What is the most successful Kitchen Nightmares restaurant?

Pantaleone’s is one of the most successful restaurants to have come out of Kitchen Nightmares and it remains popular and highly-rated to this day.

Although Kitchen Nightmares is a very entertaining show to watch, the success rate of the restaurants that appeared on the show is extremely low.

Fortunately, restaurants like Pantaleone’s in Denver and a few others have managed to use the publicity that they generated from their appearance on the show to keep their restaurants popular and successful to this day.

What happens after a restaurant appears on Kitchen Nightmares?

It is quite entertaining the watch chef Gordon Ramsay hurl creative insults at the chefs and owners of failing restaurants throughout the United States, only to turn around and help that same restaurant to win back to faith of its diners.

However, this is not where the Kitchen Nightmares restaurants’ journeys end.

Unfortunately, although the restaurants featured on Kitchen Nightmares over the years may have seen an uptick in their revenue shortly after their episodes aired, this fame was short-lived.

A shocking 78 percent of the restaurants that were featured on Kitchen Nightmares have closed down since their episodes aired on the show.

What is the most successful Kitchen Nightmares restaurant?

The Kitchen Nightmares success rate is lower than one might expect. Even so, there are a few of the 79 restaurants that appeared on the show during its 92 episodes, which have been able to stand the test of time. These restaurants are still successful to this day.

It can be difficult to determine exactly how successful a restaurant is from an outsider’s perspective.

However, Pantaleone’s is certainly one of the most popular and highest-rated restaurants from the 15 restaurants that were featured on Kitchen Nightmares and which are still open to this day.

Pantaleone’s, is a Denver-based Italian restaurant that has been in business since 1985 and has, over the years, seen both great and not-so-great cycles of revenue.

The restaurant proudly carried the moniker of the “Best Pizza in Denver” when Chef Gordon Ramsay arrived in 2013 to give it a top-to-bottom makeover in the second episode of the seventh season of Kitchen Nightmares.

There is no denying that Chef Gordon Ramsay managed to drag Pete and Paulette Fafalios, the owners of Pantaleone’s, into the modern age by convincing them to update the interior design of the restaurant and to modernise their menu.

Subsequently, it  seems like all of these changes have really helped the restaurant stay successful.

Now, 10 years after Pantaleone’s appeared on Kitchen Nightmares, the restaurant is still receiving mostly positive reviews. Moreover, Pete, the owner, can still be spotted throwing his signature pizza dough behind the counters on most days.

How popular is Pantaleone’s?

Since its appearance on Kitchen Nightmares in 2013, Pantaleone’s is still receiving mostly positive reviews from customers. The restaurant currently has 4.7 out of 5 stars on Google, a 4.5 rating on TripAdvisor, and four out of five stars on Yelp.

Because of its connection to the show, Pantaleone’s is also often still visited by tourists in the Denver area. It is also visited by social media stars who want to see whether the pizza is really as good as the restaurant’s owner claimed on the episode.

What is Pantaleone’s like today?

In an interview in 2019, Pete revealed that Pantaleone’s was still using the same pizza oven that they were using when the restaurant was featured on Kitchen Nightmares.

He went on to say that one customer had calculated that they must have made over a million pizzas in that oven at that point.

Whether this number is accurate or not, the style of pizza, the dough recipe, and the restaurant’s location have not changed since the Kitchen Nightmares episode. This makes it the ideal restaurant for fans of the show to visit.

The other Kitchen Nightmares restaurants which are still open

Besides Pantaleone’s, the only other restaurant from season seven of Kitchen Nightmares that is still open is Zayna Flaming Grill, from the fifth episode.

The other restaurants that were made over on Kitchen Nightmares and are still open to this day include: