“It’s my restaurant and my rules, and that should be the bottom line.” – Anthony Trobiano
If you’ve been following my Kitchen Nightmares recaps, you’ll know that I get extra fired up when the show features a trainwreck restaurant situation in my homeland of Long Island, New York.
In this case, we get Trobiano’s, located in Great Neck on Long Island’s north shore. This is ultra-ritzy territory, part of the so-called gold coast: think F. Scott Fitzgerald territory if you’re a literary cat, or perhaps Nelson DeMille if you’re more of a pop fiction fan as I am.
To be sure, I didn’t grow up on the gold coast – it was a middle-class suburban strip mall-scape for me out in Commack.
Anyway, Narrator Guy is correct in stating that an Italian restaurant has to be really good to survive in this part of the world, and Trobiano’s, owned by Anthony Trobiano and his girlfriend’s parents, has been struggling since opening up for business three years earlier.
Anthony comes across as an ambitious, earnest young man, while Joe, the owner, cracks me up immediately simply in the way that he says “I don’t know if it took bawls or I was just plain stupid doing it” when it came to the decision to buy the restaurant.
Tiffany, Anthony’s girlfriend, is also a waitress and says that while she and Anthony never used to fight in the early days of their six-year relationship, nowadays her take on things is, “Who am I going out with?”
It occurred to me here that it seems very unusual for this family run restaurant situation to involve an unmarried couple, but maybe that’s just me having some old school Long Island thinking going on. Tiffany does eventually allude to the fact that Trobiano’s financial difficulties are a factor in her and Anthony not yet having gotten engaged, which makes some sense.
While Anthony seems earnest, the kid’s certainly got an ego. “It’s my restaurant and my rules, and that should be the bottom line,” he says.
While business at Trobiano’s was apparently good early on, things are looking bleak these days (we learn later that they’re half a million in the whole). To help “keep the boat afloat,” Anthony has been running early bird specials, which brings in an elderly crowd. This of course immediately reminds me of Artie Buco and Vesuvio from The Sopranos.
“Fuggetaboutit, I feel like I’m in Florida, it’s crazy,” Joe says.
Please note that everything that Joe says is absolute gold.
When Gordon Ramsay sits down with the family, he quickly uncovers that Anthony is confident (bordering on cocky) and also that he had never trained in an Italian restaurant before becoming the head chef and running one.
Tiffany openly admits that “I hate working here,” while her parents discuss that Trobiano’s precarious financial situation is causing them to push off retirement while obviously causing them a lot of stress.
When Ramsay sits down to sample dishes amid the old folks coming in to enjoy the Early Bird specials, he quips, “I feel like I’ve come to see my granny in the retirement home.”
Ramsay asks an older woman if she’s enjoying her meal, and it’s so authentically Long Island in the way that she spits back, “Fair.” Gordon soon learns too that this crowd enjoys the enormous dishes served by Trobiano’s, which they plan ahead of time to take large doggy bags home for subsequent meals.
Ramsay orders a special that is a house “creation” dreamed up by Anthony, shrimp served inside chicken. The dream’s a (kitchen) nightmare though as Ramsay finds the shrimp to be “rock hard” and overall, it’s “s—.” Other dishes are “absolutely abhorrent.”
Back in the kitchen, Anthony says that he’s “f—ing furious” at Ramsay, and he absolutely looks like it.
After the early bird hour, Trobiano’s becomes completely empty. Ramsay assembles the staff and calls the team out on both the terrible quality of the food and (“commercial processed crap”) and the enormous portion sizes.
“I know I’m a great chef,” Anthony maintains to the camera. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
When Ramsay then heads back into the kitchen to check out its cleanliness, you know it’s not going to go well. He finds shelves “caked with grime” and dirty water sitting in stacks of plates. But even worse: mouse or rat droppings.
“When a chef lets go of a kitchen like this,” Ramsay concludes, “it proves he doesn’t care.”
There are few things that make Ramsay more indignant and pissed off than when he finds substandard conditions and a kitchen staff that is apathetic about it. It’s part of the charm of Kitchen Nightmares here, as Ramsay’s anger is authentic – this dude legitimately cares about creating the conditions to run a successful restaurant business.
When Anthony says he doesn’t clean himself at all (“that’s what we have staff for,” he says), this sets Ramsay off yet again.
“Oh my god,” he responds.
When Anthony refuses to respond to Ramsay’s battery of questions of the how can you run a kitchen like this kind, the British chef eventually says, “F— it, I’m out of here,” and storms off.
Joe is my favorite person in this episode, and he’s so Long Island-meets-Goodfellas extra when he says, “We might as well burn the place,” in reaction to the dire straits he’s realizing Trobiano’s is in.
Eventually, Ramsay and Anthony have a mano a mano chat outside the restaurant. When Anthony explains that he’s trying to learn from his mistakes, Ramsay’s not buying it, telling him that he needs to show far more humility and gratefulness for the opportunity that his family-by-proxy has sacrificed to provide for him.
“Time to get humble and turn the corner,” Gordon tells him.
Next up: a full and deep cleaning of the kitchen is called for. Ramsay himself offers to pitch in with the rest of the team. Now, Anthony says he has a “shot of reality” and is willing to do whatever it will take to get things back in track.
The following day, Ramsay takes the team to a local dairy farm – which, I wasn’t aware that they existed on Long Island past the 1980s or so, though maybe it’s a petting zoo in fact? – to milk cows for themselves. The gimmick is to do a little team building and also so Ramsay can introduce the concept of making homemade mozzarella as a means to make Trobiano’s stand out in the competitive local restaurant scene in Great Neck.
That night, the early bird special is killed in favor of new specials that incorporate fresh mozzarella to introduce for that night’s dinner service.
Dinner service goes well at first, though Ramsay calls out Anthony for not tasting food before it goes out to the front of the house. Soon after, we see multiple diners sending their entrees back.
Again, incredible stuff comes from Joe here: “What, are we playing games here? We’re getting killed over here.”
After dinner service, Ramsay tears into Anthony again: “The minute you do that, don’t call yourself a chef.” It’s important to note here that Ramsay does seem to see talent in the young head chef, which might be why he’s being “extra” hard on him at this point in the episode.
To his credit, Anthony admits that he has been “cocky and arrogant” here for the first time, while saying that he needs to learn to taste every dish before it goes out.
The next day, the renovation makes things look more elegant, though the carpeting still does make the place look a bit drab, at least on television. The staff though seems thrilled. Meanwhile, the menu overhaul calls for smaller portions, fewer dishes, and fresh, rustic entrees.
For relaunch night, the pressure is on because Barbara Fairchild, the editor-in-chief of Bon Appetit magazine, will be reviewing Trobiano’s. A mozzarella bar allows diners to quickly get served appetizers, and it really does look delicious.
The house is packed, and things go off the rails in the kitchen with mix ups involving Anthony and the servers getting on the same page. Ramsay rallies the troops to get things running smoothly once again. Barbara Fairchild seems happy with her fish and wine combination, which greatly relieves, Anthony, Joe, Ramsay, and crew.
After dinner service but with the restaurant still full, Ramsay pulls Anthony aside to give him a gift of an engagement ring, telling him, “Make an honest woman of her.” Anthony then proposes, and Tiffany happily accepts.
“You better make my daughter happy,” Joe tells Anthony, hugging him. “I’ll f—ing kick your ass,” he adds.
Gotta love Joe, he’s priceless.
Then, in a somewhat strange move, Ramsay announces that the wedding would take place that very night. In a quick montage, we see the ceremony take place in wedding outfits that had “somehow” been arranged for them.
🍽 Want more? Check out Pop Thruster’s Kitchen Nightmares episode reviews (there’s a lot).
Kitchen Nightmares, “Trobiano’s”: is it still open?
So… no, and for a pretty wild reason: Trobiano’s closed in 2008 – very shortly after Ramsay’s visit – for failing to pay taxes apparently (note: I could not corroborate this with a reputable news source).
On a brighter note, kind of, Anthony Trobiano is still married to Tiffany as of 2025 and works “for Pacific Stone, a cannabis distributor in New York City these days.”
Some stats and info about Kitchen Nightmares, “Trobiano’s”
TV SHOW – Kitchen Nightmares
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
GENRE – Reality TV, Docuseries, Food Shows
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Chef Ramsay tries to help Italian restaurant Trobiano’s. When Ramsay confronts the owner about the cleanliness of the kitchen and the tastiness of the food, tensions rise.
CAST – Gordon Ramsay