What Happened to Catfish Cabin After 24 Hours to Hell and Back?

Catfish Cabin was a Memphis seafood restaurant that had served the city since 1971, run by owner Charles alongside his daughter Rachel, with longtime cook Rose leading the kitchen. By the time Gordon Ramsay's crew visited in November 2018, the business had been declining for roughly a decade, and a longtime manager, Geraldine, answered only to Charles rather than to Rachel, limiting his daughter's authority. Ramsay, dining in disguise as a construction worker, found outdated decor, a foul kitchen odor, greasy hush puppies, soggy catfish, and an undercooked hamburger.

Hidden-camera footage shown to staff and customers documented grime built up beneath cooking equipment, cross-contamination, pest activity, and spoiled beef and catfish sitting in the walk-in cooler. Footage also showed the manager taking cash from the register with no business record to justify it, which led Charles to agree she should be let go once confronted with the evidence; Rachel handled the actual termination. For the relaunch, Ramsay's team installed new fryers and updated kitchen equipment, refreshed the dining room with a nautical theme, and had Charles formally hand daily leadership of the restaurant to Rachel.

The relaunch dinner had a rocky start, including at least one undercooked piece of chicken, but the kitchen recovered and closed out the night on a positive note, with Rachel taking ownership of front-of-house decisions for the first time. In the months after the episode aired in January 2019, an account on realitytvupdates.com states the restaurant's mac and cheese became a bestseller, and that Charles stepped back from day-to-day operations to spend more time with his grandchildren, leaving Rachel in charge. That improvement did not continue indefinitely: a Yelp business listing and a fan site, realitytvupdates.com, both indicate Catfish Cabin closed in the second half of 2019, though no news coverage describing the exact circumstances has been found. Accounts differ on what happened to the physical location afterward, with one description suggesting a new tenant eventually opened there and a more recent reader comment on realitytvupdates.com instead claiming the building has sat vacant with the old signage still in place; neither account has been independently confirmed.