Cut Menu, ‘Restaurant Impossible’ Chef Suggests

Have you ever heard of a restaurant offering too many menu choices?

Celebrity chef Robert Irvine apparently had. The overdone menu, as he saw it, belonged to Edibles Restaurant & Pub.

When Irvine was done tweaking and cutting sections altogether, the pared-down offerings represented the first menu for Hurley’s American Grille.

The former Edibles Restaurant & Pub, following the “Restaurant Impossible” filming and improvements, had 10 items–none of them geared for kids–on its menu during its May grand re-opening, General Manager Steven Hurley said.

“When they left the menu was pretty small,” Hurley said. “They said, ‘Stick to a smaller menu. Do 10 things great instead of doing 100 things halfway.’”

Speaking of doing it right, Hurley said the smoked chicken, with parmesan fried corn on the cob and fresh-cut French fries, as depicted on the recently aired episode, has pushed out the previously tied pulled pork sandwiches and crab cake sandwiches for most-ordered item.

Since the show first aired on July 21, Hurley said the restaurant has sold between 800 and 1,000 of the $12 entrees. And on Wednesday night, when cooks ran out of the sought-after chicken, Hurley joked that he worried customers would throw tomatoes at him upon hearing the news.

“It’s almost like a full-time job for him keeping the chicken going,” Hurley said of his cousin and head smoked chicken prep, John “Johnny” Hurley Jr.

Johnny said it takes three to three and a half hours to smoke the chicken. So, running out during the dinner hour isn’t something that cooks could quickly fix.

Hurley’s American Grille has kept with the fresh, made-to-order cooking style as suggested by Irvine, Steven Hurley said, and even kept his recipe for a pulled pork and goat cheese pizza on its menu, though few people order it.

But, Hurley’s has since upped the menu offerings three or four times in the little more than two months since Irvine was in town for the taping.

Nearly a dozen pasta dishes have resurfaced, as well as two salads and seven sandwiches, including sausage parmesan and grilled chicken BBQ.

Some of the eatery’s 20 or so regular customers had requested some of the previous offerings, prompting the menu adjustments, Steven Hurley said, adding that if the ingredients are on hand and customers ask for something from the old menu, cooks will make it.

Being accommodating is perhaps what helped the family make it through a scene in which Irvine, after complaining that all of the restaurant’s food was “awful,” picked up a table and dumped it and the food, all over the floor. 

Johnny Hurley said he knew it was “all for show.”

“I laughed about it,” he said.

Steven Hurley, who said he’s “fine with constructive criticism,” views everything that came of the “Restaurant Impossible” experience as a positive.

“We learned how to prepare certain foods,” he said. “I kind of took some of their way and mixed it in with some of my way.”

For more on Hurley's American Grille's "Restaurant Impossible" transformation, click here.