What Happened to Zeke's After Kitchen Nightmares? (Metairie, LA)

Zeke's, a seafood and Creole restaurant on Metairie Road just outside New Orleans, was featured in Kitchen Nightmares' thirteenth episode of Season 4, filmed in early 2011 and aired May 13, 2011. Founded in 2002 by James "Zeke" Unangst, who, as recounted on the episode, died not long after Hurricane Katrina, the restaurant had since been run by Darryl and Ellen Cortello, who by the time of the episode had raised prices while quietly switching to frozen shrimp and other lower-cost ingredients, a shift staff said had driven away longtime customers. Ramsay's tasting bore that out: the boiled shrimp was frozen, the fried chicken and oysters bland, and the lasagna stale, though he singled out the bread pudding as genuinely good.

In the kitchen, cook Emil explained that Darryl had cut corners on ingredient quality to save money and did not make time to buy fresh shrimp; during a staff meeting, the Cortellos responded to complaints about pay and food quality by telling unhappy staff they were free to leave. Ramsay's changes added a fresh seafood display area, introduced new low-prep menu items such as a seafood bucket with catfish, shrimp, and alligator to ease pressure on the kitchen, and pushed servers to promote the new options directly to reduce back-of-house strain. The relaunch drew a strong crowd, including some of the customers who had been unhappy before, and local news covered the reopening.

Business improved for a period after the visit, but Darryl and Ellen ultimately sold the restaurant in October 2012, roughly two years after Ramsay's visit; commenters on later write-ups have connected the sale to Ellen's cancer treatment around that time, though that detail has not been independently confirmed through a named outlet. Zeke's closed that fall, and in January 2013 the new owners opened Porter & Luke's, a different Creole-and-Italian restaurant, in the same building, Gambit reported. A Yelp listing for Porter & Luke's was updated in July 2026 with over 150 reviews, confirming a different restaurant now operates under new ownership at the Metairie Road address. Darryl and Ellen Cortello later opened a second restaurant, Luca Eats, elsewhere in the New Orleans area.