Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s 24 Hours to Hell and Back is set up at another central Arkansas restaurant.
The show’s Hell on Wheels truck was parked along Counts Massie Road north of Maumelle Boulevard in North Little Rock on Wednesday morning.
Nearby, at South Boulevard, 10840 Maumelle Blvd., several white trucks sat in the lot in front of the American fusion restaurant and in the gravel lot behind. Crew members were moving inside the restaurant, and stacks of wood, plants and power tools rested outside near the trucks.
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Ramsay, an award-winning host, is known for his work on Hell’s Kitchen, Masterchef and Kitchen Nightmares. On 24 Hours to Hell and Back, Ramsay first visits the restaurant in disguise to evaluate the eatery’s issues. He then confronts the staff with camera footage exposing their problems and challenges them to turn the place around.
The Hell on Wheels vehicle serves as a temporary kitchen while the featured restaurant is revamped.
A Facebook post from South Boulevard early Sunday afternoon said the eatery would be closed throughout that day and most of Monday.
At about midnight Tuesday, South Boulevard posted again: “Sorry guys, but we are unable to give out info right now! Please be patient with us. As soon as we know more details, we will pass them along!”
Victoria Joseph, a manager at South Boulevard declined to comment on Ramsay’s show, or on the nature of the restaurant’s renovations.
“I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say, so I’m just not going to say anything at all,” Joseph said.
Alicia Gillen, executive director at the Maumelle Area Chamber of Commerce, however, confirmed the show was filming.
“Nobody really knew a lot leading into this,” she said, speaking from Morningside Bagels, a restaurant next door. “We knew that [the owner] had submitted some information about doing a reality show.”
About two months ago, cameras were installed at South Boulevard to shoot some footage to determine whether the venue would make for a promising episode, according to Gillen.
“Apparently they saw something they like, and here they are.”
The chamber’s assistant director, Julia Everett, said she’s heard that the chef’s show plans to renovate at least one more restaurant in central Arkansas.
“If someone like Gordon Ramsay is taking note [of this area], I think that’s very promising,” Gillen said.
Brett Gross, a manager at Morningside, said they’d seen a slight uptick in patrons on Wednesday as crew from next door venture inside for coffee, bagels and sandwiches. The business is sold out of plain and “everything bagels.”
“That’s what we shoot for,” he said. “The whole idea is to run out.”
South Boulevard is the third restaurant to occupy that space in the roughly six years that Gross has worked at the bagel shop, the manager said. The restaurant, however, was already seeing more success than its predecessors.
“I really wish him nothing but the best,” he said.
The 24 Hours to Hell and Back truck previously set up outside Bear’s Den Pizza in Conway. The restaurant closed for a time and reopened with a new menu and an interior renovation.
The third season of 24 Hours to Hell and Back will air starting Jan. 7, 2020.