What Happened To Mama Rita's After Kitchen Nightmares?

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"That's like eating wet cardboard." Not exactly what any restaurant owner wants to hear when a world-famous chef comes to visit their restaurant, but it's standard fare for "Kitchen Nightmares." The long-running show visits restaurants in need of help across the country, and host Gordon Ramsay works with the owners to turn things around. It makes for good TV (and there are some great episodes of "Kitchen Nightmares"), but how many restaurants are actually thriving today? In other words, do Ramsay's changes stick?

Entering Mama Rita's Mexican Cantina in Newbury Park, California, Ramsay found what, unfortunately, is the norm for the restaurants he helps. He was struck by a disorganized and confused team staffing the kitchen, a dwindling customer base, and food bad enough that Ramsay compared it to fast-food drive-through food (including tamales that earned the "wet cardboard" distinction). The owner, Laura Papenfus, had previously run a successful catering business and was confused by the reality that her past success didn't translate well into a restaurant. "I'm just adding a dining room," she said in the episode (via YouTube). "How could it be so hard?"

Mama Rita's had its fair share of competition. California is known for its Mexican cuisine, and Southern California has some of the best Mexican food in the United States. Newbury Park is just 160 miles from the Mexico border, so it should be easy for a Mexican restaurant there to turn out great food. Mama Rita's proved success was far from guaranteed, though.

Ramsay arrived at Mama Rita's in Season 2 of "Kitchen Nightmares," only about a year after the restaurant opened. Papenfus wasn't shy about admitting she needed help. "I don't know what the f*** I'm doing," she said in the episode. And Ramsay discovered that Papenfus hadn't established any standards for the restaurant, leading to bad service and worse food. That put Papenfus deeply in debt, and put her house at risk of foreclosure.

Mama Rita's kitchen was run by Perla Hernandez, the head chef. "She's my right hand and my savior," said Papenfus about Hernandez. "I mean, she's family to me." But after trying those wet cardboard tamales, Ramsay had something else to say: "What an embarrassment." As the celebrity chef browsed Mama Rita's kitchen, he figured out just why the food was all so bad — it was all premade long ago, then frozen in plastic bags.

Ramsay and his team set out to fix the dysfunctional kitchen. As Ramsay believed Hernandez wasn't truly up to the task of leading the kitchen team, he brought in Naris Mardirosian, a chef consultant who specialized in Mexican cuisine. "We're going to make your kitchen beautiful, we're going to make your food beautiful," she promised. Ramsay and Mardirosian introduce a new menu to the restaurant, focusing on seasonal cuisine with authentic ingredients. After a rocky reopening dinner, Papenfus promised Ramsay that she would stick to his changes. Did it work?

Right off the bat, it was clear Mama Rita's success would be an uphill battle. A local blogger, who attended the reopening dinner, called it "our own little kitchen nightmare" and described basically all the same problems that existed before Ramsay's visit (via EatMeCalifornia). And customer reviews in the subsequent weeks were extremely varied, with some who loved it and some who thought it was as bad as ever. "I don't know who their chef is, BUT FIRE HIM/HER!" wrote one customer on Yelp.

Papenfus didn't — Chef Hernandez remained in the restaurant after getting a "crash course" in Mexican food from Mardirosian. "Perla now rules that kitchen with an iron fist," said Papenfus to the Ventura County Star. "Kitchen Nightmares" fans have their own theories of why Papenfus didn't fire Hernandez, as Ramsay advised, including a dubious assertion on Reddit that Papenfus and Hernandez were romantically involved (there's no evidence to back that up, though).

In a comment on the blog EatMeCalifornia, Papenfus said the kitchen's failure on the reopening night wasn't their fault, but Ramsay's. "He sprung this new menu on my cooks and they were expected to cook these new recipies [sic] with no notice, cameras and mics in their faces, a full house of customers and Gordon screaming at them and me while he made his 'show'," she wrote, encouraging the blogger to return. When he did, he found the food far improved, although mostly reverted back to the pre-Ramsay recipes.

"Kitchen Nightmares" filmed at Mama Rita's in May 2009, with the show airing nearly a year later in March 2010. Even the blend of the original strong points with the fixes Ramsay and his team brought in didn't turn around the restaurant, though, and it closed by the end of 2010. "Mama Rita's is closed... This is unfortunate," wrote one reviewer on Yelp on January 1, 2011. A commenter on the EatMeCalifornia blog had a different take: "This place deserved to shut down."

Multiple online reviews mention the high prices of the food (both before and after the "Kitchen Nightmares" overhaul). That could just be par for the course: affluent Newbury Park's median household income is over $150,000, and its property costs are quite high (real estate is more expensive in Newbury Park than almost two-thirds of the United States, per Neighborhood Scout). That increases the overhead costs of a business, which can be the end of a small restaurant business where profit margins are already very low.

Even after Ramsay's visit, the food didn't elicit particularly positive responses from customers. Instead, reviews were mixed, with some loving the new menu and some finding it no different from any other Mexican restaurant. A combination of average food and higher-than-expected prices could have done in Mama Rita's, but the restaurant didn't confirm a specific reason for the closure.

One aspect of Papenfus' life that didn't come up in the "Kitchen Nightmares" episode: She was injured after being thrown off a horse as a teenager, and subsequently experienced chronic pain and migraine. In 2015, six years after "Kitchen Nightmares" arrived at her restaurant and five years after it had closed, she underwent surgery to permanently fix the herniated discs in her neck, thereby removing pressure from her spinal cord — and eliminating the chronic pain (via Thousand Oaks Acorn).

In her career, though, Papenfus didn't leave the restaurant business after Mama Rita's closed. She went on to manage the Mission Oaks Cafe, a bar and grill with American comfort food and some of the Mexican dishes she once served at Mama Rita's. Mission Oaks Cafe closed in 2019 and was replaced by Patron Mexican Bar & Grill, which is still open. Papenfus says on her Instagram page (with the username mamarita4ever) that she now does standup comedy "for fun because we all need more laughter."

Once Mama Rita's closed in the Newbury Park space, an Italian restaurant called La Cucina di Venti opened. But it closed just two years later. Now, it's The Local Table, a hybrid Italian/California cuisine restaurant that's had a strong run of 12 years and counting. The high real estate costs don't seem to be a problem for The Local Table, and that's in part because Peter Cohen, who runs the real estate firm that owns this strip mall, is also the majority owner of the restaurant. A variety of Italian and local favorites now populate The Local Table's menu.