What Happened to Prohibition Grille After Kitchen Nightmares?

Prohibition Grille was a steakhouse-themed restaurant in Everett, Washington, opened by Darlene "Rishi" Brown, a longtime belly dancer who told The Herald (heraldnet.com) she started the business with $10,000 and no restaurant experience, only for the economy to crash a month after opening. By the time Ramsay's crew arrived for the show's fifth season, Brown was regularly performing with her belly-dance troupe during dinner service, confusing and frustrating customers, and had placed her trust in a chef whose staff described as disengaged, spending much of his shift on his phone or outside smoking rather than running the kitchen. Ramsay found the restaurant's self-description as a "gourmet Southern" steakhouse didn't match a kitchen that had no working grill despite the name, undercooked and returned dishes, and food held in unsafe conditions.

He taped over the word "Grille" on the sign ahead of a dinner service to make the point, then worked with staff to convince Brown to take control of her business and stop deferring to a chef who wasn't serving her interests. The relaunch renamed the business Prohibition Gastropub, brought in a new consulting chef, pared down the menu, and gave Brown a new professional wardrobe. A follow-up visit seven months later, aired as part of season six, found the restaurant busier and Brown telling Ramsay she had been working around the clock and had stopped the belly dancing during service, a claim she later admitted to The Herald was not entirely true, since she quietly brought the dancers back in 2015.

Everett's mayor proclaimed a Prohibition Gastropub Appreciation Day around the time of the second episode. The gastropub lasted roughly three years under Brown before she sold it in 2016 to Brent Holland, who restored the name Prohibition Grille and added "Saloon." That business closed less than a year later. James Abbott, who owned another restaurant nearby, then converted the space into a higher-end restaurant called Abbott's, which drew strong Yelp reviews but closed a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Mashed (2023-11-27). Flying Pig, a bar and restaurant unrelated to any previous owner, opened in the space in 2021 and remains open there today with a Yelp rating above four stars. Brown, for her part, has continued running her belly-dance company and has worked as a restaurant manager for the Tulalip Resort Casino since January 2017, per her own social-media accounts cited by Mashed.