What Happened to Wagon Wheel Family Restaurant? (Smyrna, DE)

In "Muskrat Mayhem," which aired May 19, 2013 on Restaurant: Impossible (Food Network), Chef Robert Irvine visited Smyrna, Delaware to help three generations of one family — owner Patty Gallegos, her daughter Sheila, and grandchildren Jessica and Joshua — save the Wagon Wheel Family Restaurant. The episode found a frozen-food-heavy menu, dated decor, strained relationships among the family members running the business together, and a heavy reliance on muskrat, a regional dish also known locally as marsh rabbit, to keep longtime customers coming through the door. Irvine's team retrained the kitchen to work from fresh ingredients rather than the frozen product it had been relying on, refreshed the dining room's decor and lighting, and worked with the family to clarify who was responsible for what and to improve how staff treated one another and customers during service, while keeping the restaurant's signature muskrat dish on a revised, shorter menu built around it.

The two-day turnaround closed with a relaunch dinner for the Gallegos family, staff and regular customers, centered on the updated menu and dining room, with the family expressing hope that clearer roles and a tighter kitchen would ease the tension the show had captured among them. According to Food Network Gossip, Wagon Wheel Family Restaurant closed on September 7, 2014, about 16 months after the broadcast; the outlet linked the closure to the owner's declining health and reported that the restaurant's remaining contents were later sold off. A Yellow Pages listing for the address, 110 S Dupont Blvd in Smyrna, marks the business as closed. A Facebook page titled "Wagon Wheel Restaurant & Bar" for a Smyrna, Delaware business was found during research, but its content could not be independently confirmed as describing this same address or as reflecting current 2026 operations, so it is noted here only as an unconfirmed lead requiring further verification and was not used as a status source.