One thing for sure, it can't hurt for your restaurant to be featured on a national TV show.
On Tuesday night, the 31-year-old New Mandarin Garden restaurant in Farmington Hills will be featured on the Cooking Channel’s new series, “Restaurant Redemption," according to Detroit Free Press food writer Sylvia Rector.
The show, staring host Ching-He Huang, visits troubled Asian restaurants and helps owners turn things around, Rector reports.
Let's face it, when it comes to Chinese restaurants in particular, there are some good ones and some pretty average ones in Metro Detroit, but not an abundance of great ones.
Rector writes:
One of the main problems at New Mandarin Garden — which the show’s promos called a “failing family restaurant” — was supposedly the bickering of sibling owners Garry and Jerry Che.
“Can the brothers get along long enough to make the restaurant a success? Only time will tell,” the network writes in its description of the episode.
But the story line is largely a made-for-TV exaggeration, the brothers say.
“We had our moments as far as getting along, but never to the point where we would want to split up and sell,” says Jerry Che. And they were never in danger of closing because of poor sales. “We had our flatlining moments, but we never lost money,” he adds. -- A.L.
