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

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) sent chef Robert Irvine to Ellendale's Restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee, for an ambush edition titled "Ambush: Stay.. Or Go?," which aired November 12, 2015. In the ambush format, a family member arranged the visit without owner Julie Buhler's advance knowledge. Ellendale's operated out of a converted farmhouse on Old Elm Hill Pike and had built a following over roughly two decades in business, but the crew found a dated dining room, kitchen workflow problems, and a staff that described feeling unsupported by ownership.

Buhler told Irvine on camera that she was carrying substantial debt from purchasing the restaurant, a hardship disclosed during the episode itself. Over the show's compressed schedule, Irvine's team redesigned the dining room, adjusted the menu, and worked with Buhler on communicating more directly with her staff. A later report from EntertainmentNow described a near-term sales increase following the episode and noted praise for the refreshed look and more consistent food. Buhler kept the restaurant running for roughly two and a half more years after the broadcast.

A post in a Nashville neighborhood Facebook group, cited by multiple outlets that track the show's past locations, said Ellendale's would serve its last Sunday brunch on July 1 before closing, with the closure taking effect in 2018 after nearly nineteen years in business; the post attributed the decision to Buhler shifting her focus to Phat Bites, a delicatessen concept she had also been running. Yelp's business page for the address, last updated in January 2026, still carries a closed marker, consistent with that earlier account. The Old Elm Hill Pike property has drawn separate local coverage in the years since.

WKRN reported that the vacant farmhouse structure sustained fire damage, and Fox17 covered concerns raised by neighbors about people sheltering inside the empty building. Neither outlet described any plan to reopen a restaurant there. No source reviewed for this record pinned the July 1 closing to a specific weekday-and-year combination beyond what is described above, and this summary does not speculate beyond what those outlets reported. Taken together, the available reporting shows a ratings-driven makeover that produced a documented short-term business improvement, followed by an owner-directed wind-down of the restaurant several years later in favor of a different venture, and a property that has remained unused since.