What Happened to Down City After Kitchen Nightmares? (Providence, RI)

DownCity, an American comfort-food restaurant a few blocks from the Providence River, was featured in Kitchen Nightmares' seventh episode of Season 4, filmed in December 2010 and aired March 11, 2011. Co-owners Abby Cabral, who ran daily operations after three decades in restaurants, and Rico Conforti, a finance professional who supplied roughly a million dollars in capital, had bought the business in 2005. Their introduction to Ramsay set the tone for a famously contentious episode: after Ramsay mentioned disappointing hotel room service, Abby took offense and rated her own menu a 10 out of 10, a claim Ramsay's tasting did not support -- he described the calamari as soggy and the "Party-in-Your-Mouth" nachos as a letdown, and found the meatloaf lukewarm.

A kitchen inspection turned up moldy food, and when Ramsay raised it with the owners, Abby responded by accusing him of planting the mess himself and ordering him off the premises. Staff, meanwhile, told Ramsay the sprawling menu was a known problem that Abby had refused to trim. After the confrontation cooled, Ramsay worked with Rico and the kitchen to pare the menu down to a shorter, comfort-food-focused list, including a goat cheese truffle dip, meatball sliders, and a redone meatloaf, and invited a local food blogger who had previously panned the restaurant to the relaunch.

The new dishes went over well with the room, and the kitchen, initially overwhelmed, found its footing as the night wore on. Ramsay returned for a Season 5 revisit that showed business up roughly 30 percent, though he also worked through friction between Abby and Rico over how Abby had begun addressing her business partner. The recovery did not hold. According to a December 12, 2011 report from GoLocalProv, and a farewell note the owners posted to DownCity's own website, the restaurant closed that month, citing the broader economic downturn; Abby's message thanked "everyone and anyone that has ever walked through the doors of DOWNCITY." Circe Restaurant & Bar, a New American restaurant led by chef Simon Keating, now operates at the same 50 Weybosset Street address; a Yelp listing for Circe was updated in July 2026 with several hundred reviews, and the business's own website remains live.