What Happened to Del's After Restaurant: Impossible (FN)? (Pittsburgh, PA)

On Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network), Robert Irvine visited Del's Bar & Ristorante, a longtime Italian restaurant on Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh's Bloomfield neighborhood, owned by siblings Marianne and John Del Pizzo, whose grandfather had opened the business. According to the episode, the restaurant's core problem was less about food or decor than about owner Marianne's management style: under the stress of trying to save what the family considered an heirloom business, she had, in the show's telling, alienated staff and developed a difficult reputation in the neighborhood, driving away customers even as the building itself, with its original 1940s-era floors and persistent leaks, badly needed physical repair. Irvine described the Del's renovation as one of the toughest he had undertaken given the building's age and condition, and his team used the standard two-day, $10,000 budget to rebuild parts of the kitchen and dining room while working with Marianne on staff relations and service standards.

The episode aired February 29, 2012. The restaurant continued operating for roughly three more years after the renovation; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on April 23, 2015 that Del's would close after more than 60 years in business, with the DelPizzo family selling the Liberty Avenue building to a commercial real-estate executive. Pittsburgh Patch later reported the space cycled through unrelated restaurants after Del's closed: Jabo's Smoque House operated there about two years before closing in spring 2018, Sugar and Smoke ran briefly before closing in mid-2019, and as of a January 2022 Patch report the building was slated to reopen as Camino Mexican Street Food.

A Yelp listing for the original Del's business is marked permanently closed. No source identified in this research confirms what, if anything, currently occupies the address. Pittsburgh media at the time, including the CBS Pittsburgh affiliate, covered the renovation as a notable boost for a long-running Bloomfield institution facing an uncertain future.