What Happened to Smitty's Restaurant After Restaurant: Impossible (FN)?

In "Creepy in Clearwater," which aired April 28, 2013 on Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network), Chef Robert Irvine visited Clearwater, Florida to help owners Gus and Evi Gialelis with Smitty's Restaurant, a spot serving American diner food alongside a handful of Greek dishes rooted in the family's own background. The episode's central problem was a roach infestation serious enough to require a professional exterminator, alongside outdated decor and a menu the show described as unfocused and inconsistently executed by an overwhelmed kitchen staff during peak service hours. Irvine's team brought in pest control to address the infestation at its source, had the kitchen and dining room deep-cleaned and refreshed with updated paint and furnishings, and narrowed the sprawling menu to a shorter list combining American diner staples with a handful of Greek dishes drawn from the Gialelis family's own recipes and cooking style.

The two-day turnaround ended with a relaunch dinner that introduced the cleaned-up space and revised menu to the Gialelises' regular customers and to new visitors drawn in by the broadcast, with the couple expressing relief at finally addressing a problem they had struggled to fix on their own for some time. Evi Gialelis said afterward that the restaurant saw a noticeable increase in first-time customers in the weeks following the episode's original air date on the network, a lift the couple attributed directly to the renovation. According to Food Network Gossip, Smitty's closed in mid-2014, after the owners were unable to absorb a roughly 25 percent rent increase presented at lease renewal.

A Yelp listing for the address, 4890 122nd Ave N in Clearwater, carries a permanently-closed tag last updated in March 2026, consistent with the property having remained closed under this business name since 2014. No successor restaurant at the address has been confirmed in the sources reviewed for this entry.