Gordon Ramsay is the Scottish born chef that has turned his passion for cooking into a multimillion dollar empire. After achieving 16 Michelin Stars (the equivalent to a Golden Globe for fine dinning), he has owned and operated over 40 restaurants. This eventually led to eight TV shows between the U.S. and the U.K. So, yeah, in case you haven’t caught on, the guy is a total BAMF in and out of the kitchen.
What makes his shows (especially Kitchen Nightmares) so popular is his dynamic insults and undisguised passion for fine dining. He has no problem ripping people a new one for undercooking, overcooking, microwaving, and feeding customers subpar food. So when a restaurant is failing and is up to their ears in debt, they call chef Gordon Ramsay in to repair the sinking ship. Ladies and gents, here are 15 moments form Kitchen Nightmares where Ramsay absolutely loses it, because let’s face it – that’s what we all want to see!
Levante’s American Bistro, Beaver (PA)
After sampling some of the food while visiting Levanti’s American Bistro, Gordon believes the bistro is using frying oil instead of olive oil for their meals. If that’s not gag-worthy enough, he refers to the stuffed banana peppers as tasting like “donkey d**k” due to being frozen. (Which happens to be one of the best insults Ramsay drops in this episode.) But no other meltdown takes the cake than when he discovers old slimy chicken in the kitchen alongside tomato sauce COVERED in mould. Does he throw the sauce out and call it a night? No, he brings the pot of moulded tomato sauce into the dining room and shows the customers what they have been eating. It’s safe to say they closed early that night and after doing some Google searching, Levanti’s American Bistro closed all together after 15 years of business. I guess they still had mould on their food?
The Secret Garden, Moorpark (CA)
After being over $300,000 in debt, the owner of The Secret Garden called Ramsay in for some backup. In typical Ramsay fashion, he does very little waiting before ordering off the menu. But, of course, it never exceeds his expectations. Before expecting the kitchen himself, Ramsay orders the shrimp and strawberry salad, which he ended up sending back to the kitchen for fear of being “poisoned.” But all hell breaks lose when he takes a step into the walk-in fridge only to find mould growing everywhere and…(wait for it)…MAGGOTS. Seeing the infestation sends Ramsay straight to the restroom where he is then heard gagging at the site. You would think seeing maggots on your ingredients and the world’s top chef gagging would change your tune for change as the owner – but not this guy. By the end of the dinner service Ramsay rips into the chef and calls him a donkey, a French pig, lazy, and well, to go f**k himself.
Casa Roma, Lancaster (CA)
When your restaurant and bar is making less than $100 a night, Houston – we have a problem! Gordon visits Casa Roma to try and figure out why the restaurant is doing so terribly. After tasting the food and realizing the food is bland and watered down, he takes a look around the dining room only to find old food in the seats and broken booths. (Which is SO disgusting if you’ve been to a place like this.) The next day, Ramsay decides to enter the restaurant before the staff so he could check out the kitchen properly. And as you can expect…it doesn’t go so well. He finds bloody meat, moulded ham (which was SO rotten that it actually stuck to Gordon’s hand), rotten avocados, and three-month old ribs that makes Ramsay throw up in the kitchen trash can. If you’re repulsed now, I wouldn’t click the video if I were you.
Finn McCool’s, Westhampton Beach (NY)
After ordering salmon, spring rolls, and Shepard’s pie, Ramsay is repulsed by all three tastings. After finding out the kitchen serves frozen meals over fresh – Ramsay is pissed at the family owned restaurant. But if you thought that sounded rough, it gets worse. Ramsay witnesses the sous chef drop a chicken wing on the FLOOR before picking it up and throwing it back in the fryer. Apparently, the grease will “sterilize” the meat after falling on ground. Nasty! And of course, in Kitchen Nightmare prime, the episode takes a turn for the worse when Ramsay visits the fridge only to find cooked chicken next to raw chicken, old mince meat, and unorganized containers holding a bunch of who-knows-what. The only clean thing he found in the kitchen was a Gordon Ramsay cook book. #Awkward.
Lela’s, Pomona (CA)
Lela’s has to have one of the most awkward “executive chefs” I have ever seen on Kitchen Nightmares. For starters, he raps so loudly while he cooks that the patrons can hear him, he added chocolate syrup to a rack of lamb, and tells his waiting staff to “shut the fu*k up.” Seems like a stellar guy to work for! After tasting the food, Ramsay discovers that everything is frozen and not house-made. And if there’s one thing we learned from this show, it’s that Ramsay cannot stand frozen food, people! But that’s not the worst of it. Besides finding out the fridge isn’t cold enough which results in rotting food, Ramsay discovers one of the employees is stealing from the restaurant. He chased down “Buzzard” to find food and bottles of wine in his bag—which resulted in the owner firing him on the spot.
Trobiano’s, Great Neck (NY)
When Ramsay visit’s Trobiano’s for their “early bird special” he is dumbfounded by how crowded it is with “old” people. He also makes the excellent comparison between what the people were wearing to the decor of the restaurant. It’s then, that Ramsay discovers a customer had fallen ASLEEP while waiting for his food! You can take a guess how his first taste of the menu was. But it wasn’t until he visited the kitchen that led him to his outbursts. He uses phrases like “shocking,” “my goodness me,” and “bloody hell” to name a few.
As Ramsay is about to leave the kitchen he discovers mouse or rat droppings in the kitchen! When the owner and chef are speechless at the site of their dirty AF kitchen, Ramsay loses his patients screaming, “Say something, PLEASE!” When the silence continues, Ramsay threatens to leave which follows with a whole lot of F-bombs.
Guiseppi’s, Macomb Township (MI)
You know the episode is going to be a good one when it starts off with Ramsay mocking the menu by saying “The essence of Italy…my A**.” The Italian themed restaurant had only been open for two years and it looked like a dusty set from a cheesy sop opera. After scanning the menu, Ramsay orders the Octopus Salad. After one bite of his “fresh” seafood, he spit out his protein by saying it tasted like rubber and that it was like a “mouth full of Hubba Bubba.” He even made the waitress try it for proof! (And yes, she agreed it was a little “tough”. She, too, was embarrassed the restaurant had been serving that kind of quality to their patrons.) My favorite comment on his meal, though, was that he said the cheese was “hideous.” I guess that’s one way to describe your cheeses.
Spanish Pavilion, Harrison (NJ)
When there is fresh lobster on the menu, it’s typically a crowd pleaser. But not at the Spanish Pavilion in Harrison, New Jersey. Ramsay orders the lobster bisque and has, probably, the most epic response to the rancid soup, asking if the lobster had already been dead before cooking it. The chef insured that lobster came from the live tank, however, when Ramsay inspected the tank, there was a DEAD lobster at the bottom. Which, of course, leads to the other lobsters eating the dead one and being infected with whatever the hell killed the first one. Yeah—we’re gagging too.
But it gets better. After walking into the kitchen and covering his nose from finding dead lobster in multiple areas, he also stumbles upon a live PIGEON flying around! He could not make this stuff up even if he tried, folks.
Fiesta Sunrise, West Nyack (NY)
Fiesta Sunrise might as well be one of the worst kitchen’s we’ve ever seen on Kitchen Nightmares. There were mouldy dishes, old pots of rice (that stayed true to form after he scooped it out with his bare hand), bad meat soaking in blood, and a staff that reuses food that hasn’t been touched by its customers! But once he laid eyes on a massive can of refried beans that looked like cement (according to Ramsay), he asked the owner if he was “fu**ing stupid” before taking the cement-like beans to show the customers where their food came from… The owner is in such disbelief and in denial that Ramsay literally bends down to the owner’s eye level to rip into him dropping all kinds of Ramsay insults.
Seascape, Islip (NY)
You know your dining experience is going to be unreal when Gordon Ramsay asks the waiting staff why the dining room smelled so bad and their answer was SEWAGE. Ignoring the smell, Ramsay orders some dishes—which he was unpleased with—and then ordered a homemade Greek cookie. I was hoping the cookie would be better than his meal, but he literally choked on it from the amount of powdered sugar.
That night, during the dinner rush, Ramsay gets into a heated argument regarding parsley (of all things) and watches the cooks drop sauce all around the kitchen without cleaning up after themselves. Which, of course, leads to Ramsay searching the kitchen to find grease on the walls, sour pork, and bad pesto sauce. When he asks the chef if he’s aware of how “dirty” his kitchen actually is – to which the chef agreed that he knew – Ramsay goes OFF on him for serving him a meal out of a filthy kitchen.
Hannah and Mason’s, Cranbury (NJ)
Have you ever noticed some dessert trays that restaurants lay out? Some look so good that they seem fake. Whereas others look so bad, you’d rather skip dessert – which is a nightmare in itself! Well, when Ramsay visited Hannah and Mason’s in New Jersey, he was astounded at the look of their dessert tray. But shit really hit the fan when he noticed an item was MISSING from the tray and was actually eaten by a customer! Concerned for the customers’ safety, he checks the wellbeing of the kitchen to find unwashed vegetables (that never end up getting washed because the chef says they come “pre-washed”), old bacon, and a whole lot of unsanitary preparations. He gets in a shouting match with the owner which, inevitably, ends with the kitchen closing early that night.
Grasshopper Also, Carlstedt (NJ)
If there’s one thing mozzarella sticks should have – it’s cheese. But at Grasshopper Also, their mozzarella sticks happened to be doused in meat blood due to cross contamination during storage. Gross! It’s no wonder this restaurant is $3,000,000 in the ground.
After having a bland meal of what tasted like onions in dish water, Ramsay asked the chef how he thought the food was. The chef believed what he served was “okay” which led to Ramsay ripping him apart for his bland food and decided to ransack the kitchen. Which is when he found the bloody mozzarella sticks, slimy salmon (that looked like was attacked by “cats”), and a whole lot of ew. As per usual, the owners play dumb and act like they had “no idea” the kitchen was this bad. Yeah, okay, guys.
Oceana, New Orleans (LA)
This episode has to be one of the more feisty episodes from Kitchen Nightmares. With two brothers as owners at Oceana in New Orleans, the two bump heads the entire episode which is most likely why the restaurant is failing so badly.
If you watch the first three minutes of the video, you can see right away even the kitchen staff is repulsed by how dirty there kitchen is. And that’s before Ramsay has his way with it! After viewing the kitchen and finding three dead mice, milky crabs, and precooked pasta – Ramsay eventually throws up in the trash bin. And let’s just say, if you make chef Gordon Ramsay vomit from being in your kitchen, well, you should say goodbye to your business because that reputation will follow you for life.
Peter’s, West Babylon (NY)
Peter’s is an Italian restaurant with some serious issues, not only in the kitchen but with the staff. After complaining about the rotting produce, bad meat and broken freezer (along with witnessing the staff handing out complimentary food left and right), Gordon tries his best for a new beginning with the relaunch of Peter’s Italian Restaurant. That is until a debt collector comes to meet with the hotheaded owner, and let’s just say, it didn’t end well. The owner rips off his blazer and charges the debt collector off his property with Ramsay trying to pull people off of one another! I know this is about Gordon’s best freak outs – but in this scene, Gordon says it all by staying completely silent and totally dumbfounded.
Dillon’s, Manhattan (NY)
After commenting that the dining room looks like it was dressed in “hospital lining,” Gordon is a little hesitant for his lunch. He ordered the salmon (which the restaurant was out of, so they had to serve Gordon frozen salmon) and the vegetarian platter, to which he said a prayer before eating (and ended up having meat in!). The entire scene was cringe-worthy with him covering his eyes, rubbing his forehead, and shaking his head back and forth. If you think that’s embarrassing, how about when Gordon walks in the kitchen to find dead flies, green chicken, rat droppings, and insects covering the floors. Yikes. As you can imagine he asks a lot of questions and the owner responds they have “rat traps” to catch the rats but doesn’t seem too worried about their problem. And poor Gordon has to come in and make them realize having mice in your kitchen IS a problem.
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