What Happened to Bazzini After Kitchen Nightmares? (Ridgewood, NJ)

Bazzini was a small Italian restaurant that chef Paul Bazzini and his wife Leslie ran in Ridgewood, New Jersey, in a dining room previously home to several earlier restaurants at the same Oak Street address, according to Reality TV Updates and a contemporaneous Ridgewood Patch review. By the time of Gordon Ramsay's 2009 visit, the restaurant was open only in the evenings, financially propped up by Leslie's income, and struggling after five years in business; Ramsay found the restaurant locked when he first arrived and had to leave a note for Paul. Recap sources describe a lunch service in which Ramsay was served a cold, bland fettuccine pesto, an overcooked chicken Milanese, a gluey mushroom risotto, and a greasy almond-crusted tilapia, with the standout being desserts from pastry chef Sharyn.

A dinner service later that day fared little better: crab cakes had been pre-cooked the day before and reheated, tickets ran over an hour behind, and returned dishes piled up. Ramsay worked individually with Paul on a pasta-focused menu the next morning, and a Ridgewood Patch reviewer who dined there shortly after the episode's February 2010 broadcast described the food itself as good, while criticizing service and reservation handling. For the relaunch, Ramsay's team redesigned the interior, trimmed the menu from 27 items to 15 focused mainly on fresh pasta, and Sharyn was promoted to sous chef on the spot after the original sous chef left partway through the relaunch service; the night was ultimately well received by diners, per Reality TV Updates' recap.

The improvement did not last. According to Reality TV Updates and a separate Gazette Review account, Bazzini closed sometime in 2010, not long after the episode aired, though neither source gives a precise closing date. A Season 4 "Revisited" episode that aired February 11, 2011 shows Ramsay arriving to a dark, empty restaurant and confirming with Sharyn, by phone, that the business was now permanently closed. Sharyn went on to start her own bakery, The Cake Lady, in Harriman, New York, and Paul Bazzini has since worked as an executive chef at other New Jersey restaurants, most recently Let's Meat Steakhouse in River Vale, according to a 2022 North Jersey news item cited by Reality TV Updates. A different restaurant, described in later updates as a Mediterranean cuisine concept, occupies the Ridgewood address as of a 2023 fan-site update.