Trobiano’s closed down only a few days after the restaurant’s Kitchen Nightmares episode first premiered, but the Trobiano family seems to be doing well.
There have been quite a few utterly disastrous dinner services featured on the celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant-rescue series, Kitchen Nightmares, over the years.
However, Trobiano’s, the struggling Italian restaurant that Ramsay visited all the way back for the second season of the show in 2008, was the only restaurant on the show which had a service so chaotic, that they actually ended up setting off the fire alarm.
But, despite this episode’s rather bumpy start, it actually ended on quite a high note.
Not only did Ramsay work his magic to transform everything from the restaurant’s outdated décor, to its dirty kitchen – but he also spoiled Trobiano’s owners, the now Anthony and Tiffany Trobiano, with an impromptu wedding to top it all off.
What happened at Trobiano’s after Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares intervention
Unfortunately though, it seems like this good fortune did not last after Ramsay and his Kitchen Nightmares team packed their things, as Trobiano’s ultimately closed down just months after its big Kitchen Nightmares makeover.
Though it does seem like the extended Trobiano family was able to get back on their feet after their beloved family restaurant failed.
Anthony and Tiffany are still seemingly living a fairly happy life, more than 15 years after this episode first debuted on television.
Breaking down Trobiano’s quick closure
The reality of the Kitchen Nightmares franchise is that Ramsay often arrives at these businesses when they are already drowning in debt. So his advice and suggestions often provide a solution which is just too little and too late.
In the case of Trobiano’s, the restaurant was already half a million dollars in debt when Ramsay arrived.
And with Tiffany’s parents’ (who are also Trobiano’s other co-owners’) house and retirement on the line, it is really no wonder that the restaurant ended up closing down only about a month after the Kitchen Nightmares episode aired.
Trobiano’s full Kitchen Nightmares timeline can be summarized as follows:
| Date | Event |
| February 2008 | Ramsay and the Kitchen Nightmares crew arrive in Great Neck, New York to start filming |
| September 25, 2008 | The “Trobiano’s” episode premieres |
| October 2008 | Locals start reporting that the restaurant is closed on sites like Chowhound. |
The real reason why Trobiano’s closed down
Trobiano’s closed down so quickly after its reality television appearance, that there was really no time to see whether Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares intervention would have helped the restaurant at all.
The restaurant closed so quickly, in fact, that the Trobiano family never even put out any kind of announcement or statement informing the public of what was happening.
And while it is unlikely that fans of the series will ever get any clarity on what exactly led to Trobiano’s sudden closure, there are some rumors that the restaurant actually got in trouble with the IRS.
One user shared on a now-deleted Chowhound community forum that the old Trobiano’s had been covered in orange stickers explaining that the restaurant had been seized after failing to pay its taxes.
But since this has never been corroborated, the real reason for Trobiano’s closure remains a mystery.
What Anthony Trobiano did after the restaurant closed
While Anthony’s own restaurant did not quite work out the way he had planned, he did manage to land a few chef positions at other restaurants after Trobiano’s closure.
This includes a chef position at Speranza Food Studio, which also closed in 2011.
After Speranza Food Studio closed down, Anthony became the executive chef Cirella’s Restaurant, which is an Italian restaurant located in Melville, Long Island.
It seems as though Anthony also returned to school in 2014 to work on earning his Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Walden University.
However, Anthony has now moved on from the culinary industry. According to his LinkedIn profile, he is currently working as the Vice President of Sales at Pacific Stone.
Anthony and Tiffany are actually still married
Having your marriage start out in the dining room of your struggling family business, in front of the acclaimed chef Gordon Ramsay and broadcast over national television is certainly unconventional, but it seems like it all worked out for Anthony and Tiffany in the end.
Tiffany’s personal Facebook page reveals that she and Anthony have now actually had a few children together and they seem to be living quite a happy life together all these years later.
But in a much sadder turn of events, a deep-dive into Tiffany’s Facebook page also revealed that her mother, Pat (who viewers may remember from this episode) passed away quite recently.
