This place, the La Gondola Restaurant & Hotel, was featured in a 2005 episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (which for the unaware is a show featuring Gordon Ramsay attempting to turn around the fortunes of struggling restaurants, with limited success). The La Gondola was opened as a restaurant in a large converted property in 1968, with capacity for 125 diners and 21 hotel rooms. The last owner bought it on a whim because of the happy memories she had there as a child, despite having no restaurant or hotelier experience whatsoever. The entire place hadn't been changed since the 1960s and was completely stuck in the past, with an ageing (and dying!) clientele which had steadily dwindled.
Despite Gordon's efforts to change around the restaurant, the head chef left immediately after filming finished, and although the new chef was competent and the food was of a good standard, the business went into liquidation in 2007.
Since 2007 the building has sat slowly decaying, the water damage inside is extreme, and other than the main restaurant room it is almost unrecognisable. The lobby seemed to have become a local favourite spot for drug users to discard their used needles too which was...not nice.
The building was sold a couple of months ago, but as of yet nothing has happened.
Someone kindly uploaded the entire sorry episode onto Youtube here -
Cool shots, it looked like it would have been quite the beauty back in the day.
I can't stand Ramsay, he makes me cringe. He did a restaurant on his show in my little hometown in Massachusetts. He had them change their menu from their traditional options to fancier stuff, the patrons (myself included) hated the new options and the restaurant eventually switched back to their old menu and has been doing better since ditching Ramsay's ideas back in 2012.
Nice shots! I just watched this episode of kitchen nightmares last week so this is pretty neat to see. Shame the building is completely decayed. I’m sure it will all be torn down to make way for something new.
Ethics
