What Happened to Goombazz Big City Eatzz? (Rock Island, IL)

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) traveled to Rock Island, Illinois, for "Goombazz Gone Wild," season 7 episode 9, which aired December 18, 2013, focused on Goombazz Big City Eatzz at 2704 18th Avenue. The restaurant was owned by Brenda Brewer and Sal Cracco, who the episode's own framing described as carrying substantial business debt and losing money each month at the time chef Robert Irvine arrived to rework the menu, kitchen operations, and pricing over the standard two-day format. The pizza-and-Italian-leaning menu and dining room were both overhauled as part of the renovation, and the show also addressed staffing levels and portion-control issues that the owners said were contributing to the restaurant's ongoing losses at that time.

The Quad-City Times, the regional newspaper covering the Rock Island area, reported in a story headlined "Goombazz locks its door" that the restaurant ended operations around February 2014, about two months after the episode aired. That newspaper account is the most credible dated source located for this record and is broadly consistent with the closure timeline described by the blog Food Network Gossip, which separately noted that a temporary increase in customers following the television appearance did not resolve the underlying financial pressure on the business, since the restaurant's debt load predated the renovation by several years. Yelp's current listing for "Goombazz Big City Eatzz" at 2704 18th Ave, Rock Island, Illinois shows the location as closed, and Foursquare's listing likewise marks the business "now closed."

No current website or active social media account for Goombazz was found during this research pass, and no successor restaurant at the same 18th Avenue address was identified in the listings consulted. The Restaurant: Impossible episode remains available in Food Network's archive and continues to be referenced in retrospective coverage of restaurants featured on the series that did not stay open for the long term.