Bella Luna from Kitchen Nightmares closed down just months after Gordon Ramsay’s visit, due to a dispute with the landlord.
The Bella Luna episode from the seventh season of Kitchen Nightmares featured an Italian restaurant which was on the brink of complete failure.
And even though it seemed like Bella Luna would thrive at the end of the episode, its owner Rosaria Scollo, later revealed that it had closed down due to a dispute with the landlord, before the episode even aired.
The Kitchen Nightmares “Bella Luna” episode
Gordon Ramsay has attempted to save dozens of restaurants in the first seven seasons of Kitchen Nightmares, but there are a few restaurants that always stand out in the minds of fans.
Bella Luna, which was featured in the penultimate episode of the show’s seventh season, is one such a restaurant.
During this episode, Ramsay visits the Bella Luna Italian restaurant in Easton, Pennsylvania, only to find that the mother and sons, who are in charge of the daily operations of the restaurant, have no real experience in the hospitality industry.
They had been spending most of their time trying to shift the blame for the issues at the restaurant.
Why Bella Luna from Kitchen Nightmares closed down
Throughout the Bella Luna episode of Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsay got to work showing the owner, Rosaria Scollo and her two sons, Gianfranco and Maurizio, the error of their ways.
Thereafter, he introduced a brand-new simplified menu and a refreshed interior just before the final service.
By the end of the episode, Bella Luna had started turning its horrible reputation around, and the restaurant seemed to be well on its way to establishing a more stable business model.
However, Bella Luna officially closed its doors in November of 2013, just three and a half months after Ramsay had visited the restaurant and before the “Bella Luna” episode even made it to air.
It is not completely unheard of for the restaurants featured on Kitchen Nightmares to struggle to make ends meet, even after Ramsay’s changes were implemented. However, it seems like Ramsay and the show had nothing to do with Bella Luna’s sudden closure.
In a surprising twist, which seemed more fitting for a scripted daytime opera than a reality series update, Scollo explained in a 2014 interview that they never even really had a chance to see whether the boom in business which Ramsay’s changes had caused would last, as a dispute with the landlord ultimately forced them to vacate the premises.
According to Scollo, she had planned to host a big live screening to celebrate the airing of the “Bella Luna” Kitchen Nightmares episode, but she was instead forced to watch the episode from her home since the restaurant had already been closed down.
What happened with the dispute between Rosaria Scollo and the landlord?
Scollo initially claimed that the landlord of the building in which Bella Luna was located was falsely claiming that she had defaulted on her lease, because they were planning to sell the property.
However, the landlord’s daughter Tina Gasparetti, disputed Scollo’s claim, stating that Scollo had been behind on her rent for multiple months.
Later she even added that Bella Luna had gotten in trouble with the Pennsylvania State Police Department for serving alcohol with an expired liquor license, before the closure.
Has Bella Luna been replaced?
Even though Scollo initially promised that “Bella Luna’s not dead yet” after the restaurant’s closure in 2013, the family has yet to open a second restaurant in a new location.
However, it did not take long for another Italian eatery, called “DeLorenzo’s Italian Restaurant” to open in Bella Luna’s old location.
DeLorenzo’s Italian Restaurant also eventually closed down, but this former Bella Luna location is now occupied by yet another Italian-inspired restaurant, which is called “Tony’s Pizza & Restaurant.”
Where to watch new episodes of Kitchen Nightmares
The Bella Luna episode (and the restaurant’s swift closure) happened almost a decade ago, and although it is always fun to re-watch the drama-filled episodes from the first seven seasons of Kitchen Nightmares, fans now have even more new content to look forward to.
Fox announced in May 2023 that Kitchen Nightmares would be returning to its Monday-evening line-up for an eighth season on September 25, 2023.
These new episodes will air live on the channel at 8 p.m. ET, but they will also be available to stream a day later on Hulu.
This means that fans of the reality series will finally get to watch Ramsay and his signature confrontational approach as he visits, inspects and updates more failing restaurants all across the United States very soon.
