Blackberry's

What happened after

Soul food/catering-family restaurant closed in 2013, about a year after its Sept 2011 episode.

Closure date on record: 2013

What happened on the show

Shelly had been a successful caterer before pouring her family's money into Blackberry's, a Plainfield soul food restaurant she was convinced was spectacular, right down to sixteen cooks crammed into a kitchen with no system or leadership and 200,000 dollars in debt she could not explain. She refused to hear criticism. Ramsay found the smothered pork chop dry, the mac and cheese bland and possibly microwaved, and the chitlins so bad he asked the staff to pray before he tried them, then spat them out and was sick in the bathroom; only her mother Mary's red velvet cake won praise. The strangest turn came when a mouse appeared during service and the general manager, Shelly's fiance James, accused Ramsay of planting it for the cameras. Shelly tried to pull out of the show entirely before her mother overruled her, James backed down and apologized, and Ramsay agreed to stay.

After the cameras left

Blackberry's did not convert its moment into survival. The Plainfield soul food restaurant at 500 Watchung Avenue closed in 2013, about a year after its September 2011 episode. A family that had bet everything on a first-time restaurateur who would not listen, buried in debt with a kitchen of sixteen and nobody in charge, ran out of runway, and no successor took the space under the name.