PJ's Steakhouse

What happened after

Steakhouse (renamed PJ's Grill during production per spine/Wikipedia) closed in 2010, reportedly before its Feb 4, 2011 episode aired; source does not itself confirm the PJ's Grill rename.

Closure date on record: 2010

What happened on the show

PJ's Steakhouse carried the weight of a dead brother. Joe had named the Queens restaurant for his late sibling PJ, who once owned the same bar, and the loss had flattened him: a contractor with no restaurant experience, he mostly drank at the bar all day while his wife Madalyn begged him to get off the stool. For a steakhouse it offered only two cuts of beef, which baffled Ramsay before the food made things worse. The crab cake was rancid and, alarmingly, contained a piece of plastic, its mango sauce straight from a can; the gorgonzola filet was tough beside inexplicable raw onions; the lobster ravioli came acidic and tart. Chef Eric insisted he got compliments, prompting Ramsay to ask from whom, given the empty room. Madalyn admitted a meal at PJ's averaged two hours, and told Ramsay privately that they had lost their dream house keeping the doors open, because Joe needed the place to hold onto his brother.

After the cameras left

PJ's did not even reach its own premiere as an open restaurant. The Forest Hills location, at 73-11 Yellowstone Boulevard in Queens, reportedly closed in 2010, before the February 2011 episode aired, having been rebranded PJ's Grill during production. A grieving owner drinking through his shifts, running a two-cut steakhouse into deep debt, was one of the show's sadder cases, and the memorial to his brother could not survive the grief driving it.