Michon's

What happened after

Smokehouse/BBQ (opened 2002 by Al and Gaye Wilson) is no longer open. After the episode the business opened a second downtown Atlanta location (161 Peachtree Center Ave, March 2012) which was later destroyed by fire; the original College Park location subsequently closed in 2014.

Closure date on record: 2014

What happened on the show

Al Wilson had run Michon's, a family barbecue smokehouse in the shadow of Atlanta's airport, since 2002, but failing health had pulled him out of the kitchen and no one had filled the gap. He wanted his daughter Natalie to step up; Natalie described herself, to Ramsay's disbelief, as more of a human resources person and was stunned to hear her father thought she could do far more. Ramsay ordered nearly the whole menu and it was a graveyard of dry: wings with good sauce but parched meat, cornbread he compared to the Sahara, ribs and brisket dry enough to pass for beef jerky, black-eyed peas he dubbed black-eyed bullets, canned baked beans, and cloyingly sweet collard greens. Only the rotten tomatoes in the salad rated worse than dry. Feeling cornered, Natalie retreated to complain to her father that Ramsay had thrown her not under the bus but up under the train.

After the cameras left

Michon's tried to grow at exactly the wrong moment. After the episode the family opened a second location in downtown Atlanta in March 2012, which was later destroyed by a fire, and the original College Park smokehouse closed in 2014. A barbecue restaurant that lost its way when its capable founder fell ill, and whose next generation was reluctant to take the reins, could not sustain the expansion, and the Wilson family's spot near the airport is gone.