Popular Delco Restaurant Closing One Year After Gordon Ramsay Came to “Help”

Steve Wilson: I was a mechanic for many years and started smoking ribs and brisket on the side as a hobby. Garry Maddox used to have a big barbecue competition down at the ballpark, and we entered and took first in chicken and second in ribs a couple of times. This evolved into doing a bit of catering, which grew quickly to the point where we couldn’t do it out of our house.

The location you chose on Township Line Road has always seemed like a doomed address to me. Before you, nothing really took off there.

SW: Yes, it was an Indian place, it was a crab cake place, it was something else — I think a pizza place? This guy I bowled with owned the building, and he convinced me to sign a lease. Then COVID hit, and banks were like, “You really want to buy real estate right now? Sure, here’s a mortgage.” So we bought the building.

Do you regret buying it?

SW: Not at all. We’re going to set up a ghost kitchen in Delco – we have a friend who wants to open a bakery but doesn’t want to commit to her own space yet — so we can share that and just concentrate on the catering.

Why sell the sit-down spot in the first place, though?

SW: Our son is 13. He’s wrestling and playing football, and if we keep the restaurant, we’re going to miss out on so many things. Plus, it’s hard to keep staff there. It’s hard to bring in tables if I don’t have waitresses, and it’s hard to bring in waitresses without tables. And our dynamic is really about catering and events. We’re also selling it for more than we bought it for.

That’s always a good thing. So … Gordon Ramsay.

Kelly Wilson [joining the call as she’s getting her kids off to school]: Hi, Victor. It’s Kelly. Do you want my opinion or Steve’s?

Steve and Kelly Wilson inside Wilson’s Secret Sauce in Upper Darby the week before the Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service about them aired / Photograph by Kae Lani Palmisano

Go for it, Kelly!

SW: Just remember … It’s going down on paper!

KW: I mean, it’s not that I don’t appreciate some of the advice that he gave us. I’m sure it helped with some things. But business actually slowed down a bit since he came in.

Wow. I didn’t expect you to say that. I know the dining room isn’t often crowded when I come in, but you seem to do a heck of a lot of catering and takeout.

SW: When I look back at it and look at, “Are you still climbing, are you staying the same, or are you going backwards?” I have to say that last year was the first year that we went down year-to-year.

KW: Gordon Ramsay changed the menu. I didn’t feel like his menu … We had a lot of customers coming in from day one of the new menu begging us to bring the old menu back. We were getting lost with his menu, and our menu really worked a lot better.

SW: We had a lot of things on our menu, yes, and that drove Gordon crazy. But the thing is, our menu was just a combination of things we had in-house. We weren’t bringing in one thing to create some new dish. We are looking at a case of chickens and figuring out what new and different thing we could do with those chickens. But I think that overall, working with Gordon Ramsay was a great reality check, more than anything else. Some of the show was a little humiliating and I could have used more of a hand in the back office and less in the kitchen, but …

One of the things that came out in the show was that you are in debt for more than $600,000.

SW: Yeah, that sounds like a lot. But really, almost all of that is just two mortgages: one on our house in Havertown, and one on the restaurant. And the house and the restaurant are both worth the same amount of money or more than what we paid for them, and now we are getting out from under the restaurant. So it’s okay.

Gordon Ramsay with Wilson’s Secret Sauce owner and chef Steve Wilson in Upper Darby during the shooting of Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service / Photograph via Fox

You mentioned being humiliated on the show.

SW: So, they basically kick you out of your restaurant. They showed up on a Friday and we had to hand over our keys and leave, and then they go in with Gordon and their cameras. So they show brisket in our walk-in, and they say, “Oh my God, they are going to reheat that brisket.” But that brisket was actually from that day and it was supposed to go to Barnaby’s in Havertown and the Greeks in Narberth. I wholesale my brisket out to them and they turn it into cheesesteak specials or quesadillas or tacos. And then, if you watch the episode, they’re watching us cook and saying, “Oh my God, he’s going to throw those burnt ends into the fryer.” They weren’t burnt ends at all. They were chicken wings.

My impression is that, at first, you didn’t realize any of this had anything to do with Gordon Ramsay.

SW: We weren’t approached by Gordon Ramsay or his people. We were approached by a network that said, “Hey, you want a makeover?”

Right, I saw that a restaurant in Rhode Island had complained that they were sold on this idea of getting a fresh new look for their restaurant, and nothing about Gordon Ramsay going undercover with infrared cameras in the middle of the night.

KW: No, they kind of tricked you about that!

SW: Well, they didn’t tell you exactly what the premise was. I wouldn’t say we were “tricked.”

But then the trailer comes out for the new series and they say it’s all about “America’s filthiest restaurants.” I can’t imagine how nervous that must have made you.

KW: I got really upset because, first of all, I take pride in keeping this restaurant clean and immaculate. I don’t want people to be skeeved touching things, to be grossed out because things are dirty and sticky. So it’s actually extremely clean.

SW: I think the production team was actually shocked they were here for the show, based on how clean the restaurant was.

KW: They really didn’t do much. The show was originally supposed to be a makeover show. They put some fresh paint up and changed the curtains and put plastic tablecloths down. We didn’t get a whole lot of new stuff like the restaurants in the other episodes.

Steve, you and I recently had a conversation about the cost of goods, where you were complaining that the price of a case of corn just went from $18 to $58. And I get that. But I also feel like there are some restaurants out there charging COVID pricing just because people are used to paying for it. I’m not going to name the spot, but I recently got a barely mediocre cheese pizza from a place in Delco, and it was more than $30 for a large pepperoni. So you’ve got some flour, some water, some low-quality cheese, and some low-quality pepperoni.

SW: Well, but you also have to keep in mind that a lot of places are paying people a much better hourly wage, because people won’t work for minimum wage anymore, in many cases. So, sure, that pizza might only cost them however much to make — but what about payroll and other overhead like rising utility costs, what about insurance that goes up and up every year? The cost of those pizza boxes went up.

KW: Well, hold on now. I do feel like there are businesses out there definitely taking advantage, like they just know people are going to pay, so they might as well just keep it that way. But Steve and I, we adjust our menu regularly. Our rib costs go up and down, so they go up and down on the menu. We were at $32 a rack, and now we’re at $28.

So you’ve opened a restaurant and now you are closing one. What advice do you have to people out there who say they want to open their own restaurant?

SW: I tell people all the time, if you are going to own your own business, whether it’s a restaurant or not, you have to own the real estate. If you don’t own, you’re just paying rent with nothing to show for it. If you buy and have a mortgage, you have that property to fall back on. You don’t want a landlord. You’re at the mercy of whatever the rent’s gonna be. Sure, you might have the benefit of more foot traffic in a mall or at a strip mall, but you’re going to get clobbered in every other way.

Kelly?

KW: [pauses] I would definitely find a mentor. Follow somebody around. Really look into it because there’s a lot more involved than you would think. Steve and I literally had to learn everything along the way. Be prepared to, if you have kids, you’re not going to see them a lot. It’s hard. [pauses]

SW: Hon, don’t cry,

KW: You miss a lot along the way. You miss weddings. And funerals. You miss your kids’ games. You miss your kids’ concerts.

I wish you a lot of luck.

SW and KW: Thank you.