The restaurant business can be rough, but it’s even harsher when you’re on the receiving end of Gordon Ramsay’s famous temper tantrums. That’s the exact position Bailey and Samy Bouzaglo of Is Cafe 36 were in when Kitchen Nightmares featured their restaurant in one of its episodes. Cafe 36 is one of the featured restaurants on Kitchen Nightmares, a popular TV show that aims to help restaurants improve their businesses.
Cafe 36 is a restaurant in Tempe, AZ that is owned by Kerry Simon. The show featured the re branding of Cafe 36 which included a new menu, new interior design, and re-modeled bathrooms. If you watched the episode, you would remember that this re-branding didn’t go so well for the restaurant as Chef Kerry was very hard to work with. Some employees quit because of it and they also closed down shortly after being on Kitchen Nightmares.
Table of Contents
Cafe 36 was featured on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares in 2013
- Cafe 36 was featured on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares in 2013.
- The restaurant is closed and has been since 2017.
- On the show, Chef Gordon Ramsay tried to help owners Jeff and Janean King with their struggling business. But it looks like they were not able to save their restaurant.
- The restaurant is now a Mexican restaurant called Los Toros Mexican Restaurant & Cantina. According to Yelp, it is open and getting positive reviews.
Cafe 36’s menu, decor and even staff were totally changed
Cafe 36 was featured on Season 5 of Kitchen Nightmares.Gordon visited Cafe 36 in Montebello, California. The restaurant had been open for 8 years and were doing 160 covers a night with a slightly under performing staff.The food was inconsistent and troublesome. Gordon began to work with the owner who would not accept his advice and fired one of his best cooks after Gordon’s suggestions.
Gordon then had to bring in a new chef to save the business. He also got the owner to make some changes to the menu and decor but these were not very effective.A revisited episode saw an increase in sales from $7,000 to $10,000 per week but they still struggled with consistency and marketing.
The owner received several fines from the state health department
Cafe 36 closed within a week of being visited by Gordon Ramsay. The restaurant was shut down by the state health department in 2013 and Chef Edward was later arrested after failing to appear in court for numerous citations.Chef Edward received several fines from the state health department and had his liquor license revoked. The Cafe 36 website is no longer operational and it is believed that the restaurant has closed for good.
Gordon Ramsey coached the owner to communicate more effectively with his staff
The restaurant was featured on the season 3 opener of Kitchen Nightmares on September 19, 2008. The show depicted a dysfunctional relationship between the owner and his staff, many of them friends and family. He seemed to lack the ability to communicate effectively with his employees, even though they were willing to work hard for him. The restaurant was also losing money due to poor management, but also because the owner did not have a liquor license.Chef Ramsay told the owner that he needed to communicate better with his staff, and they would in turn do a better job for him. Ramsay also helped him secure a liquor license.
Following the visit, the restaurant was still open but closed a few years later after failure to pay rent
Cafe 36 (originally known as Zocalo) is a Mexican restaurant located in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan. It was featured on the third episode of Kitchen Nightmares, first aired on October 5, 2007.Gordon Ramsay visited the restaurant in 2007 and found long waiting times, cold dishes and poor service. After the visit, the restaurant closed for a few weeks of renovations.After being open for a few years following the show, it was reported that Cafe 36 had become a hotspot for drug users and was closed after failing to pay rent arrears.
Conclusion
Kitchen Nightmares has done a lot for the restaurant industry, bringing new life to many failing restaurants by offering an investment from Gordon Ramsay and his team. Many of these restaurants have gone on to flourish afterwards, but there are still countless others that never recovered after their episode aired. If you visit any of the locations in this article, you can judge for yourself whether Ramsay’s example helped or harmed these restaurant owners.
In the end, though, no amount of help could rehabilitate Ramsay’s hard-earned image as a restaurateur. It seems that the only thing you can do after the Kitchen Nightmares cameras are gone is hang on for dear life. And most of us aren’t really camera-ready in the first place.
In any restaurant business, the chef is the most important factor in whether or not customers enjoy themselves, but it’s almost always other factors that end up driving a restaurant under. Whether it’s location, price of ingredients, or something else entirely, Cafe 36’s location and décor (or lack thereof) did not help matters when it came to bringing people in the door.
