Rico, who was the co-owner of the DownCity restaurant from season four of Kitchen Nightmares, is now working as a real-estate agent.
Longtime Kitchen Nightmares fans have certainly seen a wide range of business partnerships over the years, but few have made a lasting impression quite like DownCity’s owners, Abby Cabral and Rico Conforti, who made an appearance in the fourth season of the series all the way back in 2011.
Abby has now gone down in Kitchen Nightmares history as one of the most stubborn restaurant owners ever featured on the show (and one of the only owners to kick the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay out of her restaurant multiple times during the episode). However, there is no denying that she and Rico made a very good team.
Unfortunately, their strong friendship and even Ramsay’s emergency intervention methods were simply not enough to keep DownCity in business.
So the restaurant closed its doors just a few months after the Kitchen Nightmares episode had first aired.
What Rico has been up to since DownCity closed
Where Abby was clearly DownCity’s more rambunctious owner, Rico quickly became a favorite among fans of the show for his soft-spoken and calm approach to the true chaos that is the Kitchen Nightmares format.
And now that it has been more than a decade since this episode aired, Rico has managed to incorporate this management style in an entirely new industry – the real-estate industry.
Rico is now the Vice President and Senior Loan officer at BayCoast Mortgage, which operates throughout the East Coast.
Moreover, according to his Facebook page, he even set a company record for the biggest purchase ($5.25 million) in May of 2022.
What happened at DownCity after Gordon Ramsay left?
Ramsay actually visited DownCity again later in 2011 to film the “Revisited No. 6” episode, which aired as part of Kitchen Nightmares’ fifth season.
At this stage, Abby had been very proud of the influx of business that DownCity had seen, and told Gordon that their business had improved by at least 33 percent.
Unfortunately, it seems like the business died down just as quickly as it had picked up, as DownCity closed down before the years was even over.
DownCity’s short rollercoaster-ride to dissolution can be summarized as follows:
| Date | Event |
| 2005 | Abby and Rico bought DownCity |
| August and December, 2010 | The crew started taping for Kitchen Nightmares |
| March 11, 2011 | “DownCity” Kitchen Nightmares episode airs |
| October 21, 2011 | “Revisited No. 6” Kitchen Nightmares episode airs |
| December 10, 2011 | DownCity closes its doors permanently |
Rico is actually the one who convinced Abby to be on the show
Abby told Deborah Allard from WickedLocal.com in 2011 that she felt less confident that she may have seemed on screen when Ramsay first showed up to DownCity.
She said “I didn’t want anyone coming in here and telling me what I was doing wrong. It was exciting and really scary.”
Although Abby ended up taking the brunt of Ramsay’s scrutiny over throughout the episode, the Providence Monthly reported that it was actually Rico who pushed her to do the show in the first place.
This would perhaps also explain why Abby did not hesitate to kick Ramsay to the curb when she felt like his not-so-friendly advice was uncalled for.
The reason why DownCity closed down
Abby bid DownCity adieu in a message posted to the restaurant’s website which read “”I want to thank everyone and anyone that has ever walked through the doors of DOWNCITY. What owning DOWNCITY has meant to me–words cannot describe.”
And although this message did not provide the exact reason for DownCity’s sudden closure, it does not take much to figure out that it was probably a combination of DownCity’s financial troubles (which Abby had described as a “slump” prior to Ramsay’s arrival) and consistent poor reviews, which ultimately led to the restaurant’s downfall.
What Abby has been up to since DownCity closed down
It is difficult to mention one owner of DownCity, and what he has been up to since the restaurant closed, without mentioning the other as well.
It turns out that Abby has been using her more direct style of management in her new career path after DownCity too.
Abby signed on as a personal trainer at Total Fitness, a gym which is located in Swansea, Massachusetts after they closed DownCity.
And, if she runs her training classes like she used to run her restaurant, then they are likely to be very effective workouts.
However, the Total Fitness Facebook page has not posted about her classes since 2020, so she may have moved to something else by now.
