How I Accidentally Got Up Close With Food Network’s TV Show ‘Restaurant Impossible’

This past weekend, my wife and I took a trip to Houston to see the Livestock Show and Rodeo with our good friends Robert and Nikki Bland.  We left out mid-morning Friday and since we picked them up outside of Marshall, Texas we were nearing lunch when we arrived in Lufkin, Texas. 

Seeing the sign above and really enjoying good barbeque, we decided this would be our first stop of the trip.  We always have a rule that we never eat from chain restaurants when on vacation.  Only the places that look like locals would really enjoy.  We do have one rule though.  Never will we stop at a place with a homemade sign.  You know those places that look like a serial killer made the sign while he was still incarcerated?  But this place, Bryan's Smokehouse, looked likely for a great culinary experience.

Little did we know, it would be end up being one of the highlights of our life and a likely focal point for many story telling sessions years from now.  As we entered the building, we noticed a young woman sitting at a table working on a lap top computer.  We were a little curious when she never even rose to offer us a table.  She just pointed us to the back room, where we had to move a couple plaques and wipe off a dusty table to seat ourselves.

Inspecting the room, we again found other people working on lap tops and I began to feel like we'd somehow wandered into a camouflaged Starbucks Coffee instead of a barbeque place.  It just didn't feel right.  The décor was right, but the service was dismal at the very best.  I even remarked to my guests, "I wonder what this girl's gonna do on her second day at work."

After a few minutes, she took our drink orders and my wife excused herself to the restroom.  About the time my wife returned, the waitress brought our drinks and we placed our orders.  My wife made the comment, "I wonder what's going on here? There are big white tents all in the back of this place and there are tons of people out there."  Seeing the place also did catering, we imagined that maybe they had a party out back and continued our conversation while we waited.

Within just a couple minutes, a lady came to the table and introduced herself as a member of the hit television show, "Restaurant: Impossible" from the Food Network.  Not knowing anything about the show, she had to explain its premise.  Failing restaurants submit applications to the network to come in and help re-image, re-brand, refine and put these places back on a successful path.

This place, Bryan's Smokehouse, was about to receive such a makeover.  While she was speaking, the waitress brought us a bowl of fried potato skins.  They were cold and soggy.  My wife Julie took a bite and put hers back on the table.  This lady from the network made note of the action and began to explain this was the kind of thing that had brought about the downfall of a once thriving restaurant.  We had now waited nearly 45 minutes and had yet to receive our meals.  Another reason this place was failing, as pointed out by the network.

The waitress brought more fried potato skins, that were apparently old skins just dropped back into hot grease to warm them up. Awful!  The next thing we knew, the film crew was placing microphones on Julie and I, and had us explain our disappointment in this place.  A little bit later our meals arrived.  Mine was really good, except the barbeque sauce on my ribs was really salty.  Julie's baked chicken was refrigerator cold.  Wow; no place could really be this bad could it?

Apparently so.  How much of this was made up for Hollywood I don't know, but they struck out all the way around.  Julie and Nikki even had to hunt down the waitress to get our check, only for her to have to re-write our ticket because she couldn't remember what we had ordered.

The good news is that they were set to re-open Sunday with all the improvements from Restaurant Impossible and it's host Robert Irvine.  I'm hoping it's a success. We were told the episode would air in 3 to 4 months.

Course our biggest concern was that we knew there was no way that the remainder of our trip could ever top the first couple of hours, but we wouldn't have traded the memory for the best barbeque in Texas.