Casa Roma Kitchen Nightmares

Gordon visits Casa Roma, Lancaster, California, the oldest restaurant in the city. What happened to the restaurant? Was Gordon able to save it on time? We manage a commercial kitchen hood cleaning company and run into our own kitchen nightmares. As hood cleaning professionals, we’re intrigued to watch these stories.

Casa Roma Kitchen Nightmares Recap

They bought the failing restaurant with the hope of turning it around and making it successful again. Their lack of experience got the better of them as only their bar is packed while their dine-in restaurant is empty.

Gordon arrives and meets the owners, the bar has no windows and he finds a busy bar but a completely empty restaurant. Gordon sits to read the menu and order food and notices bits of food and tissue down the back of the broken booth.

It takes a long time for the food to be delivered and during the wait, Gordon notices the blinds are dirty, even though the restaurant has a cleaner. Chef Eric is defensive of Gordon’s criticism of his food and blames the poor quality food on him having a bad day.

During the dinner service, Eric ignores sous chef Drew and they don’t work together at all, leading to long wait times. Gordon notices how often foods were being sent back to the kitchen as undercooked and he angrily shuts down the restaurant.

The next day Gordon inspects the walk-in and finds moldy food, unidentifiable defrosting meat, and 3-month-old ribs. He takes a blue UV light to the bathrooms and finds out they are in a disgusting state as they have bodily fluids on the ceiling, walls, and floor!

Gordon sets Drew a challenge of cooking a fresh pizza while Gordon cooks them a frozen pizza to see if they can tell the difference. Nylah likes the fresh pizza made by Drew and she says the cooked frozen pizza tastes like their old pizza.

A day is spent giving the restaurant a makeover both inside and out and the filthy carpet is ripped up. Nyla and the staff were really surprised and happy when they saw the new beautiful pizzeria, Casa Roma.

Gordon organizes a pizza-eating contest to celebrate Casa Roma’s 50th year and introduce the place as the new pizzeria in town.

On the relaunch night, customers start arriving at the restaurant. Nylah’s son Jimmy is helping Drew out in the kitchen. One table returns food two times because it is undercooked, which frustrates Gordon. Calzone’s size that Jimmy is baking is huge, Gordon asks him to cut down on size. Drew is under pressure and the kitchen gets backed up. Drew takes a break to regroup, and then in a dramatic turnaround takes control of the kitchen. Orders now are moving out much faster. Customers love the food and the relaunch is a success. Gordon tells them that he is happy with the turnaround and now they need to keep up the good work.

Drew finally steps up and the food leaves the kitchen quickly, the customers are impressed and the relaunch was a success.

Revisiting Casa Roma

One year after the relaunch, Gordon revisits Casa Roma, Lancaster. Chef Drew is not there anymore. Gordon is surprised to see Q (Chef in one other restaurant Gordon relaunched – Sebastian’s). Gordon talks with Q about Sebastian’s, Q tells Gordon that one day the owner just disappeared. Gordon checks the walk-in freezer and the kitchen and place are clean.

It appears that Casa Roma was briefly renamed CR Roadhouse in mid-2015 and that all of the staff worked here after a local restaurant Nico’s closed. They also changed the menu again.

As of July 1st, Casa Roma will be closing its 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.

The Comment Section

A recap of some of the social media comments regarding Casa Roma and the show.

“Because most bars in residential areas are NOT profitable, especially when they serve inedible food. And I have a sneaking suspicion that wasn’t urine on the ceiling that was exposed by the black light, which makes the whole thought of it even more disgusting. Maybe that’s where lazy Chef Eric made his “special sauce.””

“dirty kitchen dining room restroom is just a sign of the owner not caring anymore in GR words… WAKE UP”

“We visited a couple of times shortly after Gordon did his magic and everything was very good. Haven’t been there for a couple of years so don’t know what it’s like now.”

“Often I feel that they just Ramsay spend on makeover the restaurants+advertisings. You can see who respect him, their restaurants are still open and other closed!!!!!”

“The history of this place was so weird. Changed the menu back to the original right after the revisited episode for no reason (why? Nylah never claimed to like the original menu), then rebranded and basically recreated the changes Ramsay made without Ramsay’s professional changes and menu (then why change in the first place?), then of course when that failed they made a new change and again rebranded to make it seem like a new place? They could have just saved so much time, money, and effort by just staying the same this whole time. The only person I really feel bad for here is Q, he went from one nightmare to another (though he really should have known better he wasn’t a negative part of Sebastian’s)”

“They are making less than 100 dollars per night and their rapid-fire with chefs had left them struggling for a good one. They have hired and fired over 20 chefs during a two-year period.”