Is 3 Southern Girls Still Open? Kitchen Nightmares Update (Jefferson, LA)

3 Southern Girls, a Southern-comfort-food restaurant in Jefferson, Louisiana founded by chef Gabrielle "Gabi" Smith in 2020, appeared in season 9, episode 5 of Kitchen Nightmares, "3 Southern Girls," which aired February 4, 2025. Smith learned to cook from her grandfather, who had grown up in the same Jefferson neighborhood where the restaurant now stands but, because of segregation, had not been able to walk through its doors as a customer; she opened the restaurant partly in his memory. The business thrived in its first years, but a car accident left Smith's son hospitalized, and she closed the restaurant for about a month while covering staff pay from her own savings.

As shown in the episode, Smith never fully recovered financially or operationally afterward: she took on nearly every task herself, resisted delegating to her sister Tia and her best friend and cook, Monchel Parker-Johnson, and her exhaustion showed in slower kitchen turnaround and food that strayed from her grandfather's original recipes. Ramsay found the cornbread crumbly, the shrimp underseasoned, and the gumbo lacking depth, and traced the decline to Smith cutting corners under the strain of running the kitchen and front of house alone. Ramsay arranged for Smith to meet former NFL linebacker Craig Robertson at the Caesars Superdome, where he framed running a restaurant as a team effort no single person can carry alone, a message Smith said helped her see the value of delegating.

Ramsay's team refreshed the restaurant's decor and reintroduced Smith's grandmother's original recipes, including her red beans and rice, made with the Cajun "holy trinity" of onion, celery and bell pepper added raw near the end of cooking. At the relaunch, Smith began stepping back to let her staff run service, and wait times and food quality improved as a result. Two months after Ramsay's visit, the restaurant was again busy with regulars and new customers, according to a recap by entertainment site Moviedelic (2025-03-27); Smith had continued working as part of a team rather than alone, and the restaurant had begun accepting online orders and prioritizing fresh ingredients.

The restaurant celebrated its fifth anniversary in early 2025 and, per the same account, was looking to hire an additional restaurant manager and kitchen staff. Its red beans and rice recipe has since led to a collaboration with the New Orleans bean brand Camellia Beans. As of research in September 2026, the restaurant's listing pages showed continuing reviews and no indication of closure, though no single 2026-dated news account was located.