South Brooklyn Foundry, a beloved Bay Ridge restaurant, has closed its doors for good after almost nine years in business.
The closure comes after the eatery, at home on lower Third Avenue, was featured on an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” when it returned for an eighth season earlier this year.
South Brooklyn Foundry’s owners, Kelly Agnes and Rey Martinez, decided to part ways over their different visions for the restaurant, noting their experience on the Fox show “knocked the wind out” of them.
“Sometimes things have to break up before better things happen,” Agnes told Brooklyn Paper. “Rey and I had problems, but at the end of the day we both had the best of intentions for the restaurant, we just thought two different ways about it and that happens sometimes.”
Sept. 1 would have been the eatery’s ninth anniversary, but Agnes still likes to call South Brooklyn Foundry a “success story.”
“I want to focus on the good times that were shared here,” she said. “I want to focus on the people that supported me through all of those years, the patrons, I want to thank them so much for believing in us.”
After learning the hospitality trade from “the best in the business” at Vinny’s of Carroll Gardens, Agnes wanted to pursue her dream of owning her own restaurant that would welcome people from all walks of life. She opened the South Brooklyn Foundry in 2017, going into business with Sam Dabbas and Rey Martinez. Dabbas would ultimately be bought out of his share within five years, while Martinez remained, serving as head chef.
“Everybody told me that being on [Bay Ridge Avenue] and not being above the 70s was going to be hard for me to survive in Bay Ridge,” said Agnes. “They really thought I was going to go out of business in the second year, so to be there nine years, I want to say that we were a success story.”
Throughout its tenure, South Brooklyn Foundry became a community hub, hosting events ranging from jazz and drag shows to paint-and-sip nights. However, like the rest of the hospitality industry, the South Brooklyn Foundry struggled to stay afloat once the COVID-19 pandemic started.
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Despite surviving temporary closures and restrictions, Agnes said mounting debt from that period — particularly the COVID-19 economic injury disaster loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration — forced her to look for a new avenue to give her business a boost.
“The government made it seem like they were giving us everything, they weren’t giving us anything,” said Agnes. “You still have to pay for liquor licenses that weren’t used for almost a year and a half. We still had to pay to renew it. How is that fair to a small business owner?”
Then came the opportunity to appear on a new Gordon Ramsay show. Correspondence seen by Brooklyn Paper show that Agnes and Martinez applied to be on a kitchen renovation program aimed at helping struggling businesses after the pandemic, unaware they had signed up to appear on the high drama show “Kitchen Nightmares.”
The series, which sees Ramsay spend a week-or-so with a struggling restaurant in order to help the business come up with better operational practices, was revived in 2023 after a 10-year hiatus on Fox. The show is best known for its viral moments that see Ramsay unearthing horrifying discoveries in the kitchens he’s attempting to rescue.
Agnes said applying to appear on the show was the “worst decision” she has ever made.
The main focus of the episode, which aired on Nov. 20, 2023, was the working relationship between Agnes and Martinez — something both acknowledged was an issue, but not to the scale it appeared on television.
“They made it seem that in that show we didn’t know what we were doing as far as serving,” said Agnes, who added that, as of this year, the restaurant had six consecutive A ratings from the city’s Department of Health. “They didn’t come into the kitchen, they didn’t rip anything out. They didn’t say ‘Oh my god, this bad meat’ and this and that. It was basically just the partnership.”
During the episode, Ramsay has a frank talk with Agnes and Martinez, telling them “their business is going nowhere,” that culminates with Martinez walking away from the restaurant. The show states that he came back as head chef two months later, but Agnes and Martinez said their reunion came to an end the day after production stopped.
Martinez said he wanted to pull out of production after realizing days before that South Brooklyn Foundry would be on “Kitchen Nightmares.”
“It’s not a cooking show, it’s all about drama for him [Ramsay],” Martinez said, noting that he regrets the blow-up because it played into the storyline of him being an antagonist, resulting in a flood of hate online.
As promised, production carried out renovations at the restaurant but strictly in the front-of-house. The finished renovations — which Agnes said did not suit the functionality or style of the restaurant — are put on display during a private relaunch dinner.
According to Agnes, the chaotic scenes that depicted that evening were a result of miscommunication with the chefs Ramsay had enlisted after Martinez’s departure and a rejig of their table numbers. “They made us look like we didn’t know what we were doing,” she said.
That experience, in particular, left Agnes doubting her abilities in the hospitality industry but one year later she is in a better place and so is her relationship with Martinez.
“I really was a little bit gullible. I really thought that they were going to help us. I think it knocked the wind out of both of us,” she said of the experience, saying that closing the restaurant for 18 days to shoot was another fatal financial hit.
With the restaurant space now for lease, Agnes is looking forward to her next venture — hopefully, in Bay Ridge. She said previous reports that the South Brooklyn Foundry was changing locations were unfortunately not true.
“I just want to let people know that they should go for their dreams but to know that there’s a lot of hard work behind it and it’s not as easy as it looks,” she said. “But I would love to be back in the community again because they served me well.”
The production company behind “Kitchen Nightmares,” Studio Ramsay, did not respond to Brooklyn Paper’s requests for comment.
Clarification (July 2, 1 p.m.): This story has been updated to include that recent reports of South Brooklyn Foundry’s move to another part of Bay Ridge were untrue, according to owner Kelly Agnes.
