“I can become physically very, very violent and have in the past… people get hurt.” – John Hough
The Roosevelt Inn is located in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I had never heard of CDA as it’s sometimes called until I first moved to Seattle, Washington some years back, and soon after had some family members on my wife’s side move there.
Coeur d’Alene does indeed offer a tremendous amount of natural beauty, so it’s easy to see why it’s an attractive destination in the interior northwest of the U.S. To be honest though I’ll always associate it with witnessing Newsmax, the ultra-rightwing/MAGA propaganda news network, proudly being broadcast on televisions in the lobby of an upscale hotel there.
Anyway, it’s rather interesting that The Roosevelt Inn was a schoolhouse at one time, and in fact one of its former students, John Hough, is now the owner.
When we meet John, he tells the story about how he bought The Roosevelt Inn without first consulting his wife, Tina. He relays the story seemingly as a funny anecdote in which he called to tell her he had made the purchase, which then prompted her to start crying.
Sidenote here: if I purchased a hotel and then called my wife to tell her that I had done so, the next sound I would hear would be the non-sound of the call being disconnected.
“I did not want to buy the hotel,” Tina adds.
We then see footage of her working in the hotel and she’s still crying.
Gordon Ramsay then segues into the guest experience at the hotel, the people who must deal with “the consequences of John’s eccentric behavior.”
Mariah Milliman, a server, feels that The Roosevelt Inn is struggling because it’s outdated and old.
We also learn that John is really into “dressing up,” as we see him wandering around the hotel in a Sherlock Holmes outfit. In fact, The Roosevelt Inn hosts a once-a-month murder mystery event of some sort.
This dynamic is set against Tina, who flat out tells the camera, “I do everything,” as we see a montage of her performing housekeeping and other tasks around the hotel.
Daughter and assistant innkeeper Lorien Hough-Cord agrees, telling the camera, “I feel my dad doesn’t appreciate my mom. My mom works three times harder than my dad does.”
As Gordon Ramsay pulls up to the old brick building where The Roosevelt Inn is located, his first remarks are, “The place looks grim.”
And then when he meets John: “It’s almost like walking into a funeral parlor.”
John gives Ramsay a tour of the inn, which starts with a basement area that looks like a rundown space in someone’s grandparents’ neglected house. John declares that people love hanging out with the house dogs down there, and it’s a highlight of the experience.
Ramsay quickly counters that the place reeks.
I must also pause here as we learn that one of the dogs is named Rohan. This strongly implies that John is a huge Lord of the Rings guy, which somewhat ties to the glimpse of cosplay sensibilities we got from him earlier in the episode. Perhaps he’s not a typical Coeur d’Alene dude after all.
“Everything looks like it’s in a time warp,” Ramsay observes of the dated décor in the rooms. And then he’s appalled when he learns that rooms cost $319 a night.
And of the dated looking “event space”: “it smells like we dog.”
A very creepy moment then happens when John admits upon being prompted by Ramsay that “maybe I do want to hit you a little bit.” It’s not so much the words he uses even; it’s this extremely unsettling smile and placid tone John uses when he says it. Separately, he tells the camera, “I can become physically very, very violent and have in the past… people get hurt.”
Uh… I wonder if this videotape footage might ever get produced in a court of law if it hasn’t already.
After John storms off, Ramsay spends time shaking out the “dust maggots” out of some of the decorations in his room.
Later, Ramsay meets with John and Tina and learns that John purchased The Roosevelt Inn (again, it’s important to note here, without informing his wife) for $700,000 and is now $1.1 million in the hole all told. They’ve sold their home, burned through their retirement savings, and are now living in their acquisition.
As Tina talks about how they’re at the brink of losing everything, John stands next to her and chuckles, soon calling the situation “entertaining.”
With all of that going on, that evening the monthly murder mystery dinner is taking place, replete with fancy dress.
As John “prances about as Sherlock Holmes,” Tina is stuck in the kitchen cooking.
John also proudly tells Ramsay that these nights are profitable and that they will make the full of $200 that night. Bonus: none of the participants will actually be staying at the inn overnight.
The problems at the inn are elementary, Ramsay quips.
John is completely deluded about how bad the situation is, even by Kitchen Nightmares or Hotel Hell standards.
“Man up and act responsible,” Ramsay tells him directly, which causes John to lamely say, “Shut up and talk to my hand” before stalking off.
Next up, Ramsay heads to the restaurant to try out a five-course set menu, with John Hough himself leading the kitchen as head chef.
Ramsay starts off with “sad looking” shrimp. “How can you f— up a shrimp cocktail?” he asks the room.
Predictably, things don’t improve from there. Ramsay hates each dish while John fumes in the kitchen, fantasizing about Ramsay falling in a “deep pit” and never coming out.
Things reach a breaking point when Ramsay asks for a simple boiled egg, and it comes out raw and with “feathers on it,” as the British chef puts it.
“You’re a f—ing joke,” Ramsay says to John directly, confronting him in the kitchen.
The next morning and after a bad night’s sleep and an uncomfortably cold shower for Ramsay, we reach the part of the episode where Ramsay confronts the hotel’s owners with a group of guests. Of the large group, predictably none of them said that they would ever want to stay at The Roosevelt Inn again.
If things couldn’t get any worse, Ramsay then hands out goggles to everyone and busts out the blacklight in one of the guest rooms.
As for what we next, I’ll quote Johnny boy himself: “Absolutely hideous, grossed out… kind of want to go vomit.”
If nothing else, this episode of Hotel Hell has made me feel a great deal of empathy of Tina, who seems mortified over the blacklight on top of all of the other pressures and anxiety she’s feeling.
In a one on one with Ramsay, Tina tells Ramsay that she feels there’s never a time during a day when she feels that she can take a break from the pressure she’s under and the unhappiness she’s experiencing.
“You’ve got a voice, you’ve got to stand up… you absolutely have a right to be happy,” Ramsay advises her.
Separately, Ramsay meets with John and softens his voice and attitude – as is his patented Tough Love Style Way – telling the innkeeper that he is here to help “but you a very tough, stubborn, selfish individual to get through to.”
“Yeah, truth hurts,” John responds. He then even adds with regard to how he treats Tina: “I’m a pig sometimes, I know that.”
Finally, he agrees to openly accept Ramsay’s help.
This leads to a therapy session-meets-business meeting with Ramsay, John, and Tina.
“I just don’t even know where to go with romance anymore,” John says with regard to the pressures of the business. My input here is that it must take a saint of a woman to not storm out of the door at hearing something like that.
John tells Tina that he wants her to regain the ability to dream of a brighter future once again.
Next up, things get more practical: Ramsay tells the couple that between the tiny kitchen and John’s clear lack of cooking skills, “homecooked meals” are what The Roosevelt’s Inn should focus on.
The overnight hotel renovation is revealed the next day, and it really does make an eye-popping positive improvement to the guestrooms. Dingy and old is replaced by vibrant, warm, and new. The dining room and event space look equally transformed.
Ramsay points out that bringing wedding events into The Roosevelt Inn will lead to more guests booking rooms upstairs. And, in fact, he announces that a wedding will take place at the Roosevelt that very night.
The wedding event goes off well, and Ramsay praises both John and Tina for working well together to make it a success.
Ramsay says farewell and conveys to John and Tina that he sees hope for a turnaround in both their business and relationship in the years ahead.
🔪 Want more Ramsay rampages? Check out our full Kitchen Nightmares episode guide — every filthy kitchen, every redemption (or disaster), all tracked.
Hotel Hell, “The Roosevelt Inn”: is it still open?
Yes, The Roosevelt Inn is still open!
Via Yelp, it has a 4.2 out of 5 star rating on 67 reviews, which is pretty good. One recent review relays:
The owners were very nice and the place was in great shape. I decided to come out and check this hotel since it was featured on Hotel Hell ten years ago. We were pleasantly surprised as we were not staying here and the owners came out and gave us a very nice history lesson on the property. Overall I would highly recommend this hotel and the hospitality was top-notch.
Some stats and info about Hotel Hell, “The Roosevelt Inn”
TV SHOW – Hotel Hell
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 1, Episode 6
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FOX
EPISODE DESCRIPTION – Gordon visits Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, to try to rescue the failing Roosevelt Inn. Despite being over a million dollars in debt, the Roosevelt’s owner, John Hough, is more interested in telling jokes than he is in fixing his struggling B&B.
GENRE – Docuseries, Office Culture, Trashtastic TV, Reality TV
CAST – Gordon Ramsay