Is Wick 'n Ore Kitchen & Tap Still Open? Kitchen Nightmares Update

Wick 'n Ore Kitchen & Tap is an independent, locally owned restaurant at 1260 S. Milwaukee Ave. in Vernon Hills, Illinois, serving what it calls classic Americana. According to the restaurant's own history page, it opened in August 2022 as a rebrand of the Vernon Hills branch of The Claim Company, a gold-mining-themed Chicago-area chain that dates to the early 1970s, closed in 1997 and was revived in Northbrook in 2009 before adding the Vernon Hills location in 2016. The name nods to that mining heritage: a lantern wick and ore.

RealityTVRevisited's recap identifies the owner as Michael Hollub. The episode's synopsis describes "a suburban eatery battling an identity crisis." As recapped by RealityTVRevisited, the show found a mostly older clientele, with service largely over by 6 p.m., a mix of American and Mexican dishes, and a menu Ramsay counted at 86 items, or more than 97 with specials. Head chef George said he had asked to shorten the menu, and Ramsay found trays of precooked food held for reheating, a practice Michael said kept the large menu moving; George said the owner wanted plates out within 12 minutes.

Michael told Ramsay he was about $231,000 in debt. In a Facebook post quoted by Kitchen Nightmares Updates, the restaurant described its episode as being "about our menu being too large and trying to execute that big of a menu in a very small kitchen." For the relaunch, Ramsay's team installed new lighting and furniture, cut the menu to 15 dishes and gave George a new set of knives. Local food influencers were invited to the reopening, where Fox's clips show Ramsay pushing Michael out of the kitchen to greet guests as a front-of-house owner, and surprising him with a visit from his wife and family.

The kitchen briefly paused new orders to catch up under the volume, according to the recap. The episode was filmed in 2025, more than a year before it aired on September 15, 2026, and Wick 'n Ore remains in business. Its website lists new fall and winter hours, with lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday and Sunday evening service, and promotes seasonal menu additions and holiday cocktails. Its online ordering page showed the restaurant open and taking pickup orders on October 18, 2026, with a menu of several dozen dishes spanning burgers, fajitas, barbecue, steaks, pastas and seafood, a wider lineup than the 15 dishes introduced on the show. RealityTVRevisited reported that the restaurant closed on Sundays from August to October 2026 before returning with limited Sunday hours, and Kitchen Nightmares Updates described online reviews posted since the makeover as largely positive.