What Happened to Benner Street Restaurant? (Bethlehem, PA)

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) visited Benner Street Restaurant, a bar and restaurant owned by Dorothy and Thom, at 1028 Broadway on the Bethlehem/Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania border, for the episode "Benner Street in Bethlehem," which aired July 28, 2013 (WFMZ's own coverage described the location as being in Fountain Hill, a small borough that adjoins Bethlehem and shares its mailing address and ZIP code, so some listings and news coverage refer to the restaurant under either place name). As shown in the episode, host Robert Irvine's team spent roughly two days and about $10,000 addressing the restaurant's menu, kitchen workflow, bar program and dining-room presentation, following the show's standard renovation format, and held a relaunch event for the community before the episode aired. The owners kept running the restaurant under the same name in the period after the episode aired.

That arrangement did not last indefinitely. Secondary reporting on the show's aftermath indicates Benner Street Restaurant closed around September 2014, after Dorothy and Thom decided to retire, roughly a year after the television visit, according to that secondary account. The Broadway address was later reopened under new ownership and a new name, Saranda's on Broadway, a French-influenced restaurant that operated at the same location for several years under different owners. That successor business has since closed as well: a Yelp listing for Saranda's on Broadway, updated as recently as July 2025, marks it permanently closed, and a separate Yelp listing for the original Bennerstreet Restaurant and Bar, updated in May 2026, likewise shows that earlier name as permanently closed at the address. No further reopening at 1028 Broadway has been identified in the sources reviewed for this record, and no dated evidence of current restaurant operation at that address in 2026 was found in this research pass, which relied on business-directory and review-site listings rather than a fresh local news account of the succession of businesses at the address.