Location: Montclair, New Jersey
The Italian restaurant had a good start, but its owner's two-year coma left her inexperienced, lazy son in charge.
Tropes
- Bittersweet Ending: The restaurant managed to pull things together after the episode was filmed and are still open as of 2022, even Michael managed to eventually become the manager the restaurant needed after Gordon's revisit helped break him of old habits, but Rose, the owner, passed away only 3 years after filming due to her ongoing health issues.
- Cool Old Lady: Rosemary "Rose" Leone, owner and manager, who passed away at the relatively young age of 64 after her health problems finally caught up to her.
- Epic Fail: Gordon requests that the staff cook one of everything from the restaurant's fifteen-page menu, and he comes back to find over one hundred dishes laid out for him in the dining room. He finds something off about virtually every dish, before ordering the chefs to sit down and take a bite. They admit that they do not like the food they cook, with one of them spitting out a poorly-prepared risotto.
- Food Porn: Played straight when Gordon sets up fantastic photos of the foods available at Leone's competition... Inverted when Gordon shows off photos of the Leone's dishes, which all suffer from really poor presentation that really matches the taste.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Trudy's official job is a waitress/head server, yet she constantly picked up all the work Michael was slacking on (orders, payroll, payables, menus), and was easily the reason the place stayed open long enough for Gordon to intervene. Even Gordon can't help but wonder what would've happened if she'd fallen ill.
