hotelRamsay's Kitchen Nightmares (UK) · Season 1, Episode 3 · Aired May 11, 2004
The Walnut Tree Inn
Llanddewi Skirrid, Monmouthshire, Wales
Still open. It kept its doors open after the show.
On the show
Season 1, Episode 3 · May 11, 2004 · inn restaurant
Revisited in Series 2 Episode 6 ("The Walnut Tree Revisited", aired 2005-06-28); do not count revisit as a new business.
What happened after
Still operating as a Michelin-starred restaurant under chef Shaun Hill; the operator's own site lists current opening hours and contact details.
What happened on the show
Before he even reached Llanddewi Skirrid, Ramsay laid out the history: the Walnut Tree Inn had thrived under Franco Taruschio and slid into money trouble under its next owner, Francesco Mattioli, a man Ramsay already knew from Francesco's London restaurant-management days. That made the state of the place all the more surprising. There was no head chef. The food was dear and poor, including a seafood stew gritty with sand, and the locals had drifted away. Ramsay helped Francesco hire a new head chef, Spencer Ralph, and rebuild a more sensibly priced menu, then staged a dinner marking the inn's fortieth anniversary with Franco himself among the guests. On the revisit the Michelin star was gone, but the trend had turned: better food, more customers, though prices stayed stubbornly high. Ramsay's parting line was blunt, that Francesco had to bring the prices down if he wanted the inn to survive.
After the cameras left
This one is the rare full survivor. The Walnut Tree Inn is still trading, now a Michelin-starred restaurant under chef Shaun Hill, with current opening hours and contact details on its own site. We hold that at high confidence. Two decades on from an episode that found the kitchen chefless and the regulars gone, the Llanddewi Skirrid inn has not just endured but climbed back to the top tier, which makes it one of the genuine long-run successes in the British run of the show.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.