1 week Ago By [email protected] (Bobby Lewis)
Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares" is one of the most iconic culinary reality shows ever. However, in nearly 20 years of Ramsay eating bad food, yelling about standards, and helping chefs fix them, some episodes have stirred controversy. Few more than the lost Oceana Grill episode, which spawned two lawsuits over a decade.
Season 4 of the U.S. show visited Oceana Grill (sometimes just called Oceana) a seafood restaurant just off of Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
According to the restaurant's attorneys, the owners didn't realize Oceana would be so negatively depicted in a show called "Kitchen Nightmares." Alleging misrepresentation, their 2011 lawsuit failed to keep the episode from airing but was later settled out of court. In 2018, a Facebook page for the UK version of "Kitchen Nightmares" shared a clip from the Oceana episode, prompting another lawsuit.
Attorneys alleged that the Facebook post violated the settlement terms of the 2011 lawsuit which stipulated that "Kitchen Nightmares" could not air clips of the Oceana episode without financial compensation, or by including the restaurant's current condition. The post was removed and the lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but the episode remains missing from legitimate streaming sites. Other Issues With Kitchen Nightmares, And Oceana Grill While the staff of some restaurants on "Kitchen Nightmares" will say the show is accurate , Oceana is not the first to accuse Gordon Ramsay of playing up conditions for TV drama.
In Manhattan, a restaurant called The Black Pearl closed just four days after its episode aired in season 2, and soon pointed the finger at Ramsay. Its three owners, depicted as incompetent in the episode, accused Ramsay and the show of deceptive editing and filming. This included hiring actors to portray diners who enjoyed Ramsay's revamped menu, which the owners claimed was actually despised by real customers — not an unheard of reaction to "Kitchen Nightmares" redesigns .
The owner's claimed Ramsay's alleged fixes caused a fatal drop in revenues. Unlike Oceana, The Black Pearl did not sue over its episode. And unlike most restaurants that have appeared on "Kitchen Nightmares," Oceana is still open — though not without new issues.
In September 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that it recovered over $100,000 in stolen wages and damages from Oceana's parent company , half of which was financial compensation that Oceana and four other restaurants illegally withheld from servers and bartenders.
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