Is Green Beret Club Still Open? Restaurant: Impossible (FN) Update

The Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) themed special "Military: Impossible" brought Chef Robert Irvine to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to rework the Green Beret Club, one of the few full-service dining venues on the Army post and a gathering place primarily for Special Forces soldiers and their families. Irvine found a club housed in a converted gym space with dated decor, a kitchen leaning heavily on pre-made and frozen food rather than fresh cooking, and a name and branding some on post felt did not reflect the venue's role as a place open to a broader military community rather than only Green Beret personnel. Staff morale was described as low, with the kitchen team feeling disconnected from a menu that offered little room for pride in the food being served.

Irvine's team used the program's standard 48-hour renovation window to modernize the dining space while deliberately preserving an existing memorial wall honoring fallen soldiers, treating that element as central to the room rather than something to be removed or minimized. On the food side, the rescue emphasized a shift toward fresh preparation over frozen and pre-made ingredients, alongside menu changes meant to raise both quality and staff investment in the food they served. As part of the changes, the venue was renamed Smoke Bomb Grille, a name intended to be more broadly inclusive of the post's wider military community while still honoring the unit's heritage informally through design details.

The reveal presented a modernized club space built around fresh cooking and the renamed identity. Because the club served an audience of active-duty soldiers, families, and retirees rather than the general public, Irvine's team also considered practical issues like extended hours around training schedules and pricing accessible to junior enlisted patrons, treating the venue's role as a de facto community center as part of the rescue's brief alongside the more conventional food and design fixes. The episode aired September 17, 2014, the third of the season's non-traditional venue specials, following the bowling-alley and golf-club episodes earlier that summer.