Location: Plainfield, New Jersey
A floundering soul food restaurant is headed by the indomitable Shelley, an owner who runs her establishment with an iron fist, and doesn't want to hear what Gordon has to say despite her own mother having to cash out her retirement to fund the restaurant.
Tropes
- Berserk Button: Never accuse Gordon of staging or otherwise faking things for the show. He was ready to walk out when he was accused of planting a dead mouse he found.
- Blatant Lies: In his second entrance to the restaurant, Ramsay discovers a dead mouse by the door. He asks James if an exterminator was ever hired, to which James claims they hire one once a month and he had been there last week (and then says behind Ramsay's back that it reminds him of a rat they found under a table a few months back). James later accuses Ramsay of planting the mouse for the sake of generating hits for the show. Ramsay gets greatly offended, and when he sees that Shelly believes the lie (due to James having whispered it to her), he lets everyone know that they can take the restaurant and shove it because he's not going to be accused of pulling a stunt for TV. After some drama happens with Shelly, James apologizes to Ramsay.
- Call-Back: Ramsay references his time at Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack when discussing with the staff why helping a soul food restaurant means a lot to him. Which can cause a bit of a
Continuity Lockout as that was an episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares in the UK. - Downer Ending: The restaurant saw a very promising remodeling and relaunch, despite Gordon nearly leaving after being falsely accused of planting a dead mouse. That is until Shelly receives a phone call from her father during service and focuses on that above all else, then promptly phases out and loses interest in doing anything afterwards. Regardless of the relaunch being overall successful despite this, she declines to join the staff meeting the next day and bluntly refuses to meet with Gordon. In spite of the episode's closing narration describing that Shelly eventually came to embrace the changes and successful results in the next few weeks, the restaurant closed down not long after.
- Kayfabe: Gordon is falsely accused of this when he finds a dead mouse at the restaurant's door in his second visit — James blows up at him for "planting it" right before talking behind his back about one they found before. Gordon takes James' accusation about as well as you might expect.
- Misblamed: The manager tried to blame Gordon for the dead mouse that was discovered, claiming that it had been planted by the camera crew to make the show more dramatic. This almost ended the episode, as Gordon came within a hair of shutting down the whole thing rather than be called a liar.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer seemed to suggest that the owner was going to throw in the towel and shut the restaurant down. In actuality, those scenes came from a moment where she got fed up with arguing with Gordon and walked out on him.
