“There is nothing edible.” – Gordon Ramsay
After the preview segment, the first thing we hear in this edition of Kitchen Nightmares is that the location of the Casa Roma is in “Lancaster, California, 70 miles north of Los Angeles.”
This makes me smile a bit as I’ve been to Lancaster a bunch of times many years ago (as part of a quirky job in which I taught library and Internet research skills to graduate students who studied in remote locations). It’s in what’s called the Antelope Valley, a wind blown part of southern California often referred to as the “high desert.” It’s, uh, not the most pleasant place I’ve ever been to, and frankly the word I’d associate with Lancaster is “sketchy.” Oh, also it’s insanely hot there most of the year.
In any event, Casa Roma is introduced as “the oldest restaurant” in the city of Lancaster. Nylah and her son Jeremy purchased Casa Roma several years earlier despite having no restaurant experience.
“Had we known the restaurant business very well, we probably wouldn’t have done it,” Nylah explains.
There’s a bar and restaurant inside of Casa Roma, and Nylah calls them “two different countries.” The bar gets all the business while the restaurant sits empty. She goes on to say that the money that the restaurant generates daily ranges from $9 to $175.
Nine dollars. Total.
They’ve also burned through “almost 20 chefs” in two and a half years, which begs the question of how many total chefs exist in the Lancaster, California metro area. Drew and Erick represent the current kitchen staff.
Ashley the server chimes in and says that head Chef Erick is super slow in the back of the house and can’t get food out to diners in a timely fashion. Also, the food is bland and dry, which doesn’t help. Drew the sous chef basically agrees with Ashley.
When Ramsay enters Casa Roma and looks around, it’s clear that this is one of the crappiest-looking places that Kitchen Nightmares has ever visited. Gordon asks Nylah why she bought the place without any experience in the business, and she responds, “Because we’re insane.”
Ramsay quickly sees how dirty the seat is that he sits down at, and I’m creeped out that he even bothers to pull dirt and schmutz out of the side of the seat to show it to the server.
Chef Erick’s immediate take on Gordon Ramsay: “Kiss my ass.”
Meanwhile, for Gordon’s private tasting session, it takes over an hour to get food out of Erick’s kitchen and onto Ramsay’s plate. Gordon literally takes to jogging around the empty dining room to kill some time.
“Soggy and tasteless” is his first opinion of the stuffed mushrooms that finally get served.
And to be fair, the “deluxe pizza” and Monte Cristo sandwich looks just as soggy. To emphasize the point, Ramsay squeezes the sandwich, which causes a bunch of greasy fat to drip out of it.
In assembling the staff, Ramsay calls them “a f—ing embarrassment.” “Cut the limp dick excuses and give me some f—ing respect here,” he adds.
Chef Erick is super combative about it, telling Ramsay that it was a bad day and that he needs to get over it.
Eventually, Ramsay and Erick have a chat outside and Erick relays that he’s not going to use any excuses for what was obviously an awful experience… but then he immediately segues into giving excuses: bad day, he’s not feeling 100%, he’s here anyway, etc.
Finally, Erick repetitively talks about “f—ing reloading” and wants to go back in to give it another shot. Meanwhile, back inside the team huddles up to figure out how to spell “Sicilian” correctly on the whiteboard of today’s specials.
During dinner service, you know things aren’t going great when one diner looks at another’s meatball something-or-other entrée, laughs/gasps, and then declares, “Send it back!”
Chef Erick’s response in the kitchen: “I ain’t got time for that!”
So much for Chef Erick: The Reload.
Sidenote that one of the diners is wearing a bright orange jumper-type shirt and I couldn’t swear that it was issued by a local department of corrections, but I also wouldn’t swear that it wasn’t, if you can dig.
Ramsay’s conclusion on the proceedings: “it’s a f—ing shambles.” Also: “We’re spinning around and serving s—.”
Ashley’s take: “I felt like crying because it was so f—ing embarrassing for me.”
And all of that finally leads to Ramsay shutting the place down and sending the diners off into the high desert night.
“Why are you even employing a chef that is so incompetent?” Ramsay lays down to Nylah with regard to the Reboot King. Drew the sous chef is the obvious one who should get the slot over Erick, and Nylah eventually gets there.
Nylah finally fires (former) Chef Erick, who storms off, saying, “I got f—ed on that deal.” Drew is now installed as Chef Drew.
The next morning, Ramsay heads to Casa Roma to check out the storage situation. This is something that could not possibly be staged and, to quote Gordon, “it’s that rancid.” There’s one mold-encrusted and slimy food item after another, and eventually he starts gagging into a garbage can.
If that’s not enough, he then takes some kind of a black light into the bathroom, which is not a good idea. Choice quote: “even the ceiling is caked in it.”
Once the staff is assembled, Ramsay tells them he’s both confused and disappointed at what he’s witnessed at Casa Roma. Nylah attempts to say that they “talk about cleaning all the time,” but obviously she has no idea what’s going on in her own restaurant.
“It looks like someone may have been peeing on the ceiling, the walls, the doors,” Nylah observes. “You know, it could be throw up,” she adds.
And that’s just off the top of her head in terms of the possibilities.
Back in the kitchen, Ramsay gestures toward some rancid-looking food, and one of the Casa Roma staff observes, “It could be Erick’s meatballs.”
Could be.
Looking toward the future while the rest of the team gets to the cleaning, Ramsay challenges Chef Drew to word on a new and fresh pizza dish. What they come up with together easily looks like the most delicious thing we’ve seen all episode long.
The next day is relaunch day, and the exterior at least looks like a non-dump, post-renovation. And inside, it looks… eh, kind of better. Clean at least.
The most hilarious line of the episode comes here when Nylah explains that they “had been going for fine dining” before, and that wasn’t working.
To promote the new Casa Roma, Ramsay whips up a pizza eating challenge promotion. Whereas in other episodes where this kind of thing happens, Ramsay usually heralds the arrival of radio stations, local food critics, and local luminaries and politicians. That was noticeably not the case here.
Nonetheless, things move forward for relaunch night. The new menu features a condensed, fresh, cook-to-order menu that (still) includes stuffed mushrooms, bruschetta, and of course, pizza.
Dinner service starts off poorly, with cold and undercooked food being served to diners. One table of local firefighters sent back chicken wings twice as they were raw… both times. Not great. And meanwhile the calzones come out enormous. That might be fine if they were tasty, but instead Ramsay refers to them as “loaves of bread.”
However, Chef Drew soon takes “complete control of the kitchen” and things start going more smoothly. The night ends on a successful note…
But it’s another bad sign that the episode didn’t bother doing a segment on what happened in the following months after Ramsay and crew’s restorative efforts.
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Kitchen Nightmares, “Casa Roma”: is it still open?
Did you have to ask? The answer is a hard no. This piece details the downward spiral: going back to the “old ways,” the “old menu,” and throw in accusations of Nylah faking “positive reviews” for good measure.
After changing names a few times (so much for the “historic” brand of Casa Roma!) it finally did change back to Casa Roma before closing permanently in 2017.
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Casa Roma”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 7
AIRED ON – March 12th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Docuseries, Office Culture, Trashtastic TV, Food Shows
CAST – Gordon Ramsay