Down City

What happened after

American comfort-food restaurant closed in 2011, about a year after its March 2011 episode; Circe Restaurant & Bar has occupied the space as of 2024 (4-star Yelp per source).

Closure date on record: 2011

What happened on the show

The bad room service at Ramsay's Providence hotel, it turned out, came from the very restaurant he had come to fix. Abby, who co-owned Down City with her friend Rico, rated her own food a perfect ten and told Ramsay that a customer as picky as him was one she would fire immediately, apparently a habit of hers. The comfort food lived down to her welcome: soggy calamari tossed in sauce after frying, nachos billed on the menu as a party in your mouth that Ramsay called more of a funeral, and a meatloaf he described as lukewarm chunks of crap that was not even hot. Every critique drew defensiveness and, eventually, cursing. Ramsay flatly told her he did not trust her opinion when she offered menu suggestions. The staff privately confirmed she was always like this, which was much of the reason Rico had called the show in the first place.

After the cameras left

Down City closed in 2011, about a year after its March episode. The 50 Weybosset Street space in Providence has since housed Circe Restaurant and Bar, in place as of 2024. A co-owner who fired her own customers and rated her cooking a ten proved hard to move, and the comfort-food restaurant she defended so fiercely could not outlast her certainty that nothing was wrong.