How Mangia Mangia Is Doing After Kitchen Nightmares

Sometimes the restaurants Gordon Ramsay visited on "Kitchen Nightmares" were already doomed. Was this the case for Mangia Mangia, an Italian restaurant with a drive-thru window, a bad-tempered head chef, and a bit of an identity crisis?

Ramsay visited the restaurant in Woodland Park, Colorado, on Season 7 of "Kitchen Nightmares." The owner, Julie Watson, was an inexperienced restaurant owner hoping to fill an Italy-sized hole in Woodland Park's local food scene but unfortunately was making all the wrong decisions. Despite Chef Ramsay's help, the failing restaurant still closed for good shortly after the airing of its "Kitchen Nightmares" episode.

During his visit, Chef Ramsay was unimpressed with the restaurant's execution of Italian-American classics like veal piccata and spaghetti and meatballs. He found the food undercooked or served on dirty plateware. "Nothing about this is Italian," Ramsay commented. Most of the food was precooked and microwaved, which Ramsay noted as a major problem. 

Worsening matters, there appeared to be a drug problem in the kitchen. 

Ramsay quickly went to the drawing board to help turn Mangia Mangia into the kind of restaurant that would attract customers, working to improve the front-of-house dining experience while giving the kitchen, staff, and menu serious improvements.

After helping fire and replace the head chef Trevor Peterson — and having a compassionate chat with him about his addiction — Ramsay gave the restaurant a makeover, ditching the microwave and moving the focus to fresh food. Chef Ramsay also helped Julie Watson with her management skills after years of her fast-food mentality.

A family day relaunch was successful, though the bold changes only gave a temporary boost to the restaurant, which closed in November 2014. Some of the restaurant's final Yelp reviews called out the poor quality of the food and service. One reviewer wrote that while "everything was fresh," the food was still lacking and overpriced for what it was. Another person described service so terrible they left the restaurant, writing, "The waitress went back in the kitchen and never did come back out."

The old restaurant location is now home to a Jimmy John's serving up sandwiches out of the same drive-thru window Ramsay wanted to close. 

It appears that former head chef Trevor is doing better these days, commenting on a "Kitchen Nightmares" Facebook video that called him a "Violent Chef" in 2019: "I'm 28 now. With 5 and half years clean! Slayin it!" He appears to be living and working in Colorado Springs. 

Former Mangia Mangia owner Julie Watson has moved into real estate now — she's listed as an agent for "Your Neighborhood Reality" in Woodland Park on LinkedIn and Zillow.