Zocalo

What happened after

Mexican restaurant closed its doors for the holidays and never reopened in January 2013. Owner Greg Russell owed approximately $70,000 in unpaid US federal taxes plus $39,000 in personal debt.

Closure date on record: 2013-01

What happened on the show

Greg Russell woke before dawn, drove his son to school, hit the produce market, and worked his Philadelphia Mexican restaurant Zocalo until nearly midnight, seven days a week, and had not taken a day off in over a year. His wife Mary, who had met him working the tortilla station before they bought the place in 2008, now worked three nights a week and mostly used them to complain about him. They were 750,000 dollars in debt, and Mary had told Greg that if he could not provide for the family she would move back to her native Mexico. The food was not carrying any of that weight: a greasy queso fundido Ramsay said he could feel clogging his arteries, a salty chile relleno with rubbery unmelted cheese, bland unseasoned cochinita pibil, and a molcajete he said looked like something out of Harry Potter. Even his waitress admitted she never ate there.

After the cameras left

Zocalo closed for the holidays in January 2013 and simply never reopened. By then Greg Russell owed roughly 70,000 dollars in unpaid federal taxes on top of tens of thousands in personal debt. A man working himself into the ground seven days a week, propping up a University City restaurant that a struggling marriage could barely support, finally ran out of both money and road, and the doors that shut for a holiday break stayed shut.