What Happened to Island Kine Grinds After Restaurant: Impossible (FN)?

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) sent Chef Robert Irvine to Nampa, Idaho, for "Clueless in Idaho," which aired January 12, 2023, to help owner Renus Domingo save Island Kine Grinds, a Hawaiian-style plate-lunch restaurant he and his wife Ludi opened in 2011 after moving to Idaho. Domingo told the crew that a sudden illness had left him paralyzed and hospitalized for three months, followed by a second health crisis that required open-heart surgery; the medical bills and lost income pushed the couple roughly $250,000 into debt and nearly wiped out their savings, according to the Idaho Press's coverage of the show's arrival in Nampa. Irvine's team spent two days reworking the restaurant's dining room and its menu of island-style meat and vegetable plates, aiming to lighten the workload on Domingo as he continued recovering and to put the business on stronger financial footing.

Robert Irvine (Restaurant: Impossible, Food Network) has said the two-day, budget-limited format is meant to give owners a working blueprint they can sustain on their own after the crew leaves, a test the Nampa restaurant would face in the years that followed. Idaho News and ListenBoise both covered the show's arrival in Nampa ahead of the taping, describing Island Kine Grinds as a local favorite for Hawaiian plate-lunch fare in the Treasure Valley region of southwestern Idaho. The restaurant did not stay open under either its original name or its rebuilt finances.

Reality TV Revisited's fan-site page for Island Kine Grinds, later updated, reports that the business, by then operating as Aloha Island Grille, permanently closed in March 2025. The location supplied with our records pointed to a same-named restaurant, Big Island Kine, in Arcata, California — an unrelated business roughly 700 miles from Nampa. The Idaho Press's coverage of the 2023 filming placed the restaurant at 140 Caldwell Boulevard in Nampa, Idaho; that address was confirmed against the Census Bureau's geocoder, which returned matching coordinates for the street number.