What Happened to Copper Steer Steakhouse? (Safford, AZ)

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) headed to Safford, Arizona, for "Smoky Steakhouse," a season 14 episode that aired May 11, 2019. The episode featured Copper Steer Steakhouse, owned by a couple who had left careers in law enforcement roughly a decade earlier to open the restaurant, investing close to $500,000 of their own money despite having no prior restaurant experience. Chef Robert Irvine's visit addressed a dark, divided dining-room layout and grill-related odor issues the show highlighted, alongside the kitchen workflow and menu changes typical of the series' two-day format.

Reporting after the episode described a marked improvement in business over the following months, with the owners hiring additional staff to keep up with increased customer volume and reporting more time available for their family. That improvement did not carry through to the following years. Yelp's business page for Copper Steer Steakhouse is marked closed. The listing itself was last updated in March 2026, with no indication of reopening under the original name at 1206 E US Hwy 70. No official statement from the owners about the closure was located during this research pass, and no dated news article confirming an exact closure date was found.

The closure is documented only through a current Yelp listing, rather than an official statement or two independently dated sources. This episode aired during Restaurant: Impossible's 2019 return, the show's comeback after a multi-year gap following season 13's original broadcast in 2016; the renovation format otherwise matched the earlier seasons. The gap between the immediate post-episode improvement reported at the time and the current closed listing means this record cannot establish exactly when the decline that led to closure began, only that it occurred sometime between the original 2019 airing and the 2026 listing check.