What Happened to Old World Italian Restaurant? (Murrells Inlet, SC)

Chef Robert Irvine traveled to Murrells Inlet, South Carolina for "Father Knows Worst," which aired April 21, 2013 on Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network), to help George and Teresa Hayek save their 16-year-old family restaurant, Old World Italian. The episode centered on a family struggling to hand day-to-day control to their culinary-trained son, George Jr., against a backdrop of the senior Hayeks' health problems and mounting financial pressure that the show said neither parent wanted to fully confront, even as the debt continued to grow. Irvine's team refreshed the dining room's decor and lighting, reworked the menu to modernize a selection of traditional Italian dishes the kitchen had let grow stale, and pushed the family toward a clearer division of responsibilities, with George Jr. taking on a larger role running the kitchen day to day while his parents stepped back from tasks they had struggled to keep up with.

The two-day turnaround closed with a relaunch dinner that brought the Hayek family, staff and local guests together around the updated dining room and modernized menu. According to WMBF News, the owners reported sales up about 35 percent in the months after the episode aired, with nightly covers rising from around 30 before the show to between 80 and 100 afterward, a swing the family credited directly to the renovation and the exposure from the broadcast. That momentum did not last. WMBF News reported that Old World Italian closed in September 2013, roughly five months after the broadcast, with the Hayeks attributing the closure to a steep drop in customers over the summer and financial strain that made continuing unsustainable.

A later WMBF News article reported that the former restaurant space at 3850 US Highway 17 in Murrells Inlet was subsequently converted into a retail store. No reopening of the restaurant at this or another address has been identified in the sources reviewed for this entry.