(keep reading to learn what happened)
Season: 3 | View All Season 3 Episodes
Original Episode Air Date: March 12, 2010
Casa Roma Address: 320 W Ave J2 Lancaster, California 93534
Episode Recap
Casa Roma was a Lancaster, California restaurant featured on season 3 of Kitchen Nightmares.
The Casa Roma Kitchen Nightmares episode aired in March 2010, but the actual filming and visit from Gordon Ramsay took place before that.
It was Season 3 Episode 7.
In this episode, Chef Gordon Ramsay visits Casa Roma in Lancaster, California.
If you’re not familiar with your California geography, Lancaster is a charter city in Northern Los Angeles County.
Additionally, Lancaster CA is not to be confused with Lancaster PA, which is where the Amish are.
But I digress…
The Casa Roma restaurant has been in the village for a very long time, making it the oldest eatery there.
Casa Roma is owned and run by Nylah and her son Jeremy.
They bought the restaurant without any experience in the trade.
In the words of Jeremy, they thought that they were buying a “restaurant with a bar attached to it”…
…but after digging into things, they realized they actually had a “bar with a restaurant attached to it”.
Oops!
Obviously, there are a lot of issues, which is why they asked for help from Gordon Ramsay.
First off, the finances suck.
They’re making less than $100 per night at the time of the Kitchen Nightmares Casa Roma visit, which is obviously completely unsustainable.
They’ve also had a ton of turnover in the chef position, which makes it difficult to have any type of continuity in the kitchen.
They have hired and fired over 20 chefs during a two year period.
At the time of the episode, the chefs are Drew and Eric.
Maybe this duo will be better than the other 20+ chefs before?
To find out, Gordon Ramsay decides to try the food.
Gordon is sat in a booth that is clearly broken.
He finds bits of food in a napkin stuck at the back of the booth.
He also finds dust on the blinds and the menu has spelling mistakes.
Basically, even though he hasn’t tasted any of the Casa Roma pizzeria food yet, things don’t seem to be looking very good for the restaurant.
Gordon’s order consists of stuffed mushrooms, Monte Cristo and a medium Casa Roma deluxe pizza.
Things don’t start off very well…
The mushrooms arrive full of water and without flavor.
The sandwich has excess fat dripping from it and the pizza is not cooked properly.
Gordon Ramsay even squeezes the Monte Cristo to show how much fat/oil is in it.
It’s super gross…
Despite these issues, Eric jumps to restaurant’s defense and labels it a bad day.
The dinner service is a disaster when servers struggle with spelling Sicilian and Jeremy is in the kitchen with a cocktail in hand.
The food takes way too long to come out because of the lack of communication.
Gordon Ramsay tells Nylah that Eric is there for the salary and not because he cares.
This echoes what Ashley, a server said, who blamed Eric for a lot of the issues at Casa Roma.
Instead of sticking with Eric, Gordon believes that Drew should be promoted to Head Chef.
Later, Gordon investigates the kitchen and other storage areas to see what’s happening there.
As part of his investigation, he uses the help of a blacklight-type device.
Gordon finds moldy food in his freezer examination and the storing standards not being observed.
That’s saying things lightly – Gordon actually throws up because the fridge is so gross.
This obviously doesn’t make Gordon very happy and the staff here about it from him.
Once he’s diagnosed the main problems, Gordon gets to work on improving the Casa Roma restaurant.
After the restaurant gets a makeover, Gordon Ramsay organizes a pizza eating competition to help promote the new Casa Roma pizzeria.
Local firemen stop for dinner and it takes the restaurant a little while to get into the swing of things.
However, the customers eventually leave happy on the relaunch night.
When Gordon Ramsay leaves, he calls it “the worst Italian restaurant going”.
However, Gordon is hopeful that, after the changes, Casa Roma can turn things around.
He says that “three months down the line, this place is gonna be rocking”.
So was the Casa Roma Kitchen Nightmares episode a success?
Keep reading our update to learn what happened next and how the Casa Roma pizzeria is doing in 2024 and beyond.
Casa Roma Update - What Happened Next?
Now that we’ve recapped the Casa Roma Kitchen Nightmares episode, let’s talk about what happened to the restaurant after Gordon Ramsay and his crew left Lancaster, CA.
First, I’ll discuss Gordon’s second visit to the pizzeria, and then I’ll get into where it is today.
Casa Roma Gordon Ramsay revisit
First off, the original episode was not Gordon’s only visit to the Casa Roma Lancaster CA restaurant.
Gordon also had the chance to revisit Casa Roma later at the end of Season 3 in Episode 13.
In this episode, he also revisited Handlebar in Mount Sinai, NY and Black Pearl in New York City.
I found the full episode on YouTube and embedded it below.
However, I’m not sure if it’s available to watch in all regions.
The Gordon Ramsay Casa Roma revisit part starts around the 28 minute mark.
In the episode, we learn that chef Drew has left and Nylah has bought out her son from the business, making her the sole owner.
She says “I love my son to death, but we just couldn’t work together”.
In an interesting twist of fate, Gordon meets Q who used to work at Sebastian’s (also featured on Kitchen Nightmares) and is now Casa Roma’s Head Chef.
Nylah said that she recognized Chef Q when he came in and decided to hire him.
Here’s Chef Q serving Gordon and Nylah their dinner.
Nylah also said that they have 28-30 dinners per night and are doing at least 33% more business than before the Casa Roma Kitchen Nightmares episode.
At the end of the revisit, Gordon shares a surprise that the restaurant is getting a certificate from the local Chamber of Commerce.
Unfortunately, the restaurant’s success would not last…
Is Casa Roma from Kitchen Nightmares still open?
Casa Roma closed for good on July 1, 2017. However, there were some closures and rebrandings that happened before that.
The original Casa Roma restaurant seems to have closed sometime around 2014 or 2015.
For a time, there was still a restaurant operating in that location with the same heritage, though a different name.
It was open in 2014 but it seems that there was a shift in the middle of 2015.
A local restaurant Nico’s was taken over and the staff shifted from one place to another.
The restaurant was serving traditional bar food – wings and appetizers.
It was renamed CR Roadhouse and was still open gathering positive reviews on staff, service and food alike.
However, it would eventually close for good in 2017 when Nylah posted the following on Facebook:
As of July 1st Casa Roma will be closing their doors for good.
It is going to be a very sad month.
But things have come about that can’t help but go this way.
It’s the next chapter in my life and I love and appreciate all of you who have stood by me and my family and business.
Thank you to all of you.
The old Casa Roma Lancaster, CA location is now occupied by a business named Salon Garibaldi, which seems to do a bunch of events and promotions.
Honestly, I’m not sure what it does – but it’s definitely occupying the old Casa Roma location in Lancaster.
If you want to learn more about the business, you can check out its Facebook page here.
Here’s what the old Casa Roma Lancaster CA location looks like in the most recent picture from Google Maps street view:
Why did Casa Roma close?
Overall, it seems like Casa Roma did not keep Gordon’s menu and concept, which I’m guessing played a role in why it closed.
The rebrandings were also very confusing and probably made it hard for Casa Roma to gain any momentum.
Beyond that, I don’t have any specific details on why the Casa Roma restaurant closed.
What happened to Nylah from Casa Roma?
As of 2023, Nylah is retired according to her Facebook page.
After Casa Roma closed, she had a few jobs working as a bookkeeper, at Vons, and as a freelance writer.
However, she now appears to be done with work.
Final thoughts on the Casa Roma restaurant
Overall, Casa Roma had a kind of confusing ending.
Things seemed to be going well in the Casa Roma Gordon Ramsay revisit episode.
The restaurant had even hired Chef Q from Sebastian’s and Nylah said that business was up.
However, the Casa Roma restaurant then seemed to go through a series of rebrandings.
It would eventually come back to the Casa Roma name before permanently closing in 2017.
The old Casa Roma Lancaster, California location seems to be occupied by a party service, or something similar.
Nylah seems to have moved on and retired.
If you want to check out some other California Kitchen Nightmares episodes, you can read these updates:
And if you want to share your thoughts on the Casa Roma episode, you can do so using the comments section below.
Thanks for reading!
More Information
https://www.yelp.com/biz/c-r-roadhouse-lancasterhttps://www.facebook.com/pages/Casa-Roma/157210060964057
What did you think about the episode? I'd love it if you shared your thoughts on the episode in the comments below!
You can also click the buttons below to share this post!
And don't forget to check out all of the other Kitchen Nightmares updates.
Last updated: 2023-08-12 05:27
I hung there for about 3 years first as a local musician that played there frequently and then started dating the owner. It was a great time and fun while it lasted
Wow! That’s a weird connection. What was it like dating the owner?
I bet it was no good, she would cry out “Oh Gordon!” in bed.
Nylah? She looks like Skeletor’s sister.
I think I found Nylah’s Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/nylah.k.christian
It’s sad that Gordon Ramsay decided to focus on destroying the bar side with all those leather incredible looking furniture which initially worked out well and provided most of the income before Ramsay arrived.
Instead of focusing on the negative side which was the other part of the bar, Ramsay instead turned the whole place into a restaurant look all alike and that I think was a burden for all the regulars that enjoyed the bar side look. Taken away all those black leather seats and couches had to negate many previous customers.
Gordon Ramsay was an idiot in this change I believe since the bar was initially bringing in all the business so why change it? Idiot. He basically turned the whole place into a strawberry restaurant.
I don’t think he gets it but hey! I only been working in sociology for over 30 years so yah, my two cents worth. Sorry Gordon, you messed this one up a bit.
Sounds like this rescue would have been better served by Jon Taffer in your opinion, as a Bar Rescue rather then a Kitchen Nightmare. I’d be willing to bet if Taffer had answered the call, he’d have focused on the bar, because he’s more of a bar guy while Ramsay probably focused on the restaurant because that’s what he knows best.
Agreed, if anything it would have been better to expand the bar and turn the kitchen into a bar kitchen that serves simple bar food, which would be much easier to run and also for the chefs. And it’d make their money maker (the bar) more profitable rather than what happened in the remake that took place.
What Ashley has become?
I have to wonder what the problems were with keeping chefs. Erick was a complete douche, but i like to hope that’s not the norm. Nylah and her son seemed like decent people.
Who are you calling a douche? I resemble that comment.
There’s a back story for the misspellings in the menu. Nylah her son Jeremy into the business, as the article relates. The thing is, he started when he was still in second grade. He was put in charge of the menus before he’d learned how to spell well.
Does anyone know how Chef Q is doing?
Does Ashley have Instagram ? She’s cute! 😏