What Happened to Chatterbox After Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network)?

On Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network), Robert Irvine visited the Chatterbox Cafe in Windham, New Hampshire, run by owner Lynn Malone. According to the episode, Malone was a former stay-at-home mother of five who used her late husband's life insurance proceeds to open the restaurant with little prior food-service experience. The crew spent roughly three days and $10,000 addressing what the episode described as inconsistent food, an inexperienced staff, and a dated dining room, aiming to give Malone both a workable menu and clearer operating procedures she could sustain after the crew left.

The episode aired February 15, 2012. Local coverage around the time of filming, including a Nashua Telegraph article on the makeover, described the Windham business regrouping around the new menu and layout in the months that followed. According to the blog New Hampshire Restaurant Reviews, which had reviewed the cafe before the renovation, the business was 'now out of business' by January 2014, and other secondary accounts describe the closure as occurring in January 2013 after a vehicle accident damaged the building, ending operations less than a year after the episode aired.

The same New Hampshire Restaurant Reviews post found the space had been taken over by MaryAnn's Diner, a 1950s-style diner chain based in Derry, New Hampshire, which had opened in the former Chatterbox location by early 2014. A Yelp listing for 'The Chatterbox Windham' at the same Cobbetts Pond Road address is separately marked permanently closed, last updated in May 2026. No source identified during this research indicates the Chatterbox Cafe, or owner Lynn Malone, reopened the restaurant elsewhere after the 2013 closure. Coverage from the time of the makeover noted that Malone had run the cafe for a relatively short period before the show intervened, and that the renovation focused as much on basic kitchen training and consistency as on cosmetic changes to the dining room. The Nashua Telegraph's report on the makeover described the business as still finding its footing in the months immediately after filming.