What Happened to Valley Inn After Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network)?

Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network) visited the Valley Inn, a family-owned bar and restaurant in Palos Hills, Illinois, that had been operating since 1972, for an episode that aired October 10, 2012. As is typical of the show's format, Robert Irvine and his crew spent two days reworking the menu, refreshing the dining room and bar area, and resetting kitchen operations to help the longtime family business better compete in its market. The Valley Inn continued operating at 8300 West 107th Street for roughly thirteen years after the episode aired, remaining a neighborhood spot known for American bar food and a lineup of televisions for watching sports and cheering on local teams, a format that had served the neighborhood for decades under the same family.

That run ended with a fire rather than a slow decline. Southwest Regional Publishing, which covers the southwest Chicago suburbs, reported on July 29, 2025, that a late-night blaze had reached the Valley Inn's dining room and caused extensive damage, though the family said at the time that they intended to rebuild. A follow-up report from the same outlet, published March 22, 2026, said the family had since decided the restaurant location would not reopen, describing the damage as too extensive to justify restoring the original building to reopen as a restaurant on the same footprint.

The same March 2026 report noted that Valley Inn Catering, a related but separate business run by the same family at 10620 South Roberts Road in Palos Hills, remains open and operating. Because that catering operation is a distinct business at a different address rather than a reopening of the original restaurant, the Valley Inn location itself is treated here as closed rather than relocated, even though the same family continues to serve customers under the Valley Inn name through catering.