Kingston Cafe

What happened after

Restaurant closed in 2018; owners pivoted to a catering business afterward.

Closure date on record: 2018

What happened on the show

A radiologist and former Olympic athlete for Jamaica, Dr. Una Morris opened Kingston Cafe in Pasadena because she loved to cook, then micromanaged it into the ground and insisted the entire staff address her as Dr. Morris. Her son Keone, who ran the front and had begged her to bring Ramsay in, rated her difficulty a 35 on a scale of ten, which made Ramsay slam on the brakes of the car. She had written the menu herself over her own head chef, and it showed: the Jamaican patties were gross with raw pastry on the veggie version, the jerk chicken dry and cold on suspiciously symmetrical rice, the oxtail fatty and bland. When Ramsay called the food an embarrassment to Jamaica, she lectured him that jerk chicken is meant to be dry, and he corrected her that a dry rub is not the same as dry food, then told her he was not there to flatter her.

After the cameras left

Kingston Cafe outran many of its castmates, staying open until 2018 before the owners closed the restaurant and shifted into catering. The 333 South Fair Oaks Avenue address in Pasadena lost its Jamaican dining room. A gifted, headstrong owner who insisted on doing everything herself, down to writing a menu over her own chef, ran the place for years on sheer will before finally stepping back from the dinner rush.