Restaurant: Impossible

I have watched one episode of this show, and it is literally a carbon copy of the kitchen nightmare format! Bad kitchen, chef comes in to see kitchen, head chef (HC) lies to presenter chef (PC). PC wants to see kitchen in action, and HC does silly things, PC brings them up on it and HC kicks off. HC then realises that PC is right. All is well.

Literally a Kitchen Nightmare rip off! Watch that, as Gordon is so much better!

Each week, a different failing restaurant is given a FAST makeover by Robert Irvine and his assistants. In many cases, you find the restaurant owners likable but clueless. In others, they just seem like annoying jerks who seem to fight Irvine's suggestions--and the audience WANTS to see them fail but Irvine, inexplicably, doesn't give up. Regardless, by the end of the show, the establishment is cleaner, brighter and more able to succeed. Despite being HIGHLY scripted, the show, overall, is very entertaining. My only complaints are that the followups online are very vague and I'd LOVE to see a followup show a year or two later when they revisit many of the old shows. Still, a simple idea that manages to work.

I know that there has been some controversy about the host, Robert Irvine's credentials. I tried to get to the truth of this by reading a lot of articles on the internet and really couldn't. It appears as if he might have exaggerated a bit instead of actually lying about his experiences. However, he IS a very good host of the show--mostly because he appears to care so much about the people (unlike in the British version of this show--where the host is very abusive). He also seems like a really nice guy--and that is hard to fake.

This show should be called Restaurant Impostor.

Talk about a Gordon Ramsey wannabe.

Did not know chefs were also trained to be counselors, let's keep the reason for the show to what it was meant to be, helping the owners of the restaurant get back on track and save their failing restaurant. Find Robert Irvine to be condescending and arrogant and somewhat of a bully. Let's keep the subject to food and restaurant revamping please. Oh and do quit the copycat behaviour.

It's enjoyable and fun to watch. It's a lot more about changing the business end, personal issues and aesthetics of the restaurant than the food. New Dishes only account for about 1 minute per show, which is a little disappointing. The biggest challenge is that it seems 80-90% of the restaurants don't make it and are closed within months anyways. That's not necessarily the fault of the show, many of these have tax liens, behind months in rent, or go back to their old ways as soon as the crew leaves, but sometimes it's also because they come in and make the place look amazing, update the kitchen, bring everything back to code and then the landlord realizes they can make 50-100% more in rent so all the benefits of the money and renovations and repairs end up going to the landlord. I would only do this if I personally owned the building they were doing renovations to or was like 1 year into a 5 year lease, otherwise it's just creating an incentive for your landlord to gouge the restaurant as soon as the show airs and location gets national attention. That's the sad part.

I loved the first several seasons of this show, because it was all about the FOOD. Sure, it involved fixing the kitchen/giving the place a facelift to make it an attractive package, but it has devolved to "HGTV/Marriage counseling Hour". I, like many people, will go into a hole in the wall, as long as it's relatively clean, but mostly IF THE FOOD IS GOOD. The last few seasons the food aspect has been less than 5 minutes out of every hour episode. So the recent places may look nice, but the food is still going to suck.

Here's something you'll hear every episode: The designer of the episode will say "There are sooooo many dust collectors", or "We HATE nik-naks!", only to put up a thousand new dust collectors and nik naks to replace the ones they just hauled outside.

It was funny when Robert used to take a sledgehammer to a wall or whatever, because then he'd walk off to the kitchen and make something delicious. Now he hangs around the remodel or goes to the trailer and makes phone calls. Very disappointing.

I thought this was a FOOD network show. What happened to the FOOD part of the show??