(keep reading to learn what happened)
Season: 4 | View All Season 4 Episodes
Original Episode Air Date: February 18, 2011
Grasshopper Also Address: 645 Washington Ave Carlstadt, NJ 07072
Episode Recap
Grasshopper Also was a Carlstadt, New Jersey restaurant featured on season 4 of Kitchen Nightmares.
The episode was filmed in November 2010 but it didn’t air until February 2011.
It was Season 4 Episode 5.
Grasshopper Also is an Irish pub located in Carlstadt, New Jersey.
The bar is managed and run by Mitch. It’s also co-owned by Mitch’s wife Maureen and Mitch’s father-in-law, Chief.
Chief is the most experienced of the group as he had over 40+ years in the restaurant industry.
He also invested most of the money into Grasshopper Also which, as you can expect, can lead to some conflict.
At first, Grasshopper Also was quite successful. However, as you’d expect from the fact that they ended up on Kitchen Nightmares, things were going downward for the restaurant.
Everyone seems to blame Mitch for the issues. Again, that’s kind of awkward when you co-own the restaurant with your wife and father-in-law.
Mitch is responsible for the kitchen, but he doesn’t do much in it. The food quality is pretty bad and dishes often get sent back.
Despite that, Mitch pretty much just hides in his office, which obviously means that his staff doesn’t really respect him.
To find out what’s going wrong, Gordon starts things off by meeting with all three owners.
Gordon Ramsay notices immediately that Maureen is basically the mediator between her husband and her father in law.
We don’t want to say it again…but that’s going to lead to some family stress.
Gordon speaks to them separately, and Maureen talks about the horrible relationship between Chief and Mitch. Chief has invested a whopping three million dollars in the restaurant, which is just a crazy sum.
Chief also thinks that Mitch is the biggest problem standing in the restaurant’s way.
Next, Gordon meets the restaurant’s manager, Annette. She tells Gordon how bad the food is, which isn’t a good sign coming from the restaurant manager.
To test it for himself, Gordon orders three dishes:
- French onion soup
- Shepherd’s pie
- Fisherman’s platter.
All three dishes are horrible, with terms like dishwater being thrown around for the soup.
As you’d expect, Gordon discovers that the chefs have no idea how to make Irish food, which explains why the quality was so poor. He also discovers some other issues, such as frozen scallops, blood in the mozzarella sticks, and just generally a bunch of gross stuff.
Gordon says that he would’ve never eaten the food if he knew how it was stored. He also makes them throw everything away and start fresh.
During these issues, Maureen is the one handling everything instead of Mitch.
To address this, Gordon has a sit down with Maureen at her home and she confides that Mitch isn’t the same person he was when she married him.
Gordon tells her that they need to find a way to get Mitch excited and passionate again.
To help with this, Gordon talks to Mitch privately and basically gives him a pep talk.
Beyond helping with the human issues, Gordon also makes some changes to the menu and introduces two new special: a shepherd’s pie and fish and chips.
The staff taste the new dishes and are blown away by the taste of them.
However, during the dinner service, the staff keep making errors like almost sending out raw burgers. They also can’t match Gordon’s quality on the specials, which tells Gordon that the chefs are a big issue at Grasshopper Also.
For dinner service, the customers are let into the restaurant.
To help, Gordon calls in James, a local chef, to help him train the cooks at Grasshopper Also. Gordon and his team also re-do the restaurant’s poor aesthetic.
Overall, everyone seems to love the changes.
So was the Grasshopper Also Kitchen Nightmares episode a success? Keep reading our update to learn what happened next and how the restaurant is doing in 2024 and beyond.
Grasshopper Also Update - What Happened Next?
Soon after the Grasshopper Also Kitchen Nightmares episode was filmed, the owners fired Chef Mario.
They also kept Chef James on to continue training the staff.
Thanks to these changes and Gordon’s other adjustments, the new Yelp reviews seemed to be genuinely positive.
Of course there were a few negative reviews, but things seemed like they had shifted.
Is Grasshopper Also from Kitchen Nightmares still open?
Unfortunately, the successes would not last as Grasshopper Also eventually closed and was sold in October 2012.
This means that they were able to survive for about two years after the episode was originally filmed.
The new owners reopened a new restaurant and sports bar called the Eastside Ale House.
However, this restaurant also closed in 2016 before being reopened as another sports bar called Primetime Sports Lounge & Restaurant.
That one also didn’t last as it closed just one year later.
As of 2022, the old Grasshopper Also Carlstadt, New Jersey location is occupied by a Tapas restaurant called Segovia Meson.
It has solid reviews, with a 4 star rating on Yelp and a 4.4 star rating on Google reviews.
You can learn more about the new restaurant at the Segovia Meson website.
👉 Read other Season 4 updates:
- Next episode – Davide update
- Previous episode – PJ’s Steakhouse update
More Information
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Last updated: 2022-06-27 05:54
What a dumb name for a restaurant.
You’re not funny so I’m not surprised you’re clueless as well.
Original restaurant: Grasshopper
Second restaurant:Grasshopper Too
Third restaurant: Grasshopper Also
It may not be the most clever naming scheme, but that doesn’t make it “dumb.”
It’s a great name, what would you have named it? Mr. I’m-so-original-and-creative?
hey sir, are you Mitch the co-owner?
Also, if Mitch is not the man Maureen married because he has less passion, Frank Thomas and Doug Flutie would recommend Nugenix Total T with Testafan.
I do not understand why Ramsay did not put Maureen in the back of the house and Mitch in the front as host with the floor manager running the floor. Both women seemed very competent. Also, the dad needed to either be told to leave the restaurant or step up and take over. His hovering around telling everyone else what they were doing wrong without stepping forward and actually doing something was a huge part of the issue. This episode felt like everyone wanted to blame Mitch, who was clearly out of his depth but no one wanted to step in and take over for Mitch. Good management means making sure the right people are in the right roles.
That just about sums it up. I am surprised Ramsey didn’t execute those ideas as the solution was obvious but I guess in his own way he didn’t want to emasculate mitch or stress the marital relationship.
If Chief spent $3 million to open the place so that his moronic and useless son-in-law Mitch could have a job, it is a big shame. He should have just given the money to his daughter to buy a house and put the rest for retirement. It was pretty clear that Mitch was dumber than a block of wood, and he had zero chemistry with Chief. A lot of time and money wasted.
It actually does if you don’t know the history
Chief was not helping that is true. Annette told the truth about the issues, but I really just saw her standing staring in disbelief instead of stepping up, but it’s possible she MAY have been an effective leader. Maureen should have stepped in as leader long before Ramsey arrived. Mitch, I can understand his attitude, but at his age and with so much money that was not his on the line, he did not have the luxury of giving up. I work in corporate and hate it’s guts, but would not like to move into a refrigerator box therefore I do not quit on it.
Mitch was a total loser. He could not even read the orders after they bought a POS machine with a printer. He was a 5th wheel, the deadwood, the excrement that they needed to flush.
When Mitch came out, his wife and Chief took him outside and administered a sobering beating, but that was the end.
The restaurant went in a new direction, and Mitch stayed on as the Maitre’D of the Asshopper.
My god, Mitch sucks. He doesn’t even know how to send food out to the correct table. If his wife didn’t divorce him then his wife is a bigger loser.
It’s obvious none of the staff respects him at all. And as a result he’s created bad staff out of people who could have been good. It’s so obvious Mario has talent but a lot of resentment for the place.
Everybody blames Mitch but what about chief . No words for him except bad .
Something does not make sense here.
The intro says that they opened the business 17 years ago. When Gordon sits down to eat and meets Annette, she says she has been working there for 6 to 8 years (which is it?) and that she has been there since day one.
If she has been there for 8 years (let’s go for the biggest number) that’s not 17 years that the intro said the place has open for. So she hasn’t been there since day one… which she says she has.
I believe she said 16-18 years with an irish accent.
Source: trust me, lad