Amy’s Baking Company reacts to alleged knife incident
Oct 2, 2014, 6:35 PM | Updated: 6:36 pm
PHOENIX — Days after allegedly threatening a drunken patron with a knife, Samy and Amy Bouzaglo, owners of Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, Ariz., sat down with KTAR to give their side of the story.
A video from TMZ appears to show Samy brandishing what looks like a knife outside of the restaurant while Amy restrains him. The person recording says, “You’re going to go to jail for the rest of your life. It’s not worth it.” The Bouzaglos maintain Samy was holding a pen.
“TMZ only shows what they want to show,” Samy said.
A KTAR review of a longer, clearer video showed the drunken man had charged both Samy and Amy prior to the incident outside of the restaurant broadcast by TMZ. He also spit on Samy, cursed at him and threatened to urinate inside the restaurant.
“He came for chaos,” Samy said. “He didn’t come to eat. I didn’t even serve him water.”
While the new video shows Samy clearly armed with a silver pen and not a knife, he admitted he wanted to intimidate the man to get him to leave the premises and not harm Amy.
“I did what I had to do to defend her,” he said. “I’m still defending her and I won’t let anyone come to bully her or even touch her.”
The Bouzaglos plan to release the video, though they did not specify when.
In the interview, the Bouzaglos also claimed they were sexually harassed by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.
The eatery first rose to fame after a disastrous appearance on Fox’s “Kitchen Nightmares,” in which the married owners were seen cursing out customers, each other and servers who were paid hourly instead of the standard tip-based system.
This brought a hailstorm of criticism down upon the Scottsdale eatery, who took to the Internet to defend itself.
On their now-removed Facebook page, the bistro posted numerous times in its defense, but what started as a business sticking up for itself eventually turned into an expletive-laced meltdown, especially after the popular user-generated site Reddit caught wind. The Bouzaglos later claimed they were hacked and maintain that argument.
The Bouzaglos have vehemently defended themselves since the original appearance caused their faces to be plastered and lambasted across the Internet. They claim the show misrepresented them and embellished conflict for ratings. Despite that, the couple agreed to make a return appearance on “Kitchen Nightmares,” though they told Dr. Phil they never would have gone on television if they knew the amount of hate they would receive.
“I’ve learned a lot,” said Amy on Thursday. “I’ve learned how closed-minded they are, but I’ve also learned how beautiful people are and how supportive people are.”
It was rumored the Bouzaglos had entered into talks for their own reality show, but they seem to have died off.
ABC has been relaunched and reworked several times since its original appearance, including the Thursday launch of a new menu. Samy said the menu would be simplified to help Amy in the kitchen and would set all prices under $10 per item.
KTAR’s Sandra Haros, Jordan Allen and Sonny Scott and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
