Restaurant: Impossible is a reality TV show on Food Network that is focused on English chef Robert Irvine. Like the name suggests, the show is centered on Irvine attempting to make a failing restaurant profitable again within a couple of days while working with no more than a $10,000 budget. Here are 10 things that you may or may not have known about Restaurant: Impossible:
1. Can Be Considered a Spinoff
Restaurant: Impossible can be considered a spinoff of sorts. This is because it was preceded by Irvine’s Dinner: Impossible, which featured him attempting to complete the various food-related challenges presented to him with a short period of time. The whole thing was supposed to evoke the Mission: Impossible show from the 1960s, thus explaining why it was designed to exude a kind of secret agent vibe.
2. Irvine Got Booted from the Food Network Once
For a time, Irvine managed to get booted from Dinner: Impossible and the rest of the Food Network. This happened because it turned out that Irvine had been adding fictitious accomplishments such as working on Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding cake to his already impressive resume, which perhaps unsurprisingly, irked some of the decision-makers at the channel who had to rush to minimize the potential fallout when the whole thing came out.
3. Irvine Managed to Make a Comeback to the Food Network
With that said, it wasn’t too long before Irvine managed to make a comeback. To be exact, the Food Network swapped Irvine out for Michael Symon for a single episode with ten episodes before bringing him back to Dinner: Impossible. Apparently, this happened because the viewers liked Irvine enough to want him back in spite of his lies, though it helped that Irvine apologized for having told those lies in the first place.
4. Restaurant: Impossible Was a Successor to Dinner: Impossible
Eventually, Restaurant: Impossible came into existence as a sort of successor to Dinner: Impossible. In short, what happened was that Irvine had returned to Dinner: Impossible by 2009, where he remained until the show stopped production in 2010. After that, Irvine continued to work with the Food Network, thus resulting in two projects at around that time. One saw him becoming the new host of Worst Cooks in America, while the other was the restaurant make-over show that we now know as Restaurant: Impossible.
5. Featured Some Reluctant Participants
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the participants on Restaurant: Impossible weren’t particularly enthusiastic about their participation on it. After all, their participation meant acknowledging that they were making some pretty serious mistakes when it came to running their restaurant, which isn’t something that most people like to do. As such, in some cases, it was actually the friends and family members of the restaurant owner and operators who convinced them to participate with some help from the promise of the $10,000 in renovations and other makeover essentials.
6. Low Success Rate
Speaking of which, Restaurant: Impossible had more failures than successes when it came to its efforts to revive failing restaurants. In fact, the premiere season was particularly bad, seeing as how none of the restaurants featured in those episodes have managed to make it into the present time. With that said, it is unclear how influential Restaurant: Impossible’s role was in these unsuccessful outcomes. On the one hand, it is clear that if its intervention was beneficial, it wasn’t enough; on the other hand, it isn’t particularly surprising for a failing restaurant to, well, fail because in the grand scheme of things, a $10,000 makeover over the course of two days isn’t actually that much help.
7. The Hiatus Might Have Been Because of a Talk Show
The show still had respectable ratings when it came to a conclusion in 2016 with its 13th season. Moreover, it had an open field that was free of competition because the other restaurant makeover shows had already been cancelled, which caused a lot of people to wonder why it had happened. In particular, it is worth mentioning that some people think that the whole thing can be explained by Irvine’s talk show, which was announced a couple of months before the announcement that Restaurant: Impossible would be coming to a close.
8. New Season
Speaking of which, said line of speculation is supported by the fact that Irvine has returned for a new season of Restaurant: Impossible following the failure of his talk show. In total, the talk show lasted for just a couple of seasons before it was cancelled, meaning that it was much less successful than what Restaurant: Impossible has proven to be.
9. Most of the Original Production Team Have Managed to Make a Return
It is interesting to note that most of the original production team for Restaurant: Impossible have managed to make a return to its production, which is pretty important because said individuals can have a fair amount of impact on what interested individuals will see on the TV screen. On top of this, this is particularly impressive because the team members would have presumably gone their separate ways to work on various projects, thus making their comeback that much more unexpected but also that much more welcome for the show’s fans.
10. Marc Summers Isn’t Returning
With that said, most of the people involved in making Restaurant: Impossible managing to return isn’t the same as saying all of the people involved in said project managing the same. For instance, the executive producer Marc Summers who was involved with both Dinner: Impossible and Restaurant: Impossible won’t be making a return to the restaurant makeover show now that it has started up again. This is because he is too occupied with his own project at the moment, seeing as how he is the host for Double Dare on Nickelodeon, which isn’t even considering his other obligations.
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