“Everybody has choices” - Gordon Ramsay’s Secret Service contestant gets mad at the celebrity chef

Episode 13 of Gordon Ramsay's Secret Service was released on August 27, 2025. It saw the celebrity chef going to Whitinsville, Massachusetts, to tend to a restaurant's insider who intended a better future for her place, The Neighbourhood Kitchen. 

When he snuck into the restaurant at night, he saw stale food, and kitchen surfaces that scored high on the contamination meter that he had, among other things. He also observed how the staff and the owners ran the restaurant through the CCTV cameras and was disappointed in the management as well. 

He came to confront the owner, Mark, his wife, and their staff members about the situation with the restaurant. Mark, at first, was in denial and kept insisting that he was running the place on his terms and didn't think Gordon's advice was necessary. 

"Everybody has choices in life," he said. 

However, after Gordon's persistent explanation, Mark realized what he was doing wrong and what were the things he needed to focus on. Gordon also transformed the interiors of the place and equipped the staff with a new menu, which eventually proved fruitful to the business. 

What happened when Gordon criticized the restaurant owner on Gordon Ramsay's Secret Service episode 13?

After Gordon observed everything about the restaurant, he confronted the owners and the staff by walking into the functioning restaurant and asking Mark to shut the kitchen. He criticized the Head Chef, Dave, for the cleanliness of the kitchen and the taste of his food. 

Mark stood up for Dave and asked Gordon to yell at him instead. Gordon criticized him for taking his wife's money to run the restaurant, which he was calling a retirement plan and not a project to take on. Mark didn't take those things at first because he believed him and his family were in a "very good shape" and stormed out of the restaurant to "take a walk." 

"I get to a point where I don't want to explode and say things I shouldn't say, I walk away," Mark told the cameras. 

When Gordon met him again, he encouraged him to acknowledge the mistakes he had made and stop ignoring them. Gordon stated that his food was not nearly as good as he thought it was, which Mark didn't agree with and told him that he was pissed off. 

Gordon further told him that the restaurant's systems weren't in place, the staff needed to be held accountable, and there were standards that they needed to uphold. 

"I want to reach across the counter and punch him in the face," Mark told the cameras. 

Gordon stated that he was taking his employees down with him, but Mark argued that they could walk out the door if they didn't like the place. The chef said that they couldn't do that because they had nowhere else to go and that they wouldn't be hired anywhere else with the performance they were showing currently. 

He also advised him to stop dipping into his wife's funds and really focus on the business so that it could make its own money. 

"For Gordon Ramsay to come here and tell me, I'm destroying my wife's future, that's hard," said Mark to the cameras. 

Gordon also told him that he knew of his health conditions and stated that he needed to slow down before it was too late. He referred to the heart bypass surgery that Mark had gotten in the recent past. 

Mark finally understood everything Gordon was trying to change for the better. He told him he was ready to make the changes and said that he would do it if Gordon thought it could be done. He then told the cameras that his defenses got up because he was blamed and thrown under the bus, but he eventually realized that Gordon was right. 

Stay tuned for more updates!