Is LBI Pancake House / Ship Bottom Volunteer Fire Department Still Open?

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) returned to Ship Bottom, New Jersey, for "Holiday: Impossible 2," season 7 episode 8, which aired December 8, 2013, pairing a renovation of LBI Pancake House with work on the adjacent Ship Bottom Volunteer Fire Department. The episode was framed around recovery from Hurricane Sandy, with chef Robert Irvine given a three-day timeline and roughly a $50,000 budget to rebuild the pancake house at 2111 Long Beach Boulevard after storm damage, alongside improvements intended to support the fire department that had helped the community through the storm. The dual-site format was one of the show's occasional holiday specials pairing a restaurant makeover with work benefiting a local civic or emergency-services organization, reflecting the barrier-island community's broader recovery from the 2012 storm that caused significant damage along the New Jersey shore.

LBI Pancake House has continued operating at the same Long Beach Boulevard address since the episode aired. According to a summary from the fan site PopThruster, the restaurant changed hands in June 2018, with new owners taking over the business while keeping the LBI Pancake House name, a same-name, new-ownership transition rather than a rebrand. The business's own website, lbipancakehouse.com, currently lists an active menu and continues to promote the location, and Yelp's listing for the restaurant, last updated in 2026, shows it operating as a breakfast-and-brunch restaurant with several hundred reviews accumulated in the years since the show aired.

The Ship Bottom Volunteer Fire Department, the episode's second beneficiary, remains an active department serving the borough. No independent news source with a specific ownership-transfer date was found, so the June 2018 timeframe for new ownership is reported rather than independently confirmed, though the restaurant's continued operation is supported by its own website and an up-to-date commercial listing.