Café 36 closed its doors shortly after its Kitchen Nightmares episode aired, but the Gilmers’ restaurant had been struggling since the very beginning.
It did not take long for Terry and Carol Gilmer, the sweet old couple that owned the Café 63 bistro and which was featured in the second season of Kitchen Nightmares, to be branded as some of the most sympathetic owners in the history of the show.
But since it has now been well over a decade since this episode first aired and the restaurant shut its doors permanently, it may just be time to take another look at why Café 36 did not make it.
Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares overalls are by no means a magic fix, but it is always sad when one of the restaurants featured on the reality series only stay open a few months after the celebrity chef’s departure.
And unfortunately, in the case of Café 36, it seems as though the restaurant’s Kitchen Nightmares appearance came just a little too late.
Why Café 36 was doomed from the start
Although the Gilmers did not provide much of an explanation for why Café 36 closed down, besides mentioning that the failing economy had taken its toll (Which it had – a local blog called The Business On LaGrange reported that a nearby restaurant called ‘La Pinta’ also closed in the same week in a bid to rebrand and renew the business) and that the Kitchen Nightmares fame had not brought in as many new patrons as they expected, Terry may have revealed the real reason for the restaurant’s eventual closure, just after he bought it.
When Terry spoke to Phil Vettel from the Chicago Tribune in 2006, he admitted that keeping the bistro’s old name had been a mistake.
He said, “If I had it to do over, I would have changed the name instantly,” before he explained that the restaurant’s extended closure between owners, had also not helped business at all.
In the end, it seems like the influx of new business after the airing of the Kitchen Nightmares episode was simply not enough to save a business which had never quite found its feet to begin with.
Terry and Carol’s Café 36 timeline
All in all, the Gilmers were able to keep Café 36’s doors open for just under four years, rounding off the end of the bistro’s 16-year run in LaGrange as follows:
| Date | Event |
| 1993 | Reinhard Barthel opens the original Café 36 |
| November 2005 | Terry and Carol Gilmer take over Café 36 |
| February 2008 | Filming for the “Café 36” episode of Kitchen Nightmares starts |
| January 15, 2009 | “Café 36” Kitchen Nightmares episode airs |
| April, 18 2009 | Café 36 closes down |
What happened to the Gilmers after Café 36 closed down?
Terry and Carol have not been very active online since Café 36 closed. In fact, Carol’s last update on her personal Facebook page dates back to 2014.
However, since a new restaurant called empanadUS moved into Café 36’s old space in June 2013, it is fair to assume that this beloved Kitchen Nightmares couple is now enjoying the retired life and spending more time with their family.
What chef Pinto has been up to since leaving the restaurant
Longtime Kitchen Nightmares fans may remember that one of the biggest changes that Café 36 saw before the restaurant’s final service was that the old executive chef, Pinto, who had coined the term “fresh frozen” in the episode, was fired and replaced.
But as for what chef Pinto did after he was let go from Café 36, the most likely explanation actually comes from his biggest critic, sous chef Barney.
A user named ‘ChefBarney77’ shared a few behind-the-scenes details from the filming of this episode and the aftermath, including the fact that the last he heard, Pinto had been hired as the personal chef for a family in the Chicago suburbs.
Other details that have surfaced from the “Café 36” episode of Kitchen Nightmares
Although there is no real way to verify whether this first-hand account of what really happened at Café 36 came from the real chef Barney, some of the details from this 2009 LTH Forum thread are just too juicy to ignore.
For a start, this user revealed that while a large part of Terry’s narrative on the series was structured around him not knowing much about the restaurant industry, he had actually worked as an executive chef for over 20 years.
He also clarified that his reported “bad attitude” as portrayed on the show, had actually stemmed from a deep dislike for the way chef Pinto ran the kitchen.
