What Happened to Bryan's Smokehouse After Restaurant: Impossible (FN)?

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) visited Bryan's Smokehouse, a barbecue restaurant on South Timberland Drive in Lufkin, Texas, for the episode "In the Pits," which aired May 26, 2013. The location had served barbecue since the 1950s under earlier names before Tommy and Lynn Bryan took it over and renamed it Bryan's Smokehouse. As shown in the episode, host Robert Irvine found a kitchen and business strained by heavy debt and staffing problems, though owner Lynn Bryan later told the Lufkin Daily News that portions of that on-air narrative, including the specific debt figure, were scripted for the show rather than strictly accurate.

Filming took place over two days in March 2013, during which Irvine's crew reworked the restaurant's kitchen operations, menu and dining room in the show's standard format, and a public relaunch event was held before the episode aired. Lynn Bryan said she and her husband signed a contract requiring them to stay silent about the renovation for two weeks after broadcast, and that Irvine's crew found Lufkin an unusually cool reception, with some former employees protesting outside during filming. In February 2014, the Lufkin Daily News reported that the Bryans sold the restaurant to Seth Gragg and Ryan Pope, two local men who kept the Bryan's Smokehouse name and much of the existing menu, including its pulled-pork "South Carolina" sandwich plate and cheesecake sopapilla dessert.

Lynn Bryan said at the time that running the business for sixteen years had left her exhausted and that she planned to move into a new career selling prepaid funeral plans. The restaurant did not continue indefinitely under the new owners. K-Fox 95.5, a Lufkin radio station, reported in October 2022 that the building at that corner had since been completely torn down and that a Shipley's Donuts location had moved onto the site. A Yelp listing for the barbecue restaurant, last updated in April 2026, similarly shows it marked as permanently closed. Lynn Bryan has since become involved with the Angelina County Farmers Market, according to the same K-Fox report.