Pappas From Restaurant Impossible To Close

Pappas restaurant in Benicia, California, which was featured in Season 3 of Restaurant Impossible (original air date May 9, 2012), will close Sunday, March 24th at the end of the day after 23 years in business.  The Benicia Herald reported that the restaurant almost closed in February, but owner Mike Anestasios was trying to line up some financing options, none of which panned out.  He plans to retire after closing the restaurant.

The reasons given by the owner as to why the restaurant needed to close include:

• Blaming the economy and the recession
• Too many restaurants and not enough diners in the area of Benicia
• Regular Pappas diners missed their favorite dishes after the Restaurant: Impossible menu changes, and Pappas was too slow bringing those items back.

Other things to note:

• The owner's two sons, Nicolas and Andreas were back in the kitchen cooking.
• Benicians lined up to see, and eat at, the “new” Pappas after Restaurant Impossible, but the excitement died down and it was hard to compete after that.

When looking at the recent reviews of Pappas, most were average to bad, so that is probably the real reason they needed to close.  The food was not good enough, so people decided not to come back.  If Pappas was able to convert some of the Restaurant Impossible traffic into repeat customers, they  would still be open.  They went back to their old ways of having the son's in the kitchen and went back to old menu items as restaurants normally do after the show airs.

Are you surprised that Pappas closed?