What Happened to Italian Village After Restaurant: Impossible (FN)?

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) brought Robert Irvine to Italian Village in Milmont Park, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, for an episode that aired August 1, 2012. As shown in the episode, the family-owned restaurant was roughly $500,000 in debt and losing about $5,000 a week by the time Irvine arrived. During his kitchen inspection, Irvine's team found dead mice and mouse droppings in food-storage areas, a food-safety problem the show addressed directly as part of the two-day turnaround, alongside the restaurant's mounting debt load. Irvine's team spent the renovation cleaning up the kitchen's pest and sanitation issues, overhauling back-of-house procedures, and updating the dated dining room to feel more like a welcoming Italian villa.

On the menu side, the team kept the restaurant's Italian-American identity intact — chicken parmigiana, baked ravioli, and Romano-style pizza remained staples — while tightening the offerings so the family's kitchen staff could execute them consistently going forward. Philadelphia Magazine's Foobooz blog covered a post-show dinner at the restaurant shortly after the episode aired, reporting that the makeover had visibly changed the space and menu. Food Network Gossip later reported that sales were up roughly 18 percent in the months following the broadcast, though reviews of the changes among longtime regulars were mixed.

That improvement did not hold. Food Network Gossip reported in July 2014 that Italian Village was closing, citing the restaurant's continued financial strain, and noted that an auction to sell off the restaurant's furniture, kitchen equipment, and other contents was scheduled for July 26, 2014, with the last day of normal operation falling on July 20, 2014. Food Network's own restaurant-directory page for the 902 MacDade Boulevard address still describes the business only in the past tense as "once a Restaurant: Impossible mission," and no evidence was found of the location reopening under a new operator since the 2014 closure.