Finn McCool's

What happened after

Irish pub was sold and closed in 2009.

Closure date on record: 2009

What happened on the show

Retired detective Buddy had sunk his savings into Finn McCool's, a Westhampton Irish pub with surprisingly little Irish food and a chef, his son Brian, whose confidence far outran his cooking. Buddy hoped Ramsay would humble him. The food did most of that work: Ramsay disliked the spring roll, rejected a salmon that did not taste like salmon, and bolted to the bathroom to be sick after the greasy shepherd's pie. During a service he had stacked with local firefighters as guests, sous chef Francis dropped a chicken wing on the floor and moved to refry it, explaining that the fryer would sterilize anything that fell in, a theory Ramsay relayed to a stunned Buddy. Frozen vegetables and clams that were not fresh, on Long Island no less, rounded out the picture. Ramsay taught Brian his own shepherd's pie recipe, which the room preferred, to the young chef's embarrassment, while Buddy admitted he could not even pay himself.

After the cameras left

Ramsay's humbling did not save the pub. Finn McCool's, on County Road 31 in Westhampton Beach, was sold and shut down in 2009, two years after the episode. Buddy's retirement gamble, staffed by his own sons and buried in debt he could not dig out of, ended the way the numbers always threatened. No Irish revival took its place in the reporting.