NEWS

Landolls glad they went through 'Hotel Hell'

Courtney Day
Reporter

LOUDONVILLE - For months, Marta and Jimmy Landoll and the staff at Landoll's Mohican Castle have been anxiously waiting to see the episode of "Hotel Hell" that was filmed at the property last December.

The Landolls invited Castle staff and their families for a private watch party and saw the show for the first time Tuesday, along with the rest of America, when it aired on Fox during prime time.

"We were all terribly nervous," said Marta Landoll, the owner of the hotel, restaurant and event center.  "We had some rough nights, and we knew the kitchen scene was going to be rough."

She was right. In the season finale of the Fox reality show, restaurateur and television personality Gordon Ramsay didn't mince words. He told the Landoll's their beef stroganoff looked like prison food and called the kitchen the most dysfunctional he had ever seen.

He compared the color of the special event space to lemon meringue vomit and expressed disgust over finding dust in the hotel lobby and flies and trash in one of the Castle's towers.

"I can't sit here and say he was wrong," said Jimmy, the general manger and Marta's son, after watching the show. "It was pretty accurate."

Castle's grand re-opening follows Gordon Ramsay makeover

But Jimmy and Marta say they are grateful for Ramsay's criticism.

"I wasn't going to be on 'Hotel Hell' and assume it was all going to be peaches and cream," Jimmy said. "I knew I was basically going to be exploited, but it didn't feel like that."

Jimmy said he sensed that Ramsay really cared about the business and worked to help them grow.

"It really showed us what our faults were so that we could correct them," Jimmy said. "We're busier than we've ever been, we've just made so many changes, and we really get very few complaints anymore."

Early in the show, Castle staff told Ramsay that Jimmy was general manager in name only, while Marta ran the place.

After seeing Marta at work in the kitchen, Ramsay told Marta she was working too hard for a woman in her 60s and that she needed to take a step back from the business. He asked Marta to write a letter to Jimmy, an exercise that resulted in a tearful scene in which Jimmy thanked his mom for her hard work and agreed to adjust his leadership style.

Jimmy said Tuesday his mother has not worked a weekend since Ramsay's visit, and Marta said she no longer works in the kitchen at all. Jimmy, too, spends less time in the kitchen and more time managing, since the business hired a professional chef and additional staff.

"I think it really took an event like having 'Hotel Hell' here to really change the way she was here and make me basically demand she take time for herself," Jimmy said.

For the show, Ramsay arranged for a couple to get married at the Castle and unveiled a new menu and a redesigned event space for the wedding. The couple was brought in from the Toledo area, Jimmy said.

When the show aired Tuesday night, Fox interrupted the program with an update from the Democratic National Convention, causing viewers to miss the portion of the show in which the new space was revealed.

For Marta, this was a disappointment, as she felt the reveal and transformation was the most important thing for people to see.

But overall, both Marta and Jimmy said they were pleased with the show and glad they were part of it.

Marta said she was pleased with the beautiful footage the "Hotel Hell" crew shot of the property.

Most importantly, Marta said, the difference at the Castle since Ramsay's visit is like "night and day."

Jimmy agreed.

"We're not going to look back," he said. "We're going to stay at this pace, we're going to stay occupied at the hotel and filled up with events and give people the best possible service," he said.

ceday@gannett.com

419-521-7220

Twitter: @courtneydaynj

Kyle Elasser, executive chef for the Copper Mug Bar & Grille, stands next to the proprietors of Landoll's Mohican Castle, James Landoll and Marta Landoll.