What Happened To Casa Roma After Kitchen Nightmares?
Anyone who's been watching Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" since the very beginning will no doubt remember the Casa Roma episode. The family-owned restaurant in Lancaster, California, was infamous for having one of the grossest kitchens in the show's history — no easy feat considering some of the questionable sanitation practices in the restaurants Ramsay has visited.
As recapped by Reality TV Revisited, the Casa Roma episode saw Ramsay waiting more than an hour for his food, which consisted of "soggy" stuffed mushrooms, an overly greasy Monte Cristo sandwich, and an undercooked pizza. As if the meal Ramsay was served wasn't stomach-churning enough, an inspection of the restaurant's walk-in freezer brought to light some truly disturbing discoveries. Hidden away in the fridge was an assortment of moldy food and months-old mystery meats. Even worse, the bathroom was covered in "bodily fluids."
After leading the restaurant's team through a much-needed extensive cleanup, Ramsay helped Casa Roma's owner Nylah rebrand the eatery as the city's premiere pizzeria. Despite the overhaul, however, a number of bumps in the road lay ahead for the Casa Roma crew.
Casa Roma's revitalization was short-lived
Despite Ramsay's creating a new Italian pizzeria-inspired menu for Casa Roma to use, the restaurant fell back into its old ways shortly after his departure (via Reality TV Revisited). Management opted to return to the original menu, and it was also revealed that owner Nylah had been faking positive reviews for the restaurant online. In the years following Casa Roma's appearance on "Kitchen Nightmares," the restaurant came to be known as AV Roadhouse Restaurant Bar & Grill and later CR Roadhouse, with online reviews for both establishments decidedly negative. The team returned to the Casa Roma name before announcing a permanent closure in 2017. While there's been no word on what the crew has been up to since closing, we certainly hope they're all staying far away from soggy mushrooms.
Casa Roma is far from the only "Kitchen Nightmares" restaurant to succumb to the same unfortunate fate. According to fan-run website Kitchen Nightmares Updates, a whopping 82% of eateries featured in Season 3 have since closed for good. The real reason why so many "Kitchen Nightmares" restaurants fail, as suspected by some users on the r/Television subreddit, is that many of them may already be at the point of no return before filming. "Ramsay is more or less patching up holes in an otherwise sinking ship, in an industry already notorious for business failure," said u/AeroGold. Moreover, the Casa Roma crew's decision to keep the restaurant open while only pulling in an average of $100 per night likely also led to its demise.