Spoiler alert ahead for those who haven’t watched Tuesday’s two-hour finale of “Kitchen Nightmares” featuring what happens at a Warren restaurant.
Lack of leadership, a chef not worthy of wearing a chef’s jacket, under par and underwhelming food.
Add in finding what looks like a flattened dead mouse as well as finding out that the restaurant’s chef, or kitchen manager, says he’s never made mashed potatoes using actual potatoes.
These are just a few of the, we’ll call them mishaps, which plagued the now closed Warren eatery, Firenze Restaurant and Pizzeria, on the final episode of the Fox Networks’ “Kitchen Nightmares” show.
Firenze closed out the current “Kitchen Nightmares” season in a two-hour, two-part finale that aired Tuesday, Sept. 15. The
Warren restaurant was owned by Lewis “Lew” Dutton.
What happened? More on this later. But we will say that the show ended with the restaurant open. Everyone, including the owner, appears happy with the restaurant’s makeover, menu and leadership changes. It wasn’t until weeks later that Firenze abruptly shuttered.
What was good about the show?
The opening scene gave an aerial view of downtown Detroit. Show host Gordon Ramsay chimes in with, “I am in Warren, Michigan,” while traveling along a freeway — presumably Interstate 696.
Ramsay described Warren as a working-class area outside of Detroit full of family-owned restaurants. There are a few clips of area restaurants, including Dan’s Diner and Theo’s Family Restaurant, both in Warren, as well as St. Paul’s United Church on Mound Road and Boff’s Market.
Ramsay appears motoring around in a GMC SUV. We like that, too. After all, this is the Motor City and Ramsay is in GM territory.
Later in the episode, Ramsay and crew take over the kitchen and began cleaning and overhauling the restaurant. There’s a clip of Eastern Market's Del Bene Produce and Ernst Meat and Seafood there to deliver products to the restaurant.
Gordan Ramsay tries the food
Ramsay pulls up to the restaurant saying it looks like a funeral home.
“It looks closed. If the food is anything like the outside of this place, we’re in trouble,” Ramsay says.
The staff knows he’s coming as one of the servers goes into the kitchen and says, “Gordon just walked in.”
In the dining room, Ramsay sits alone at table as restaurant patrons sit at other tables around him. Ramsay starts out ordering items off the menu. He also asks the owner to come out.
Dutton, who’s had three heart attacks in the last nine years, doesn’t want to see the place fail.
Dutton explains to Ramsay that all the sauces and soups are homemade.
First up, Ramsay tries the chicken noodle soup – with no discernable chicken in it.
“Not the best of starts,” Ramsay muttered.
One of the restaurant’s specialties is its alfredo sauce.
Ramsay gets the fettuccini alfredo with shrimp.
“That’s the saddest fettucine alfredo on the planet,” he says. "The pasta is mush, it looks and tastes dated, there’s no texture.”
One of the telltale scenes noting Ramsay’s disappointment in the food is when he tries the mashed potatoes.
“They make the mash here?” Ramsay asks the server. “It’s homemade?”
“No, they’re powdered,” she says.
“Powdered mash? Honestly, I thought it was a bowl of frickin’ ice cream,” Ramsay says.
Powdered mashed, Ramsay says as he dips a fork into the bowl of potatoes.
He tastes and almost immediately spits the potatoes out followed by a “that’s disgusting.”
“If my food is really not that good, I didn’t know it,” owner Lewis says. “The negative feedback was not what we were prepared for.”
Ramsay speaks to the staff about accountability, and his disappointment in the food.
“Within a 3-mile radius of this front door there’s 200 restaurants in the neighborhood,” he said. Honestly, you walk through that door, the legacy of 60 years, they want to taste good food. They want to eat your celebration. There’s no (expletive) call to celebrate here.”
One of the first things Ramsay changes are adding real mashed potatoes. He hauls in 25 pounds of potatoes for the owner’s son and kitchen manager, also named Lewis Dutton.
When Ramsay asks kitchen manager Dutton, “how long for the mash,” Dutton replies that he doesn’t know because he’s never “made them this way.”
“You’ve never made mashed potatoes before?” Ramsay asks.
“Not like this kind,” Lewis Dutton says.
Ramsay asks kitchen manager Dutton to take his chef jacket off.
“Never made a mashed potato in his life and he’s wearing a chef’s jacket,” Ramsay says.
“If you can’t make mashed potatoes, you shouldn’t be near a (bleeped out) kitchen,” Ramsay says later.
While working with the kitchen and with many mishaps, Ramsay shuts everything down and tells servers to get the customers in the dining room out of the restaurant.
Ramsay tells owner Dutton he needs to pivot and start again.
Clearly let down and frustrated, the staff leaves and Ramsay’s crew takes over.
They give the kitchen a good scrubbing from what Ramsay calls “decades of dirt.”
They update the décor, lighting and furniture and add numbers to the tables.
Ramsay updated the menu, saying it's a “home-cooked, fresh modern take on Italian cuisine.” Appetizers include fried polenta and calamari and meatballs. Mains are three pizzas, shrimp bucatini and crispy chicken thigh and lasagna.
As part of the changes, owner Lew promotes a cook to head cook. He also says that customers are going to love the new décor.
Dutton speaks to his staff, telling them he wants to “show Gordon he made a good choice betting on me.”
“I realize now, through this whole experience, I was a large part of the problem. That’s not going to happen anymore,” he says. "I am going to take on leadership.”
In the final few minutes, owner Dutton talks about feeling “beat up” the last couple of years.
“Everything was going downhill. I was the guy that was going to lose Firenze’s restaurant,” he said. “That’s not what I wanted to be known for and now I walk in and, man, we are back baby, we’re back.”
On East 10 Mile Road, Firenze closed shortly after Ramsay’s visit in June 2025. Frank Rocca, a son of the original owners, the late Maria and Pasquale Rocca, confirmed the closure to the Free Press at the time, texting a photo of the sign on Firenze’s door that says it was permanently closed.
On “Kitchen Nightmares," Ramsay works with restaurants that are struggling or have management, food, or other problems. Over a week’s time, Ramsay helps identify what’s wrong with the restaurant’s operations and comes up with a fix.
In June 2025, Ramsay visited longtime Oakland County eatery Boodles Restaurant in Madison Heights as well as Firenze. The episode featuring Boodles aired Tuesday, Aug. 18. Kevin Ferguson, the son of Boodles' owner, said the experience was “intense.”
The Free Press reported in June 2025 that on the Firenze Restaurant and Pizzeria Facebook page (now not available) the family-owned spot announced it had closed. But the post stated the restaurant was reopening with a “freshened up menu,” promising customers that they will be “WOWWED!” by new menu items.
It wasn’t but weeks later that the restaurant abruptly closed. The restaurant’s website last June read: “Firenze July 10, 1964 - June 21, 2025.”
Contact Detroit Free Press food and restaurant writer Susan Selasky and send food and restaurant news and tips to: sselasky@freepress.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @SusanMariecooks. Subscribe to the Eat Drink Freep newsletter for insider scoops on food and dining in metro Detroit.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Gordon Ramsay rips Warren restaurant over powdered mashed potatoes
