Sam's Mediterranean Kabob Room

What happened after

Family-run Mediterranean restaurant (owner Sam Najjar, purchased 1997) announced its closing in a Patch.com interview published July 16, 2013 ('It didn't work. We didn't do any better than before' -- Najjar), citing competition oversaturation; a secondary source dates the final closure to January 2014.

Closure date on record: 2013

What happened on the show

Sam Najjar's entire staff was his family: his wife and seven grown children, none of whom wanted to be there, all of them working full-time and unpaid, still living under his roof. Five of the kids ambushed Ramsay in his hotel lobby to say the same thing, that their father was the problem, before Ramsay even reached the Monrovia restaurant Sam had worked at since he was a busboy in 1982. Sam, who admitted he did not pay his own children, rated his food a nine and had a menu riddled with spelling mistakes. It did not hold up: a canned-eggplant veggie combo Ramsay called gnarly, a frozen tasteless gyro, and a lamb shank so pale and overboiled he told them to send it back to New Zealand. Ramsay sarcastically dubbed Sam father of the year, and the family bickering, especially between the sons in the kitchen, boiled over almost the moment he finished eating.

After the cameras left

Sam's did not make it much past its moment on television. Najjar announced the closing in a July 2013 local interview, conceding it simply had not worked and that they were doing no better than before, with a secondary account placing the final closure around January 2014. A restaurant kept alive by seven grown children who never wanted the job, in a market Sam felt was oversaturated, ran out of reasons to keep the family tied to it.