Why did the original ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ end?

The original, US version of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares ran from 2007 to 2014, and helped solidify Ramsay as a bona fide superstar chef, alongside his other reality show, Hell’s Kitchen (2005-present).

The series followed Ramsay as the staff of failing restaurants invited him to help save the business from financial ruin, often finding bad attitudes from management, bad customer service, and meals where “bad” would be a severe understatement, even famously sending a customer to hospital in one iconic episode.

The reality/cooking show showcased Gordon at his very best – sympathetic to the struggles to keep restaurants afloat in the ultra-competitive food business, while having a no-nonsense attitude towards bad management, egotism, and food safety. Ramsay also received a lot of praise for treating wait staff and other subordinate staff with respect, something they often lacked in their workplace (remember Amy’s Baking Company and the stolen tips?).

While Kitchen Nightmares was a hit with viewers, Ramsay decided to throw in the towel and chose to cancel his own show after seven successful seasons. With such success – and certainly a kinder depiction of Ramsay than that on Kitchen Nightmares – why he decided to quit making the series may surprise fans of the series.

Kitchen Nightmares played havoc on Gordon Ramsay’s stomach

If the dodgy meals and disgusting freezers at the start of every Kitchen Nightmares episode made you feel queasy as a viewer, spare a thought for poor Gordon Ramsay – as he was eating these horrific, often dangerously prepared concoctions in large volumes.

“I want a rest. I want my stomach to go through a 12-month period with no ulcers,” Ramsay explained when the show’s original run ended back in 2014. It wasn’t just that the food was gross, but it was giving him near-constant brushes with food poisoning.

“I want to go to the toilet once a day, properly, as opposed to four or five times a day once I’ve had a bad experience in a s**thole selling frozen food that’s been defrosted in the microwave for the last 17 minutes,” Ramsay added. “I want to get back to eating normally.”

Gordon found going off on stubborn restaurant owners on Kitchen Nightmares a frustrating experience

Episodes of Kitchen Nightmares typically end on a happy note, with restaurant staff and owners enjoying a free makeover from Ramsay’s crew, vowing to remember the lessons learned from Gordon’s guidance throughout the episode. However, restaurants featured in the series have an extremely high closure rate, with many shutting their doors permanently less than a year after Ramsay paid a visit.

It’s a classic “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” scenario – Gordon can show restaurant owners every tip and trick in the book which leads to successful business management, but in the end, if the owners don’t put that advice into practice, the restaurant is still on the road to failure and ultimately closure. As shown in most of Gordon’s bust-ups in the series, owners who refuse to admit when they are the problem show that perfectly good advice can go in one ear and out the other.

Perhaps most famously in the Amy’s Baking Company episode, where Gordon ultimately walked out on the sociopathic, often downright abusive owners who refused his help, some restaurant owners take great joy in making other people’s lives miserable. Treating staff and customers with disrespect and malice to line their own pockets is a common problem found in failing restaurant owners, which Ramsay cited as a reason that he quit the original series.

This was a realization that dawned on Gordon in the middle of filming one of the final episodes of the show. “I woke up in the middle of the south of France after filming a week with a British guy I wouldn’t trust to run my bath, let alone my restaurant,” Ramsay told Entertainment Weekly.

“Because he was running a ski resort, he felt like he could take advantage of all those customers because there was nowhere else to eat. He was giving me shit for telling him the truth and I thought, ‘I’m done.’”

Why did Gordon Ramsay revive Kitchen Nightmares?

In 2023, Gordon Ramsay had a change of heart in his ability to get through to stubborn restaurant management, reviving the series for a new run. According to the celebrity chef, the “time felt right,” to try again, with the restaurant industry going through so much change in recent years.

“After the pandemic, Americans were eating out more than ever while restaurants were also still struggling. Over the last three years, the industry has seen some of the most difficult times in the history across the food and drink hospitality sector,” Gordon explained to Variety. “So for me, it really upsets me when I travel the world and see so many restaurants that have closed through no fault of their own.”

“Most importantly, I love a challenge,” Ramsay added, which is fair enough, given his unrelenting attitude towards lazy, incompetent foodies. “There was a lot,” Gordon said of new challenges in the series revival. “just ask my stomach.”