The Best Episodes of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

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7.9/10(176 votes)
#1 - Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack
S2:E36/7/2005
Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack is an intimate forty-seater a stone's throw from Brighton's sea front. Big soul momma, owner Charita Jones, produces a menu of irresistibly unique classics from the Deep South. The food's hard to fault, but the punters are nowhere to be seen. Head Chef Brian and a rag-tag collection of part-timers are taking the mickey - and despite working a seven-day week, Charita's got an empty restaurant and a £65,000 debt. If ever there was a case of too many cooks, this is it. Charita's a natural, but she's never made a profit on the restaurant and is now facing financial disaster. Can Gordon successfully shut her out of the kitchen, get the chef back on the boil and put the soul back into the business, or will the shack shut up shop for good?
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7.5/10(141 votes)
#2 - Piccolo Teatro
S5:E211/6/2007
This week Gordon takes a sentimental journey back to Paris, the place where he spent his formative years as a chef. But in the city that is a gourmet's dream, he's about to encounter one of his worst ever Kitchen Nightmares. Three years ago, feisty Scot Rachel made the jump from waitress to restaurateur and, together with best friend Stephanie, bought Piccolo Teatro, a bijou vegetarian restaurant in Paris on a mission to convert the carnivorous French into a nation of vegetarians. But handicapped by her total lack of experience, she is struggling to keep the restaurant afloat. She can't motivate her staff, she doesn't bother opening for lunch and the punters are totally turned off by the awful rabbit food she's dishing up. As a result, Piccolo Teatro is losing £5,500 a month. Will Gordon be able to perform an eleventh-hour miracle, or is he about to admit defeat?
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7.4/10(108 votes)
#3 - The Fish & Anchor
S5:E612/4/2007
The Fish & Anchor restaurant and bar near Lampeter is run by a couple of bruisers, ex-boxer Mike and his mouthy wife Caron. A self-taught cook, Mike is a one-man pressure cooker in the kitchen as he struggles to cope with a menu too vast and wide-ranging for his skills. While Mike gets steamed up in the kitchen, Carol's getting hot under the collar in the restaurant. Her unique front-of-house management style includes abusing the customers and her husband in equal measure. Every night, they go twelve rounds with the local clientele, who are fast deserting them to the tune of a £1,000 per week loss. Enter Gordon, who finds himself cast as marriage counsellor in a culinary battlefield. It’s a last-ditch attempt to reverse the restaurant’s disastrous reputation and put some love back into the kitchen as well as on plates. Will Mike take on board a last-minute reality check in the fight of his life, or stay on the ropes and sink?
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7.3/10(213 votes)
#4 - Bonapartes
S1:E14/27/2004
The kitchen in Bonapartes, a restaurant in West Yorkshire, is run by 21-year-old Head Chef Tim. He truly believes that he specialises in 'fine dining' and has ambitions to be a TV chef and own restaurants in London, Paris, and New York. Unfortunately, as Gordon discovers, Tim has no customers and doesn't even know the basics of cooking.
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7.3/10(106 votes)
#5 - The Fenwick Arms
S4:E211/21/2006
Gordon tackles a pub for the first time - The Fenwick Arms in rural Lancashire. Landlord Brian has been running the business for over 30 years, but despite his best efforts, Brian and his partner Elaine are £250k in debt, losing £1,500 a week and facing bankruptcy in three months.
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7.2/10(129 votes)
#6 - Ruby Tates
S5:E110/30/2007
The new series of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares hits the ground running as Gordon comes to the aid of resting actor Allan Love. Despite an aversion to fish, Allan opened Ruby Tates, a high-end seafood restaurant in Brighton, but it hasn’t been a success. Thanks to a pair of lazy chefs producing badly cooked, poor quality food at premium prices, Ruby Tates is losing £1,500 a week, and it’s not just the food that’s off-putting. The restaurant’s name is instantly forgettable, even to locals, and the décor, featuring a paint-splattered pair of knickers, is keeping potential punters far from the door.
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7.2/10(127 votes)
#7 - La Lanterna
S2:E15/24/2005
The venue is La Lanterna in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. Twenty-eight-year-old owner and head chef Alex offers modern Italian cuisine, a taste of Little Italy in England's first garden city. The restaurant is run by his best mate maitre d' Gavin, helped by his ex-air hostess girlfriend Emily. But Alex has no customers, cookers that don't work and an expensive menu that's about as authentically Italian as spag bol. He re-mortgaged his house to buy the business, it's losing £1,000 a week, he hasn't slept for months, but still runs around town in a flash car that's worth more than the restaurant. Running out of money, inspiration and energy, Alex is on the verge of losing everything. Gordon rolls up his sleeves and sets to work on the encrusted kitchen cookers and hapless front-of-house staff. Can a strict diet of brutal honesty, radical food surgery and undiluted energy turn things around, or is it only a matter of time before the lights go out at La Lanterna for good?
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7.2/10(112 votes)
#8 - Oscar's
S3:E111/14/2006
Gordon pays a visit to Oscar's in Nantwich. On the surface, this place seems idyllic - an Irish family-run restaurant in the heart of beautiful countryside. Owner Maura runs the front of house and her son Lenin is head chef, but it's not happy families. With her life savings on the line, Maura is in big trouble. She constantly bickers with her son whilst the customers are forced to wait hours for their fluorescent crab stick paellas and stodgy carbonaras from Oscar's 'bit of everything' menu. The place is losing £2,000 per week, but that isn't the worst of their problems - Lenin has got a serious drinking problem and during service collapses and has to be rushed off to hospital. It's Gordon's toughest challenge yet. Can he bring the Irish heart back to Oscar's, stop mother and son fighting, and get Lenin to face up to his problems?
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7.2/10(111 votes)
#9 - Curry Lounge
S5:E712/11/2007
The 110-seater Curry Lounge in Nottingham cost its owner, Raz, £500,000, but six months after opening, it's haemorrhaging £3,000 a week. Maybe customers are put off by the decor, unkindly but accurately described by Gordon Ramsay as looking like the interior of a lap-dancing club. Raz has made a rod for his restaurant's back, thanks to the barmy idea of letting customers choose the make-up of their own curries. Yes, that's right, if you want a chicken and prawn korma, that's what you shall have. But such nonsense is draining and demoralising for the excellent kitchen staff, so Ramsay brings the Curry Lounge back to basics in one of the most satisfying Kitchen Nightmares of recent memory. Everyone is charming, so Ramsay doesn't need to bluster too much; he can get on with bringing his skill and common sense to bear on a restaurant that's about to run out of luck.
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7.1/10(121 votes)
#10 - La Riviera
S2:E46/14/2005
La Riviera is a fine dining restaurant in Inverness. Owned by multi-millionaire Barry Larson and costing £8,000 a week to run, the place boasts top French chef Loic Lefebvre and an impeccably trained kitchen staff with Michelin star-studded backgrounds. Loic is on a mission to bring sophisticated French cooking to the home of haggis, tatties and deep-fried Mars bars. But though he's hungry for success, he's French, he's arrogant and the food's pretentious. The locals aren't biting and the restaurant's empty most nights. There's a sharp smell of déjà vu in the air for Gordon whose own venture in Scotland - Amaryllis - had to close. This week it's personal as Ramsay tries to save La Riviera from the same fate. Can Gordon tone down their act, demystify the menu and, most importantly, get the punters in?
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7.1/10(113 votes)
#11 - Clubway 41
S3:E33/7/2006
Despite being voted Restaurant of the Year by Blackpool's tourist board, Clubway 41 is in dire straits. Owners David and Dawn are breaking every rule in the book, and Gordon has his work cut out getting a demoralised team back on track.
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7.0/10(112 votes)
#12 - The Sandgate Hotel
S3:E211/21/2006
Gordon travels to the seaside in aid of hotel and restaurant, the Sandgate. This is happily married couple Lois and Peters' first venture into the catering industry. They used to enjoy eating in restaurants, so thought it might be fun to own one. A year and a half later, their dream has turned into a nightmare - they're losing £4,000 a month. In the kitchen, their head chef Stuart is on the brink of a nervous breakdown. He's forced to cook for four restaurants, including fine dining upstairs and Japanese fare in the basement. But it's when he loses his coveted AA award that he really hits rock bottom. Eccentric, overstaffed and on the point of collapse, can Gordon bring this real life Fawlty Towers back from the edge?
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7.0/10(104 votes)
#13 - La Gondola
S3:E43/14/2006
La Gondola - a hotel and restaurant in Derby - strikes Gordon as being stuck in the past, and indeed its glory days were back in the 1970s. The challenge is to haul the staff, decor and cuisine into the 21st century and once again fill the dining room with happy customers.
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7.0/10(103 votes)
#14 - La Parra de Burriana
S4:E111/14/2006
Gordon takes on a nightmare restaurant abroad - La Parra de Burriana in Nerja on the Spanish Costa del Sol. Nestling among the cafes lining the seafront offering all-day English breakfast and chips, ex-nightclub manager Laurence set himself up in business 18 months ago with a loan from his dad, and although he's not an experienced chef, he mans the kitchen on his own, determined to offer something better than chips. Laurence's menu has 72 dishes including his signature dish; prawns in garlic with chocolate sauce. Running front-of-house is Laurence's mate, Alex, and sous-chef, Norman, is on the barbecue serving kebabs and steaks cooked by torchlight. The kebabs are raw, the dining room is a mess and anyone who does turn up for dinner faces an interminable wait. Laurence lost £22k last year, but still resists Gordon's attempts to introduce a simple menu that will bring customers back.
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6.9/10(149 votes)
#15 - The Walnut Tree Inn
S1:E35/11/2004
In a previous life, the Walnut Tree Inn in South Wales was a Michelin-starred restaurant known throughout Britain. Under its new owner, Italian Francesco Mattioli, Gordon arrives to find the kitchen in chaos with no Head Chef and no customers.
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6.9/10(133 votes)
#16 - Moore Place
S1:E45/18/2004
In the final episode, Gordon tries to save Moore Place, a restaurant adjacent to a busy golf course in Surrey, in the south of England. There's plenty of money in the area with golfers, 'ladies who lunch,' and American business executives, but this place is deserted.
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6.9/10(101 votes)
#17 - The Priory
S5:E511/27/2007
Gordon's off to The Priory, but not to rub shoulders with wayward actors and musicians. This priory is a vast, 100-seater carvery in Haywards Heath, Sussex. This unusual venue was once a place of meditation and tranquillity as the chapel of a nineteenth-century convent. It's in a beautiful location and has been offering bargain roast dinners to its regulars for twenty years. But under its current management, things are in need of divine intervention. Owner Scott, an ex-IT consultant, bought the place for £300k, but with an aging clientele eating for half-price, he’s now losing a massive £5,000 a week. And despite the heavenly setting, the food is straight from hell; recycled meat, soup in a bucket, synthetic sauces and to make matters worse, a lazy head chef content to preside over food-encrusted ovens and a disaffected staff.
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6.9/10(98 votes)
#18 - Morgans
S4:E412/12/2006
In this fourth helping, Gordon grapples with girl power when he takes on an intimate family-run restaurant in the heart of WAG territory near Liverpool. For the last three years, Morgans has been run by antiques dealer-turned-restaurateur, Sandy and her two daughters, Helen and Laura. The beautifully designed dining room has a prime high street location and should be the perfect eatery for the trendy local clientele. But head chef Phil is grappling with an eclectic menu that includes mashed potato with apricots and his cooking's just not up to it. Meanwhile, owner Sandy can't keep the books straight, the all-female front-of-house team lacks any clear line of command and they're £100k in debt. At this rate of loss, they are facing the prospect of no punters and closure within six months. Will the ladies that lunch carry on treating their business as an expensive hobby, or can they lure the WAG glitterati of Woolton through the door for a make-or-break celebrity re-launch?
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6.9/10(90 votes)
#19 - The Granary
S5:E812/18/2007
Gordon attempts to help Nigel Nieddu turn around his restaurant in Hampshire. He opened it four years ago, but despite having the place refurbished, it is still running at a loss.
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6.8/10(111 votes)
#20 - D-Place
S2:E25/31/2005
Located in Chelmsford, Essex, D-Place is run by Mexican-born Israel and his English partner Tara. They've sunk £150,000 of their own money into their trendy café bar which offers a vast selection of fusion cuisine. In charge is Executive Chef Philippe, producing everything from all-day breakfasts to hoi sin noodles with an astounding lack of flair; the plastic food is dire and boomerangs back from the dining room as soon as it's cooked. Restaurant manager, spunky Essex boy Dave, loathes his chef, and their mutual hatred spills over into permanent running battles. Faced with dysfunctional staff and a disastrous menu, Gordon is about to face the longest week of his professional life. Can he quell the panic, banish the deep fat fryer and bring D-Place back from the dead, or will it disappear forever?
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6.8/10(156 votes)
#21 - The Glass House
S1:E25/4/2004
Britain's famous Lake District is where tourists are plentiful and money is flowing. However, The Glass House restaurant in Ambleside seems to have missed both points.
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6.7/10(98 votes)
#22 - Rococo
S4:E312/5/2006
In this third helping, Gordon finds a chef caught in a time warp when he tackles a picturesque but largely unfrequented upmarket restaurant in King's Lynn, a traditional market town on the Norfolk coast. For the last eighteen months, ex-Michelin-starred chef, Nick, has owned and run Rococo, but his past success is now eluding him. The menu is past its sell-by date, the service is stuffy, the food is over-priced and the only thing being fed is his ego. Yet, despite debts of £100k and the prospect of putting his home at risk and his young family on the streets, Nick continues to cook comatose in a 1990s fantasy land of his own making. Gordon forces him to face his failures, strips down the menu and dismantles the claustrophobic dining room. Will Nick ever get up to speed and recapture his glory days, or will he carry on sleep-walking his way to disaster?
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6.4/10(77 votes)
#23 - La Parra de Burriana (Revisited)
S5:E411/20/2007
This week, Gordon is back in Spain to see how Laurence is faring at La Parra de Burriana, an ex-pat restaurant in Nerja on the Costa del Sol. When he first arrived, he found 26-year-old ex-nightclub manager Laurence who set himself up in business 18 months earlier with a loan from his dad. He lost £22,000 in one year, but still resisted Gordon's attempts to introduce a simple menu that would bring customers back. Now, one year on, Gordon is back to find that the good news is, they've survived the winter, but the bad news is that Laurence still has ideas above his station and is planning to run before he can walk with another, second La Parra. But with cremated desserts and wine gums on the menu, Gordon's about to apply the brakes, Ramsay style.
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6.4/10(88 votes)
#24 - Bonapartes (Revisited)
S2:E87/12/2005
Gordon revisits Bonapartes in Silsden to see if his potent recipe of passion, perfectionism and inspirational leadership continues.
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6.3/10(71 votes)
#25 - The Fenwick Arms (Revisited)
S5:E311/13/2007
When Gordon first arrived at The Fenwick Arms in 2006, he found the pub run by landlord Brian, who, after thirty years in the business and a quadruple heart-bypass, was still determined to run his kitchen his way. But despite Brian and his partner Elaine working 120 hour weeks, the pub was sinking fast. Already £250,000 in debt, they were losing £1,500 a week and bankruptcy was mere months away. Gordon stepped in to remove Brian from the kitchen and turn him into a punter to get back to basics on the appeal of a traditional British pub. Taking to the streets, they launched the Campaign for Real Gravy, and put classic pub fare back on the menu. Finally, things were starting to look up for the team at The Fenwick Arms. Now, one year on, Gordon’s back only to find that morale is at an all-time low, and Brian is ready to chuck in the towel. Can Gordon save The Fenwick Arms, again?
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