Gordon Ramsay is perhaps most famous for shutting down his chefs with searing insults, but he’s
also been known to shut down entire kitchens when a restaurant isn’t performing to his
standards.
So we went through a bunch of history to bring you a deep dive into the top times that Ramsay
closed down the kitchen.
Let’s get into it.
The Grasshopper
It's actually pretty rare for Gordon to completely shut down an entire kitchen or restaurant,
as he has to actually feel like peoples’ lives are in danger to do so, but in cases
like the Grasshopper restaurant, it was pretty clear that things were near that level when
Gordon visited for his sit-down.
Unlike with other shutdowns, though, Gordon didn't even let the Grasshopper stage its
first night of service, as he discovered pretty much immediately that the kitchen had a serious
problem with cross-contamination.
Cross-contamination is, as Ramsey puts it, basically the first thing that you learn as
a chef NOT to do but it's as if that was one of the specialties of the Grasshopper, as
they were storing all sorts of different raw and cooked meats near one another in the small
refrigerator in the kitchen.
That prompted Ramsay to stride into the walk-in freezer, where things went from bad to worse,
as there was more cross-contamination and really just a ton of contamination period,
with super slimy chicken breasts as well as a large piece of salmon that looked as it
it'd been "attacked by cats".
Because of that, Ramsey shut things down until those issues could be addressed and from the
looks of it, it couldn’t have come sooner.
It's Not Bread Pudding, It's Rotten Shrimp
This inspection didn't start out great.
Ramsay found a display cart that had food that was at least a week old, but in reality
had probably been much longer, as some of it was rock hard.
After slow service leads Ramsey to some plates of food that appeared unchecked, things went
from bad to worse as he discovered a lot of rotten spinach on the plates that were waiting
to be sent out.
The sloth-and-slovenly chef calmly explained that the spinach came "pre-washed" to the
kitchen, something that Ramsay clearly had never heard of before because it doesn't happen.
But that’s not all, as Ramsay ended up finding out that someone actually sold from the aforementioned
"Display Only" tray as well.
Beyond that, there were some rotten shrimp sitting above the "Display Only" dessert tray
that was so old that the chef mistook it for an old bread pudding.
In fact, it's still hard to tell exactly what it was, but it was definitely "bubbling" as
Ramsay pointed out, right before shutting the entire kitchen down as he'd seen enough...
Or in the case of that Shrimp Pudding, he'd seen more than enough.
Everything In There Was Putrid
The moment that shut this restaurant down starts with Ramsay going down to the basement
and immediately finding rat traps and rat droppings as well as copious amounts of fruit
flies and cockroaches.
When he asks the owner if the restaurant has rats, the response is that "rats are everywhere".
As Ramsay starts looking around the kitchen at the meat "selection", one of the staff
tell him that everything in the kitchen was literally "putrid", as it was.
The meat was really not even meat anymore, but some sort of meat goo that you can smell
even if you're just watching this video.
That's all Ramsay needed to see as he saved a few customers lives by shutting down this
dump at least for the day.
“Why?"
Why, indeed.
While this kitchen wasn't the worst that we've ever seen on Kitchen Nightmares, it's up there
in terms of the general mismanagement that went into cooking that much food for a restaurant
that maybe gets 20 customers a day.
Ramsay went into the walk-in freezer and found enough food to feed an entire army and went
through it, disgusting bit by disgusting bit.
It was clear that the owner thought that buying in bulk was the way to go and then that cooking
in bulk made more sense after the bulk food started to go bad.
There were pounds and pounds of leftover mixes for burritos, enchiladas and just straight
up ground beef that had solidified into a gigantic, disgusting mess.
After he found the "cement mix”-like refried beans, he asked the owner to carry the beans
out to the customers who were currently eating them.
After he refused, Ramsay asked why and the owner said it was because he was embarrassed.
So Ramsay took things into his own hands and showed the customers what they weren't going
to be missing.
Never has a group of customers been more relieved to have to cancel lunch.
What Do You Want Me To Do?
Stand Here and Cry?
This kitchen was BAD.
It wasn't just the food, the state of the general cleanliness of the entire kitchen
was one of the worst in the history of Kitchen Nightmares.
From top to bottom, there was dirt, grime, mold...
In levels that are so bad that it's as if the kitchen hadn't been cleaned in years.
When he asked the head chef if he knew how dirty the kitchen was, he admitted that he
did and Ramsay said he should be ashamed of himself.
There were dog food bags in the walk-in freezer, half cooked meat, pesto sauce that looked
radioactive, and on top of that a general malaise or near-laughing expressions on the
faces of everyone responsible that it's amazing that they were even in business in the first
place, let alone for the years it obviously took for the kitchen to accumulate that much
filth.
Old Pork
This one is sort of sad, but at least has some self-awareness that other restaurants
don't tend to have.
Here, the main server Diana knows that the problem with this restaurant is the food.
That could mean more than one thing and in the case of this restaurant, does, as it's
not only serving bland and crappy food but also food that's basically unsafe for human
consumption: cross-contamination, spoiled food and just general poor kitchen hygiene.
Ramsay got into the kitchen itself and started to find a ton of different issues, from frozen
food and all sorts of unlabeled meat.
When Ramsay stumbles across an old piece of pork that looks similar to one that he was
served earlier that day you can actually hear the panic in his voice that builds to the
anger that he rightfully had towards this sloppy, filthy restaurant and those responsible.
Lobster Almost Kills a Man
Apparently, once a lobster (or really anything) starts decomposing, it releases a lot of ammonia,
and that's something that could end up killing a person, a lesson learned by this poor customer
of Sal’s Pizzeria, as he immediately became ill and was vomiting in the bathroom before
Ramsay caught wind of what was happening.
Thinking that the man may have been dead, Ramsay ordered the same meal to figure out
what was wrong with it and immediately smelled the ammonia coming from the bad lobster.
It’s from there that he implored the owner call 911 and the owner did just that, before
asking for a shot of vodka to calm his nerves and for the cameras to be shut off just as
Ramsay was about to shut off his kitchen.
That definitely was a first!
And hey, science fact for you kids.
Decomposing meat = bad for you.
A Pigeon in the Kitchen
This place was so gross that it had started letting the wildlife in, and Ramsay found
it with a pigeon flying around in the kitchen.
While most restaurants deal with critters like cockroaches and mice or even rats that
are all attracted to the thrown-away food, these guys were asking for by just never throwing
anything away.
Or even putting anything away.
Also, the seafood sauce had a dead lobster inside of it—not a cooked lobster, but a
dead lobster.
Hoarders and Restaurants Do Not Mix
There are a few personality traits that don't mix with being responsible for food safety,
cleanliness and just a general good atmosphere for a restaurant.
At the top of that list has to be whatever traits lead someone to hoarding.
While food hoarding can make sense for a failing restaurant where it'd be hard to throw away
any meat or produce, keeping old broken down pieces of furniture and equipment made way
less sense.
As Ramsay explores and gets more and more grossed our, he sums it up by stating that
the place is “littered with shit", and you'll understand his point of view when you hear
how he found some years old shoes hidden beneath one of the booths in the restaurant, a joker
card in one of the seats in the lobby and lots and lots of rotten meat juice.
On top of that, there's the cross-contamination from cooked food and uncooked food, food equipment
and the inside of a wall, and just crap everywhere.
This is definitely one of the bloodiest kitchens in the world and like Ramsay states, it's
"Criminal" and to sum up the cluelessness of the owner, when Ramsay asks why they need
so much "Shit", the response is "We serve that, Shit”, delivered with clueless pride.
This One Takes the Cake
This restaurant prided itself on its fast service and apparently its equally fast returns
from its customers.
Maybe if they'd taken their time, at least with Ramsey around, they would've avoided
him going into the walk-in freezer and discovering a house of horrors.
It's clear in this clip that the amount of negligence and filth really has put Ramsay
over the edge as he typically doesn't reach these levels of screaming and confusion, and
because he usually has more empathy for people in the restaurant business.
However, here Ramsay hits prime levels of Ramsay-ness, screaming expletives and really
trying to do it in a way that might work on someone who'd let things get the filthy in
the first place.
He makes it about money and that's something that a failing restaurant owner might understand,
even if he's clearly been a slob long enough to let his kitchen reach those levels.
At least there weren’t any birds flying around the place though!
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