What Happened to Da Mimmo After Kitchen Nightmares? (Dumont, NJ)

Da Mimmo, a brick-oven pizzeria in Dumont, New Jersey's Veterans Plaza, opened in November 2022 and was run by the Gigante family: Melissa Gigante, a retired Hoboken police lieutenant and mother of five, and her sons Antonio, Vito, and Vincent, according to NJBIZ's September 18, 2024 report. The restaurant was named for a family member remembered as "Mimmo," who died in 2017. It was featured in Kitchen Nightmares Season 8, Episode 4, filmed in June 2023 and airing October 16, 2023, the third New Jersey restaurant featured in the season, following Bask46 in Woodland Park and In the Drink in Wayne, per NJBIZ.

At the time of Ramsay's visit, Melissa Gigante told him the restaurant had racked up nearly $500,000 in debt since its opening; she said she had begun paying staff out of her own pocket while her husband worked double shifts as a police detective to help cover costs. Oldest son Antonio, 22 at the time, managed the restaurant and made the pizza, while Vito, 21, and Vincent, 20, TikTok influencers with a combined 3.5 million followers, were, according to NJ1015's report, criticized on the show for prioritizing social media over the restaurant. Ramsay, per NJ1015, criticized the food served to him as cold and bland.

As part of the turnaround, Ramsay connected the family with an outside chef to teach proper brick-oven pizza technique using fresh ingredients, and urged Vincent and Vito to take the business more seriously and use their social media reach to promote it; Melissa Gigante told NJBIZ at the time that the experience taught her different aspects of the back end of the business. The family said they saw a business uptick in the months immediately after the episode aired. Just under a year later, in a Facebook post reported by both NJBIZ and NJ1015 on September 18, 2024, Da Mimmo announced it would close for good on September 30, 2024, writing that launching and growing the family restaurant had been an incredible experience, "Gordon Ramsay and all," and that the closure was opening new doors for pizza chef Antonio to pursue other opportunities.