What Happened to Kalico Kitchen After Restaurant: Impossible (FN)?

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) visited Kalico Kitchen, a barn-themed buffet-style restaurant at 312 Ferry Street in Douglas, Michigan, for the episode "Kalico Kraziness," which aired July 14, 2013. The restaurant, run by owner Catherine Wilt, had been operating under various names at that location since the 1970s and offered a large Southern and American buffet menu along with a deli and bakery counter. As shown in the episode, host Robert Irvine's team spent roughly 36 hours reworking the restaurant's menu, kitchen systems and dining room, and the episode itself depicted friction between Wilt and her staff during the renovation process; that depiction reflects how the business appeared to the show's crew during filming and is not repeated here as an independent assessment of Wilt's character.

The renovation did not resolve the restaurant's underlying problems. According to the Holland Sentinel's December 17, 2013 news report, Kalico Kitchen had closed after a re-inspection by the Allegan County health department that found violations serious enough to shut the kitchen down, alongside Wilt's own acknowledgment to the paper that the business was roughly $10,000 behind on its electric bill and had already been foreclosed on. The same report noted that daily sales had fallen to roughly $100-$120 with only a handful of employees remaining, and that the property, which included Wilt's home, was listed for sale at the time.

The restaurant had posted a message on its Facebook page around the same period thanking customers for 37 years of business and confirming the closure. A Yelp listing for Kalico Kitchen, updated as recently as August 2026, continues to show the restaurant marked as permanently closed at the Ferry Street address, and no subsequent reopening under new ownership at that address has been identified in the sources reviewed for this record; the property itself was being marketed commercially in the years after the closure, according to a real-estate listing site.