(keep reading to learn what happened)
Season: UK | View All Season UK Episodes
Original Episode Air Date: May 18, 2004
Moore Place Address: Portsmouth Rd, Esher KT10 9LH, United Kingdom
Episode Recap
Moore Place was an Esher, England restaurant featured on Season 1 of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares in the UK. Though the Moore Place Kitchen Nightmares episode aired in May 2004, the actual filming and visit from Gordon Ramsay took place much earlier in 2004. It was Episode 4 of Season 1 on the UK version.
Moore Place is located in the very affluent area of Esher, Sussex.
However, the aesthetic of the restaurant doesn’t match what you’d expect from a restaurant in a rich area.
The outside of the restaurant is painted an ugly maroon color.
The inside isn’t much better because the restaurant is empty and Gordon is dining alone.
There are 35,000 rounds of golf happening around the area, so the restaurant should be packed.
Gordon orders a glass of wine, but the wine smells foul.
Gordon meets with Moore Place owners Richard Hodgson and Nick Whitehouse.
They have no experience in the restaurant business but have sunk all of their money into Moore Place, so they have a lot riding on the success of the restaurant.
The restaurant used to be successful when it was a steak house, but business is now failing.
The head chef Herve Foutrel was already the chef when the owners took over, but he didn’t have a great reputation.
Mark Robinson is an executive chef at the restaurant, along with Herve.
He has extensive cooking experience but only spends time on the fryer.
He also spends most of his time microwaving food, which isn’t what you’d expect from an executive chef.
Everything in the restaurant is deep-fried, and the oil has a weird smell.
The menu is not updated and hasn’t been updated in years.
Moore Place is missing many ingredients needed to make items.
Gordon wants to get his hands dirty in the kitchen so he changes into his chef attire to assist Mark.
Many people do not even know where Moore Place is.
That’s almost a good thing, because those who do know where Moore Place is located hate the color and avoid it.
The area is filled with many Americans, and Gordon thinks they should add more American-inspired dishes to the menu as well as American décor.
Gordon shares a burger recipe, and the staff loves it.
Gordon and the kitchen staff and servers take the food to the golf course to bring in customers.
Gordon wants the servers to upsell the new special.
However, Peter, a server, struggles with pitching the menu.
The waiters definitely need to be able to step up if Moore Place is going to stay open after Kitchen Nightmares.
Gordon decides to use Mothers Day to relaunch the restaurant.
There are 181 bookings for relaunch night, which is a huge increase over the normal situation.
Gordon decides to serve chicken that will be carved at the table to make the night easier on the kitchen staff.
The owners were greedy, though, and overbooked the restaurant.
Gordon will spend relaunch night in the dining room because he has confidence in the kitchen.
His thoughts are well-founded because, when all of the customers arrive at the same time, the kitchen struggles to keep up.
The owners left to go talk to friends, and they left the serving staff short-handed.
The chefs praise Gordon and are so thankful for his help.
Customers enjoyed the food but overall, the night was chaotic.
So, was the restaurant successful after Gordon Ramsay’s visit and the Moore Place Kitchen Nightmares episode? Let’s find out…
Moore Place Update - What Happened Next?
One month after the Moore Place episode and some things are still the same. Most notably, the restaurant is still painted an ugly purple color.
Despite the ugly purple, the restaurant has seen a 20 percent increase in sales and diners generally seem happier with the American aesthetic, which makes sense because of the high American population in the area.
Gordon sends in an undercover food critic to make sure the restaurant is still following his practices.
However, he discovers that the restaurant is still offering a lot of deep fried dishes, which leads to a funny scene where Gordon Ramsay throws the deep fryer into a nearby lake.
Is Moore Place from Kitchen Nightmares still open?
While Moore Place did seem to be doing much better after Kitchen Nightmares, the owners slowly started slipping into their old habits, which led to a decline in sales.
Eventually, the owners sold Moore Place in 2006, just a couple of years after the Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares episode aired. It closed soon after that.
Since then, the old Moore Place restaurant location has been demolished and rebuilt as a nursing home.
The nursing home has kept the name of Moore Place, but it’s no longer a restaurant. You can learn more about the new care home on this page – it seems to have good reviews.
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Last updated: 2022-01-08 12:35
darn I really thought this one would hav stayed open .. location, ambiance, food, staff, owners .. it looked good but the restaurant business is one of the hardest to work ..
the biggest surprise however is that they demolished that beautiful old building .. !?? what a shame .. the color could definitely be changed but I thought the architecture was historically valuable ..
thanks for the update though .. searched and yours was the only one that gav current (2022) results after the show..
So many things to write about for this episode.
Of course the restaurant was not doing enough business, everyone was too busy golfing.
At least they were using the fryer that the experienced chef wielded. And that’s good, you can make a lot of dishes with a fryer: fried chicken, french fries, fried eggs, fried pudding, etc.
Using a microwave also is a good idea. If you think otherwise ask yourself: why does practically every home kitchen have one?
Replacing the restaurant with a nursing home was a good idea. The nursing home kitchen makes Michelin star-quality oatmeal.
The fry chef was a lazy POS and you could see on his face he had no interest in working hard. Most of these KN restaurants have one problem in common. They have owners that are afraid to change staff/cooks/chefs and really lazy people cooking in the kitchen. If they started many of the episodes by terminating the bad cooks on the first day, some of these places might have succeeded.
This seems to have been a classic case of mismanagement. The quality control was not implemented at most levels, especially the service seemed lacklustre. A spot like this thrives on returning customers. But who wants to return to fried camembert and this atmosphere?
Just no vision from the owners to be honest.
This episode is probably the most fun I’ve seen Gordon have, which was pretty entertaining to watch. Shame it closed down though!