It’s not every day that a local business owner gets humiliated on national television for the way they run their business. But that’s what happened March 4 to Lisa Hemmat, owner of Italian restaurant Lido Di Manhattan Beach.

Hemmat, 29, purchased the restaurant six years ago just after graduating from the USC Marshall School of Business. While she had previously worked in the food service industry, she had never run a restaurant. And by last year, she had run into trouble. A friend and customer suggested she try getting a restaurant makeover from master chef Gordon Ramsay, who stars in the “Kitchen Nightmares” reality show on Fox.

“I realized I could really use some help,” Hemmat said.

Ramsay and his television crew came over in June 2009 and filmed dust in the kitchen, food that wasn’t fresh and an old ordering system that often didn’t work.

At one point, Ramsay sharply criticized Hemmat, calling her “immature” and telling her, “You may have bought a restaurant, but you’re not running it.” Hemmat started sobbing and retreated to the restroom for more than an hour at the height of the dinner rush.

“I had felt I could handle anything, but that really caught me off guard and I wasn’t prepared for it emotionally,” Hemmat told the Business Journal last week after the episode aired.

In the end, all turned out well. Ramsay and the Fox crew remodeled the restaurant, replaced the old computers and dispatched fellow chef Scott Liebfried to oversee a long-term upgrade. Customer traffic has picked up.

Last week, Hemmat invited friends over to the restaurant to watch the show, giving them a heads-up about her on-air humiliation.

“We all laughed with the show,” she said. “I would do this again; I didn’t regret it for a moment.”

Back on track

Bob Holbrook, a longtime Santa Monica city councilman, thought he would relax for few weeks on a cruise ship that departed from Chile.

But he was on a plane bound for Chile when the catastrophic 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck just off the coast of the South American country. Holbrook ended up stranded in Panama, missing his cruise and unsure what to do.

“What the hell do you do when you walk into a disaster?” asked Holbrook, reached recently on his cell phone in Panama. He said he planned to fly to Argentina and meet up with the cruise ship there.

Though he noted that his was “a long and sad story,” he said he was keeping it all in perspective.

“You realize – wait a minute – we’re just screwed up and on vacation,” he said. “Other people have lost their lives.”

Stacking the deck

Patrick Sweeney, an attorney with Nixon Peabody LLP, hopes what happened in Las Vegas last month doesn’t stay in Vegas.

Sweeney attended the Design Innovate Communicate Entertain Summit in Las Vegas, a gathering of the who’s who of the video game industry. Among attendees were Activision Blizzard Inc. Chief Executive Robert Kotick and Disney Interactive Media Group President Steve Wadsworth.

But Sweeney, who represents numerous companies in the video game industry, also went there to network and scout for new clients. It was good that DICE hosts a bowling night, a golf tournament and other casual events.

“The social events were great because they all had a good quality of attendees, the decision-makers in the industry, and it’s a good place to meet with clients and potential clients,” Sweeney said.

A highlight for Sweeney: He came in 20th in the poker tournament.

“I guess it’s probably a good thing for your lawyer to have a poker face,” he said.