Mexican-born Israel and his English partner Tara have sunk a cool £150,000 of their own money into their trendy cafe bar D-Place, which offers a vast selection of fusion cuisine. They believed they had found the WINNING FORMULA: great place, great music, great service, great food... and all at the right price. Sounds promising... but from there on it's all DOWNHILL. For the first two years, it all went swimmingly as Israel built up a mini-empire of five businesses... but the success didn't last long. Just three years later and they are all GONE - only D-Place remains and it's hanging by a thread. It's a 24-carat NIGHTMARE. The staff are at WAR, the plastic food is DIRE, the customers have evaporated, the restaurant is losing MONEY and the owners are at their WITS END. Something simply has to give or everyone is out of a job. Faced with dysfunctional staff and a disastrous menu, Gordon is about to face the LONGEST WEEK of his professional life. Can he quell the panic, banish the deep fa

The venue for the first programme is La Lanterna in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. Twenty-eight-year-old owner and head chef Alex offers modern Italian cuisine, a taste of Little Italy in England's first garden city, and the restaurant is run by his best mate, maitre d' Gavin, helped by Alex's ex-air hostess girlfriend Emily. Alex has no customers, cookers that don't work and an expensive menu that's about as authentically Italian as a Hawaiian Pizza. He re-mortgaged his house to buy the business, it's losing £1,000 a week, he hasn't slept for months but still runs round town in a flash car (number plate: A1CHEF) that's worth more than the restaurant. Running out of money, inspiration and energy, Alex is on the verge of losing EVERYTHING. It's a prime restaurant for a dose of TOUGH LOVE - Ramsay-style. But can a strict diet of brutal honesty, radical food surgery and undiluted energy turn things round, or is it only a matter of time before the lights go out at La Lanterna for good?

In the final programme, Gordon returns to Momma Cherri's Soul Food Shack, an intimate 40-seater in Brighton where he oversaw one of the most spectacular changes of fortune at a single venue. Owner Charita Jones was producing a menu of irresistible unique classics from the Deep South, but at the same facing financial disaster. The punters were missing, and so was her business acumen. But Gordon succeeded in shutting her out of the kitchen, getting the chef back on the boil and putting the soul back into the business. Today Charita is fully-booked round the clock and bursting out of the Soul Shack to take on the 110-seater Momma Cherri's Big House. But expansion brings a different set of challenges, and she's still struggling to control her staff and manage her success. Has she got what it takes to make the next step up, or will she be forced to rethink her grand plans?

Gordon returns to La Parra in Spain, to see how ex-nightclub manager Laurence is getting on. Has he sank or swam since Gordon's last visit? This week, Gordon is back in Spain to see how Laurence is faring at La Parra de Burriana, an ex-pat restaurant in Nerja on the Costa del Sol, one year on. When he first arrived he found 26-year-old ex-nightclub manager Laurence who set himself up in business 18 months earlier with a loan from his dad. Although he wasn't an experienced chef, Laurence manned the kitchen on his own, determined to offer something better than chips to his largely British clientele. Laurence's menu boasted 72 options including his unforgettable signature dish: prawns in garlic with chocolate sauce. Running front-of-house was Laurence's mate Alex, while sous chef Norman was on the barbecue serving up a haphazard combination of kebabs and steaks cooked by torchlight. The Mediterranean menu had a special twist: no-one wanted to eat it. The kebabs were raw, Alex had over-booked the place (and failed to clear up the dog mess that littered the dining room) and the punters that were still turning up faced an interminable wait for their food. Unsurprisingly Laurence lost £22,000 in one year but still resisted Gordon's attempts to introduce a simple menu that will bring customers back. Could Laurence survive the summer and Gordon's efforts to get him to learn bullfighting? Now, one year on, Gordon is back to find that the good news is they've survived the winter, but the bad news is that Laurence still has ideas above his station and is planning to run before he can walk with another, second La Parra. But with cremated desserts and wine gums on the menu, Gordon's about to apply the brakes, Ramsay style.

Gordon travels to the seaside in aid of hotel and restaurant the Sandgate. This is happily married couple Lois and Peters' first venture into the catering industry. They used to enjoy eating in restaurants, so thought it might be fun to own one. A year and a half later their dream has turned into a nightmare - they're losing £4,000 a month. In the kitchen, their head chef Stuart is on the brink of a nervous breakdown. He's forced to cook for four restaurants, including fine dining upstairs and Japanese fare in the basement. But it's when he loses his coveted AA award that he really hits rock bottom. Eccentric, overstaffed and on the point of collapse, can Gordon bring this real life Fawlty Towers back from the edge?