5 Occasions a Celebrity Chef Restaurant Failed

Even if you’re fortunate enough to advance in the kitchen and become the head chef, you’ll still be relatively unknown.

Although some figures suggest that up to 90% of restaurants fail within their first year, the actual percentages are probably closer to 30%. Still, that translates to one in three newly opened restaurants closing their doors in just one year. Given the amount of money required to start a restaurant, those odds aren’t the best.

One of the most renowned “celebrity chefs” in recent memory was the late, great Anthony Bourdain. But by the time he became famous, Bourdain had left the kitchen, unlike many of his contemporaries. Years of working as a chef in New York City allowed Bourdain to witness the rapid opening and closure of innumerable eateries. He now had a negative, if not realistic, outlook on operating a restaurant as a result of the incident.

“It can be a strange and awful disease to want to operate a restaurant. What drives so many otherwise reasonable people to have such a harmful urge? Why would anyone want to pour their hard-earned money down a hole that, statistically at least, will almost certainly turn out to be dry when they have worked hard, saved money, and frequently succeeded in other fields?” In his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential, he wrote.

“What treacherous spongiform bacteria have so muddled people’s minds that they wait there on the tracks watching the lights of the approaching train while fully aware that it will eventually run them over? I still don’t know after all these years in the industry.”

While Bourdain may have fled the food industry, many others haven’t. Here are five well-known chefs whose establishments failed.

Gordon Ramsay, who gained prominence on television, is perhaps most known for his insults directed at struggling restaurant owners, but he is also an excellent cook. Ramsay runs a number of popular restaurants in the UK and the US and has accumulated an astonishing 17 Michelin stars over his culinary career.

So why is he included in this list? Even the best hitters occasionally miss the mark, and Ramsay’s Fat Cow restaurant, which debuted in 2012 in one of Los Angeles’ busiest shopping malls, was one of them. First, the West Coast restaurant received a negative assessment in LA Weekly termed “Fat Cow” False Hope. The New Grove Restaurant by Gordon Ramsay is disappointing,” Ouch.

Ramsay was served with a lawsuit by Contractor

The Fat Cow was destroyed by more than just negative reviews. Ramsay was served with a lawsuit by the restaurant’s contractor less than a year after it first opened, claiming unpaid debts. Then, only a few months later, workers at Fat Cow sued Ramsay on their own behalf for unpaid pay and allegedly failing to provide meal breaks. Discuss Hell’s Kitchen. Ramsay kindly shut down Fat Cow in March 2014 when a rival eatery with the same name threatened legal action if it didn’t change its name.

Ramsay’s new fish and chips restaurant in NYC is already receiving negative reviews, so he might be in for another restaurant headache soon.

Cat Cora, the first female Iron Chef, made her television debut in 1999. Her trailblazing work in women’s culinary television was offset by the fact that her New York City restaurant Fatbird closed less than a year after its official opening.

On paper, Fatbird in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District sounded like a wonderful concept because it served comfort cuisine with a Southern flavor, such chicken and biscuits, but the restaurant received a lot of negative feedback in its brief seven-month existence.

Fatbird received just two out of a possible five stars from Time Out, and Eater’s Robert Sietsema informed readers that the oysters were “repulsive” and the chicken “flavorless.”

A $400,000 lawsuit Cora brought against her business partner in the endeavor for allegedly not paying an agreed-upon consulting fee served as the death knell for Fatbird. Only a few weeks after the case was initiated, Fatbird permanently shuttered its doors.

Initially making her TV debut as Mario Batali’s sous chef on Iron Chef, Anne Burrell has since hosted her own programs on The Food Network, including Secrets of a Restaurant Chef and Worst Cooks in America. She made her first foray into the restaurant industry in 2017 when she opened Phil and Anne’s Good Time Lounge in Brooklyn, New York.

Masaharu Morimoto is not one of those famous chefs who is all show and little substance. Morimoto, one of the original Iron Chefs, has a resume that is rather impressive. Michelin stars, James Beard trophies, San Pellegrino’s “Top 100 Restaurants in the World” list—done he’s it all.

Naturally, foodies and culinary journalists alike were eager to experience Morimoto’s new New York City restaurant when Tribeca Canvas opened in 2012. The restaurant’s interior even had a surreal, forest-like décor and was advertised as a change from Morimoto’s customary Asian-centric cuisine toward “American comfort food.”

Until they experienced the meal, Tribeca Canvas appeared to be a definite thing. Numerous neighborhood publications gave the establishment negative reviews.

Masaharu Morimoto Resturant Recipe

Every overwrought dish on this menu is an amalgam of international fast-casual concepts, according to Tejal Rao of The Village Voice. “If human civilization had been destroyed and the earth was a cultural wasteland, if all a young cook had to go on was a recipe collection preserved by T.G.I. Friday’s, then he might come up with this flabby mash-up of a menu,” she wrote. “Corn dogs ($9.50) are actually weenies in too large, spongy fat suits of batter, slathered with gochujang-flavored ketchup. You’ve enjoyed corn dogs out of a package better.”

Even though Morimoto attempted to relaunch Tribeca Canvas under a new name, that second attempt only endured for three months. In less than a year, the restaurant had been totally closed.