bullies:
"Over the past couple of months, we've gone from being completely unknown to having people call us at 3 a.m. saying they're going to break into our house with a rifle, rape me, and kill my husband."
"God is giving us the strength to get through it, we're fighters and survivors -- and we have our cats! We're dedicated to showing everyone who is still unwilling to accept the truth that we don't poison the food, we don't assault employees and customers -- and we don't steal our servers' tips."
(whaaaat?) "We had to get police involved and the FBI [regarding the Bouzaglos alleging their Facebook account was hacked]. But the problem is that one of the hackers is a minor, but we know who he is."
On the tipping thing:
"On the final night of filming, Gordon accused my husband in the middle of the restaurant and told the customers that he was keeping the waitresses tips and they were going in his pocket. At this point we both realized they were accusing us of something that was 100 percent inaccurate and we felt very strongly in standing up for ourselves to make sure they didn't misportray us."
"In Europe, they have a different tipping system, just as they do in China and Japan and many restaurants in New York are considering doing away with tipping completely."
"My husband is a gentleman. He would never let a woman pay for anything if she was with him, he would rather cut his balls off than take money from any waitress or servers."
"Since the show, we recognize the outcry and now we're giving the servers their tips. It would still work out in their favor to be be paid hourly, but now they're guaranteed to make a minimum of $7.80 an hour and we make sure they go home with more than that, 100 percent."
On Samy's possible deportation:
"We've had attorneys review his case and if the case was in America he would never have been arrested -- he was a victim of circumstances and surrounded by the wrong people."
"But Samy was honest and truthful and if we have to leave and go to Israel, then we have to leave."
"Samy feels like he's an American, he employs Americans, and he's paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. He does not have a parking ticket or a speeding ticket -- he has perfect credit."
"I believe if anyone deserves to stay here, it's my husband. We will continue to fight, we're good people."
On what life is like now and what the future holds:
"One good thing to come out of Kitchen Nightmares is that we are now bombarded by customers."
"We have a different kind of clientele. We've become a summer tourist attraction, we're humbled when people ask for pictures with us."
"We're printing T-shirts that say, 'I survived Amy's Baking Company', 'Here's your pizza, go f**k yourself'', 'I'm the Gangster,' and 'I speak Feline, MEOW!!' We're making cherry lemonade out of lemons. Never in my life would I have thought the show would launch us into this kind of stratosphere."
"Now we're working on our own reality show, so stay tuned!'
To read the full interview, go to the Daily Mail UK website.
