Vic from Fiesta Sunrise has not opened another restaurant yet, but his stepdaughter, Patti, is still working in the hospitality industry.
Fans and viewers never tune in to watch a new episode of Chef Gordon Ramsay’s hit show, Kitchen Nightmares, expecting to see a functional (or even clean) restaurant.
But Fiesta Sunrise, the Mexican restaurant which Ramsay visited in the 10th episode of Kitchen Nightmares’ second season, seemed slightly worse off than most of the other restaurants profiled on the series.
What happened at Fiesta Sunrise after Gordon Ramsay’s visit
Between the taped-over menus, the free tequila jug by the door, the old chips that were added to new patrons’ plates and the now-infamous trashcan filled with refried beans, it is really no wonder that this restaurant did not make it in the long-run.
Ramsay even unceremoniously dumped out the trashcan filled with refried beans in the middle of the restaurant.
Some savvy internet sleuthing has revealed that Patti, who was mainly responsible for bankrolling Fiesta Sunrise, but could not get her stepfather Vic to take any of her suggestions on-board, is still working in the hospitality industry. But there has not been any real update on what happened to Vic after the restaurant closed down.
However, since Patti seemingly works for a non-family-related business called Fiesta Mexico now, it seems as though Vic finally stopped opening new restaurants after his first restaurant, Fiesta Garibaldi, and his second attempt, Fiesta Sunrise, both ended up failing.
A rundown of Kitchen Nightmares’ most dysfunctional families
While you may be tempted to assume that Vic plunging his stepdaughter and her husband into about $850,000 of debt in just over a year would land this family high on the list of Kitchen Nightmares’ most dysfunctional families, this is not the most broken family dynamic seen on the show.
Some of the other honorable mentions for Kitchen Nightmares’ most dysfunctional families, include:
| Restaurant | Kitchen Nightmares episode | Description |
| La Frite | Season 4, episode 11 | The bickering siblings Alex and Celine basically stopped speaking to each other during shifts |
| Luigi’s D’Italia | Season 5, episode 4 | Brothers, Tony and Luigi, needed to resort to working on separate nights, because they just could not get on the same page |
| Burger Kitchen | Season 5, episode 6 and 7 | Alan Saffron used his son Daniel’s $250,000 inheritance to fund his restaurant |
| Sam’s Mediterranean Kabob Room | Season 6, episode 9 | Sam Najarr forced his entire family to work at the restaurant, in exchange for free boarding at his home. |
How long was Fiesta Sunrise open?
By the time that Ramsay and the Kitchen Nightmares film crew arrived West Nyack to observe and change Fiesta Sunrise for the better, the restaurant had only been open for about 18 months (which could probably explain why the old restaurant’s sign was still up when Ramsay walked through the front door.
And unfortunately, Fiesta Sunrise closed its doors quite unexpectedly near the end of 2008 before the episode even premiered on television.
All in all, Fiesta Sunrise was only ever really open for business for about two years before its eventual foreclosure.
It has now joined a rather small list of restaurants that closed down before they could even benefit from the publicity that their Kitchen Nightmares fame would bring.
Some of the other restaurants on this list include the Black Pearl (from season two), Sushi-Ko (from season three), Zocalo (from season five) and Tavolini (from season four).
The real reason why Fiesta Sunrise closed down
Although there has always been an ongoing debate about whether Ramsay’s suggested changes help or hinder the restaurants that he visits for Kitchen Nightmares, Fiesta Sunrise’s closure has little to do with the celebrity chef’s intervention.
Nyack News & Views reported in 2008 that Fiesta Sunrise was actually seized due to a failure to pay its back taxes.
And unfortunately, this is not the first time that the restaurant had gotten into trouble with the IRS, as it had already been seized once before in 2007, and under very similar circumstances.
Patti’s new job
Most of the family members who were in charge of running Fiesta Sunrise when Ramsay visited have chosen to keep their personal lives fairly private.
But it seems as though Patti has been able to find success in a new business-venture all these years later.
The Facebook page for an Orangeburg-based Mexican restaurant, called Fiesta Mexican, confirms that Patti was part of its staff as recently as November 2022.
Since Fiesta Mexico has managed to maintain a fairly good rating of 3.5 out of 5-stars on TripAdvisor, it seems like this business is fairing much better than Fiesta Sunrise did.
