Downcity Kitchen Nightmares Update – Open or Closed?

Is Downcity still open?

Current Status: >> CLOSED <<
(keep reading to learn what happened)

Season: 4 | View All Season 4 Episodes
Original Episode Air Date: March 11, 2011
Downcity Address: 50 Weybosset St Providence, Rhode Island 02903
Downcity kitchen nightmares episode update


Episode Recap

Downcity was a Providence, Rhode Island restaurant featured on season 4 of Kitchen Nightmares. The Downcity Kitchen Nightmares episode aired on March 11, 2011, but the actual filming and Gordon Ramsay visit took place in December 2010. It was episode 6 of season 4.

Gordon Ramsay’s visit to Downcity restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island, bought by Abby and best friend Rico in 2005, was one the most electrifying episodes of Kitchen Nightmares.

Rico had a full-time job in finance and Abby had been working in restaurants for over 30 years, and as such, Rico provides the capital while Abby manages the restaurant.

Chef Ramsay was greeted by Abby, who proceeded to rate the food a 10/10.

Their encounter did not start well, as Ramsay reveals the food provided by his hotel’s room service was disgusting, which offended Abby.

After awkwardly navigating past that interaction Gordon orders is lunch. The calamari arrived, with Chef Ramsay pointing out its sogginess and chewiness.

He also described the inaptly named Party-in-your-Mouth nachos as “more like a funeral in his mouth” and the meatloaf is lukewarm.

As the Michelin star chef converses with the staff he discovers Abby is responsible for the menu and leaves after some initial bickering.

While she attempts to get the staff on her side, saying Ramsay is wrong, they admit the food is “below par”.

When Rico arrived for dinner service, Gordon sat down with him, while the restaurant owner admitted he had $1million invested in the venture and can’t risk going bankrupt given his career in finance.

In the meantime, the kitchen pantry is revealed to have moldy food, causing Gordon Ramsay to summon the owners, with all hell breaking loose as Abby lashes off at him, accusing him of being the culprit behind the mess, calling him a disgrace to the business and expelling him from the premises in an incredibly heated argument.

After conferring with Rico, Chef Ramsay explains to Abby he’s made mistakes with failed businesses in the past, and only by admitting those mistakes and learning from them has gotten him to where he is now.

When the staff get Abby to admit the menu is unbearably large, she begrudgingly admits to changing it.

Gordon introduces a simpler new menu with considerably fewer items after witnessing a dinner service to relieve pressure on Jimmy and the kitchen.

The standard of the food is improved, but the kitchen gets swamped again, while customers are left waiting for food and start making for the door.

When Abby reveals a lack of faith in Jimmy, Chef Ramsay calls in one of his chefs to help get the kitchen staff in order.

For the re-launch night, Chef Ramsay introduces a new comfort food menu featuring a goat’s cheese truffle dip, meatball sliders, lobster Mac & Cheese and a new improved meatloaf.

He also invites Stacy Place, a local food blogger who had written a brutal review of Downcity previously.

As the night gets underway, the food is being sent out quickly, the customers love the new menu and the new food.

Just when it seemed the kitchen couldn’t cope with the pressure, the whole team rallies and the food starts leaving the kitchen, and everyone is revealed to be enjoying the food, blogger included.

Want to know more about the blogger from the Downcity episode of Kitchen Nightmares? Her name is Stacy Place and she actually shared a bit about the show and how her “10,000+ followers” might have been a bit overblown:

People assumed since Gordon was reading my Twitter feed that the show was referring to me having 10,000 Twitter followers. I don’t. The producers had asked me how many people had read my blog and I replied about 250 per week. Multiplying that by 52 weeks, they rounded down to 10,000. Of course, 3,000 people have read it just since the episode aired!

So maybe the stakes were not quite as high as the producers of Kitchen Nightmares made it seem!


Downcity Update - What Happened Next?

The Downcity Kitchen Nightmares episode was undoubtedly one of the show’s most belligerent and confrontational encounters, so everyone was curious to find out what has happened since.

Gordon revisits and is greeted by the restaurant owners with Abby revealing business is up by at least 30% and again rates the food a 10/10 after some friendly banter with chef Ramsay.

Chef Jimmy is still there continuing to impress both Abby and Rico.

Chef Ramsay goes into the fridge and after confirming it is very well organized, he sits down for lunch, finding the food delicious.

While catching up with the restaurant owners, Chef Ramsay notices there is some tension between them and eventually manages to get the truth out of them as Rico confesses that while Abby doesn’t shout at the employees, she now shouts at him a lot more.

Gordon Ramsay gets Abby to apologize to Rico, driving home the realization that they’re business partners and Abby can’t address Rico in that manner.

In the end, all seemed to be well in Downcity but it was not meant to last, as the restaurant closed doors in 2011 after being hit by the economic downturn.

What happened to Abby Cabral from the Downcity Kitchen Nightmares episode?

Abby Cabral was the Downcity owner who clashed with Gordon so much in the episode.

As of 2021, Abby Cabral seems to be employed as a personal trainer at Total Fitness, which has locations in Rhode Island and nearby. You can see her bio on the gym’s website.

👉 Read other Season 4 updates:


More Information

https://www.yelp.com/biz/downcity-providence




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Last updated: 2022-01-03 06:41

12 thoughts on “Downcity Kitchen Nightmares Update – Open or Closed?”

All comments are the sole opinion of the commenter and are not endorsed by RealityTVUpdates.

  1. Abby needs therapy to deal with her negative attitude and abusive relationships. She’s got some delusional thinking and may have some narcissistic tendency that gets in the way of successful management of her staff, partners customers.

    Reply
  2. Talk about ignorant!
    Gordon is a very very successful chef with tons of michelin stars so it proves how top notch chef he is.
    Its her own fault the restaurant failed because she’s in denial.
    She needed a kick up the arse which she had

    Reply
    • Rico is still successfully working in the real estate industry as far as I can tell. He seems to be doing well and has a pretty good position.

      Reply
  3. I clicked on the gym website where Abby is shown as a personal trainer, and I noticed the title of the page is “trainers_old”. So thinking that there’s a “new” version of the page, I navigated using the site’s menus and found the current page: https://totalfitnessclubs.com/trainers/. Abby’s not in that page, so she might no longer be employed there.

    Reply
  4. Rico is in finance, so he should have known that the smart money move would have been to burn the place down to collect the insurance money. Don’t get upset, they could have done it when no one was in the building so that no one would be hurt. It’s a perfectly legitimate business move says absolutely no one.

    Reply

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