Restaurant: Impossible - General Discussion

[GiandujaPie]

I'm not commenting on any specific episode per se, but I just wanted to say that I think it's super rude of Robert the way he denigrates the restaurant owners on their food and decor. I know it's part of his schtick at this point but it's demoralizing and humiliating. On the similar show, Bake or Break, the host is so much nicer, at least the episodes that I saw. She tastes their baked goods and finds something nice and complimentary to say, even to go so far as to rave about it and then creates new items based on or around that signature item and actually makes that proud of their bakery and take ownership of the new menu items. I don't know if they actually keep the new items on the menu after the show leaves, but it's just so much more pleasant to watch and she doesn't try to humiliate them by telling them they suck. 

[Mondrianyone]

I think I watch because I like to see the physical transformations of the spaces. I don't really believe they do all that (including the planning and acquiring materials, etc.) in two days, so they must at least have some sort of head start. It'd be interesting to get an honest look behind the scenes.

It doesn't bother me that Robert is rude. These people are getting rewarded with a huge amount of stuff, so if they have to put up with rudeness to cash in, I'm okay with that. What really does bother me is the very fact that they're being rewarded for being incompetent, reckless with their family's money, and worst of all for playing really dangerous games with their customers' health based on filthy kitchens and scandalous food-storage practices. So Irvine has my permission to be as rude as he wants to be. IMO they shouldn't really be helping most of these people at all. But I guess I'll still watch as long as they are.

[Maverick]

 To be fair, a lot of these people need a wake up call.   A lot times their food is crap (premade/Sysco caned food or just not prepared well) yet they think their food is just fine.   And the ones with the dirty restaurants...ugh, he needs to say that and more.  For a lot of them, he needs to call the health department and cancel the shoot.  I will grant the digs on the decor can be a little harsh, but it's not always about being dated or being an odd style.  A lot of them have ripped furniture, no basic maintenance, dust catches (that haven't been dusted etc).    

 I have seen ones where he says the food is fine and the decor is ok so he needs to find out what else is going to make it a failing place. 

[Yeah No]

On the most recent episode, I realize they have a budget but I thought the main restaurant needed a little something, like maybe an accent color wall or whatever.  The show put all the reno. money into the additional space and it looked great but now people are just going to feel the other way around, that they want to be in the additional area and not the main restaurant.  Sales are way up so that's good.  I hope the two women who own the place can work out their issues and succeed.

[Emkat]

Sweet Potato Cafe looks great and I seriously want that black bean burger. Best of luck to them!

[Kenzie]

Grumpy's Café

Yet another restaurant being run by an owner with zero experience wondering why she is deep in debt and has never turned a profit in four years. But mom is a hard worker and so is the daughter in law and Robert helps turn it around.

The son is another case all together. It was hard to watch a forty year old man wallow in his lack of self confidence (calling himself a loser over and over) and his inability to handle even mild stress. Robert gave him a much needed boost but I'm sure there's a lot more to the son's back story than we saw.

The tangerine French toast looked amazing.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Kenzie

[Mondrianyone]

That soliloquy from Merchant of Venice was so embarrassingly bad that my advice to the wannabe-actor son would've been "Don't quit your day job," but he stank at his day job, too. I'm going to guess that his mother told him his whole life that his poop smelled like roses, and he believed her, at least consciously. Now she wants to end her life with a shred of hope he'll have some means of supporting himself after she's gone, but it's not looking promising. And he wants to have the restaurant handed to him without his actually having to do any work, so he said what everyone wanted to hear to make that happen. His poor wife enables him as well. Oy.

Robert's croque monsieur was actually a croque madame, which is what it becomes when you put an egg on it. I'm one of those people who hate putting an egg on everything. But I totally agree that the French toast looked fabulous.

ETA: After peeking at the FN gossip page and various other review sites, which have great reviews of both food and service, I'm guessing that the conditions at Grumpy's were faked to get the free makeover and so that Florence Olivier could get his audition for the Royal Shakespeare Company on TV. I should be more skeptical in the future.

Edited June 3, 2022 by Mondrianyone

[Yeah No]

On 6/3/2022 at 12:12 PM, Mondrianyone said:

That soliloquy from Merchant of Venice was so embarrassingly bad that my advice to the wannabe-actor son would've been "Don't quit your day job," but he stank at his day job, too. I'm going to guess that his mother told him his whole life that his poop smelled like roses, and he believed her, at least consciously. Now she wants to end her life with a shred of hope he'll have some means of supporting himself after she's gone, but it's not looking promising. And he wants to have the restaurant handed to him without his actually having to do any work, so he said what everyone wanted to hear to make that happen. His poor wife enables him as well. Oy.

My husband and I actually had a completely different take on this.  We think the reason he's so full of self-doubt and low self esteem is his mother.  Her expectations of him have likely been too high and he feels like he can never meet them, probably because she is over-critical and judgmental of everything he does.  Until he feels that he is good enough despite what she thinks he will never be be his own person or be able to do anything that brings him satisfaction.  In fact, even if he tries he will likely fail at it and/or sabotage himself.  Robert completely missed that point.  The anger he holds inside of him is the unconscious anger toward his mother that he turns inward and takes out on himself.  When he took that mallet to that bar, he was releasing that anger.  We think Robert should have made his mother the focus of what needed to change in that place.  Once she could communicate to her son that he was good enough no matter what, he would start to shine.  My husband's mother was like her.  She always acted like she loved and accepted her son, but the subtext was always there:  "Only if you do what I think is best, otherwise you're a failure".

Edited June 5, 2022 by Yeah No

[Mondrianyone]

Maybe so. But I generally find it's iffy to project personal experience so globally onto a total stranger with no real evidence to go on. Anyway, if you read my edit, it turns out that the restaurant had excellent reviews long before Robert showed up, which calls into question pretty much everything about their poor-mouth self-portrait. I think they just wanted the RI windfall. MMV.

[buttersister]

1 hour ago, Mondrianyone said:

I think they just wanted the RI windfall. MMV.

Show wouldn’t research that? Perhaps they liked the (faux?) storyline. The rest of HGTV’s shows aren’t presented as is, so it would be in keeping.

Heh, Irvine isn’t what he presented himself as! No wonder they let him back. 😂

[Yeah No]

11 hours ago, Mondrianyone said:

Maybe so. But I generally find it's iffy to project personal experience so globally onto a total stranger with no real evidence to go on. Anyway, if you read my edit, it turns out that the restaurant had excellent reviews long before Robert showed up, which calls into question pretty much everything about their poor-mouth self-portrait. I think they just wanted the RI windfall. MMV.

I don't see why I was doing anything different than you were in your post.  I don't just pull these ideas out of my rear end or project my very small experience onto every situation.  Insight into human relationships is my wheelhouse and supported by my graduate degree in Psychology and 64 years of people watching and life experience.  But OK, MMV.

[nitrofishblue]

Basically I enjoy this show. However, I have an issue with something Robert does. I am referring to the part of the show where he is updating the restaurants dishes. He goes all happy happy when he says that the food cost for the dish was $2.00 (just an example) then says they can sell it for $12.00 (again just an example) and they are putting $10.00 profit into their pocket. This is not true and I feel it misleads people watching who have no knowledge of pricing. These folks are thinking that the restaurant is ripping them off by charging so much. What Robert is leaving off is the fixed costs ever restaurant has; taxes, rent, insurance, utilities, wages etc.. I cringe every time he does that. Most people today have little understanding of how a business must earn its money. Economics really needs to be taught in schools.

[Yeah No]

20 hours ago, nitrofishblue said:

Basically I enjoy this show. However, I have an issue with something Robert does. I am referring to the part of the show where he is updating the restaurants dishes. He goes all happy happy when he says that the food cost for the dish was $2.00 (just an example) then says they can sell it for $12.00 (again just an example) and they are putting $10.00 profit into their pocket. This is not true and I feel it misleads people watching who have no knowledge of pricing. These folks are thinking that the restaurant is ripping them off by charging so much. What Robert is leaving off is the fixed costs ever restaurant has; taxes, rent, insurance, utilities, wages etc.. I cringe every time he does that. Most people today have little understanding of how a business must earn its money. Economics really needs to be taught in schools.

In earlier seasons Robert often used to sit down with the owners and itemize out how much was actually profit once costs were subtracted, but he hasn't been doing that for a while now and I agree it's misleading.

What bugs me about him these days is how arbitrarily hard he seems on some people while incredibly easy on others.  It used to make some sense as to who he came down on the hardest, like the owners that were the most obviously in denial, pig headed or irresponsible, but in the past couple of seasons I can't make any sense out of it.  And how he treats them often seems unfair.  Sometimes he is nice now to people I would have thought he'd be hard on.  I notice he tends to be especially nice to ex-military people no matter how bad they've let the restaurant get, but once in a while he can be hard on them too and often when they don't seem any worse than the other ex-military people he's helped.  Maybe there's back story we don't know?  Who knows?

[oliviabenson]

I subscribed to discovery plus. S 20 is incomplete and s 21 is missing. 
 

I am disappointed!

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

And the show is back, although maybe not for long: Irvine broadly hinted on the show's Facebook page that RI is facing cancelation unless the ratings pick up. One of the FB commenters said Food Network is scheduling RI opposite Fox's Hell's Kitchen, which is truly stupid if true: despite their personal animosity, Gordon Ramsay and Robert Irvine have a lot of overlap in their respective audiences, and a Fox show will have an audience reach and promotional heft Food Network just can't match. (I always watch RI on Hulu or D+, so I don't know when a new episode officially "airs.")

Anyway, it was a good episode. The owner and her kids seemed like nice people, but she was just beaten down by the stress of running a failing restaurant in a dead-end town, and the fact that her husband's job kept him out of town so much just added to her obvious depression (it's telling that we never saw him once during the ep). I've watched a lot of RI episodes, but few owners have been this emotionally defeated. She came off as a good person who just needed a hand up.

On a brighter note, I loved Robert showing her that although driving to Phoenix instead of Flagstaff was ostensibly saving her money by buying from a cheaper supplier, the added gas and car maintenance costs (from turning a one-hour round trip into a five-hour round trip) more than wiped out any "savings," not to mention the equivalent of two full weeks per year spent driving instead of sleeping or being with her kids or whatever. It's often the stingy person who ends up spending the most, and this was a perfect example.

[Cetacean]

I enjoyed the episode tonight, no screaming and hysterics.  I loved the emphasis on Navajo food and culture as well.

This was apparently filmed during Covid which made some of the scenes a little awkward.  But they seemed like a lovely and loving family so I wish them all the best.  

[Jaded]

FN/Discovery kind of ruined any momentum this show still had when they trying making it exclusive to the Discovery app. It turned a lot of people off to the point where they don't really care that it's returned to the FN network. I watch when I see that it's on.  I don't go looking for it specifically anymore.

[Cetacean]

5 hours ago, Jaded said:

FN/Discovery kind of ruined any momentum this show still had when they trying making it exclusive to the Discovery app. 

I didn't realize that was the case. I just figured they stopped filming. I don't look for it particularly either, I just happened to run into it last night by mistake. Discovery shot themselves in the foot with several programs. I refuse to pay for another app!

[buttersister]

Saw a bit of this tonight. Remembered why I quit watching. The new food looked fine. The place looked better (not hard to top the old decor). And while I know these shows are formulaic, Robert barking at the designers and their hard-working tradespeople is such toxic "masculinity" and offensively stupid, he comes off like an over-acting steroidal jackass.

[oliviabenson]

Is it still on?

[Cetacean]

1 hour ago, oliviabenson said:

Is it still on?

Yes, a bunch of new episodes coming up.

[Yeah No]

11 hours ago, Cetacean said:

Yes, a bunch of new episodes coming up.

Sadly, I read that Robert was quoted recently as saying he doesn't know if the show will be renewed beyond this season.  If this show goes that makes at least 7 shows I used to watch that have been canceled or ended in the past year or so and I haven't been finding very many new ones to take their place.  The Discovery/Time Warner merger budget cutting has been responsible for that as was FN's putting this only on Discovery+ for a while.  Meanwhile they have all the money in the world to come out with tons of the horror/fantasy/violent dystopian stuff I don't care for.  

[Cetacean]

1 hour ago, Yeah No said:

Meanwhile they have all the money in the world to come out with tons of the horror/fantasy/violent dystopian stuff I don't care for.  

Apparently that's what sells or they wouldn't be doing it.  We are living in a world of horror and violent dystopian stuff in real life so I don't need to see it on TV or big screen.

I am not a huge fan of Robert's personality but I do like seeing the transformations of some of the restaurants and am amazed at seeing food costs vs. what they charge for a meal.  Of course there are all of the overhead costs that have to be baked in as well.

I would love some "where are they now" episodes to see if they continued to do well a year or two afterward. I know at least one place closed shortly after filming.

[chessiegal]

48 minutes ago, Cetacean said:

I would love some "where are they now" episodes to see if they continued to do well a year or two afterward. I know at least one place closed shortly after filming.

Not the same as seeing it, but this website does follow-ups.

Food Network Gossip

[Yeah No]

7 hours ago, Cetacean said:

Apparently that's what sells or they wouldn't be doing it.  We are living in a world of horror and violent dystopian stuff in real life so I don't need to see it on TV or big screen.

Exactly.  I say this myself!

7 hours ago, Cetacean said:

I am not a huge fan of Robert's personality but I do like seeing the transformations of some of the restaurants and am amazed at seeing food costs vs. what they charge for a meal.  Of course there are all of the overhead costs that have to be baked in as well.

Same here plus I was on an episode in its second season so I have a special place in my heart for the show.  If you have access to Discovery+ or "On Demand", it's the Pastori's episode in Ellington, CT, filmed in 2011 (Season 2 Episode 6).  The restaurant closed in 2014.  The owners were able to sell and another restaurant is there now.

I'm in a clip tasting a meatball and saying, "Just like my Sicilian grandma used to make", LOL.  Actually it was a pretty phenomenal meatball and I still remember how it tasted.  And I'm a pretty tough critic when it comes to meatballs, too!

How it happened is a friend that lives in Ellington found out from someone that worked there about the upcoming filming.  Given that we were unemployed at the time, we made sure to be there.  It was a fascinating experience.  I even had my photo taken with Robert.  Unfortunately I looked awful in it so don't expect to see it any time soon, LOL.  

2011 was a weird year for me.  I somehow got on TV 3 times - on this show, plus as an "audience guest" on The Rachael Ray Show, and in a commercial for a local store chain.  I was never on TV before or after that!  In November of that year I got a job.

My friend later told me that the owner didn't really want to stick to the new menu so he went back to his old ways, which of course wasn't profitable.  So it really wasn't Robert's fault that they failed.  They actually made good money on the bar so I wonder if they sold because they figured it was a good time for it, not because they were losing any money.  

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Yeah No
Season 2, not 1.

[Yeah No]

My husband and I thought Franco Di Roma's looked familiar but we thought it was just because it reminded us of our favorite family owned red sauce joint in Yonkers, NY.  My husband's sister lives in Middletown, NY but we didn't think we'd ever been there until she reminded us that it was the restaurant where she held their father's 90th birthday party in 2006.  Then it all came back to me!  I remember thinking the food should be as good as in the restaurant we loved in Yonkers, but it just wasn't that great.  Not horrible but not a place I'd go to again. 

My sister in law said she knew about the makeover and the episode and she and her husband actually went there last week after the episode aired.  She said they had to wait on line to get in outside.  The food was better, but she didn't like it that the dinner menu was so limited and that everything was ala carte, even the side dishes and the bread.  She thought the prices were too high for that kind of restaurant in that area.   I'm not surprised she felt that way.  I saw a lot of comments online from people complaining about the same thing.  

I think this is an example of where Robert didn't really get it right.  Knowing the clientele in that area as I do, and other family run Italian places like that which do well,  I think he should have let them keep some of the features of the old menu.  This isn't some high class/high priced Northern Italian place that can get away with nickel and diming people to death.  The people that would tend to go to this place would think they're getting too big for their britches doing that.  I think they should have factored in a side dish and complimentary bread with the entrée like other similar restaurants do.   How much does a side of pasta cost them?  Pennies?  Someone online said that a lot of the dishes that were taken off the restaurant menu are still available to take out.  That's weird.  If they're going to be set up to make them, why not serve them in the restaurant?  Keep the new stuff in a special section on the menu like my favorite place in Yonkers.  High class ala carte stuff on one side, more humble fare on the other.

Also, I don't think the interior needed a complete makeover either.  The best and most popular family run Italian places thrive with interiors much like this place looked before the renovation.  If the food is good and people can get what they want the interior doesn't matter so much.

[Jaded]

I thought Franco Di Roma's looked familar too. It wasn't the same reason as yours @Yeah Nothough. The interior made me think of another restaurant that was featured on this show that I wish I could remember the name of. I had to check the Zap2It guide to make sure it was new. I'm going to go look on that blog that follows up on these places to see if I can find the other one I was reminded of.

[Cetacean]

I wonder if the owners of the White Mountain Inn have killed each other yet.

[buttersister]

It’s recorded, sounds like I should go watch! Thanks 

[Jaded]

Restaurant: Impossible Cancellation Explained by Host Robert Irvine: It Was a ‘Great Show,’ But…

[proserpina65]

18 hours ago, Jaded said:

Restaurant: Impossible Cancellation Explained by Host Robert Irvine: It Was a ‘Great Show,’ But…

Irvine's full of shit.  He wasn't about helping the community or even the restaurant owners.  It was all about puffing up his ego.  So many of those restaurants are closed now because he didn't pay the least bit of attention to the communities they served.

[oliviabenson]

The show is on Max!