Restaurant Impossible - Green Beret Club (Smoke Bomb Grille) Update

Tonight on Restaurant: Impossible, Robert Irvine and his crew are in Fort Bragg, North Carolina to makeover the Green Beret Club.   Fort Bragg is a major United States Army installation, and the Green Beret Club is the only full service restaurant there.  Robert is on a special mission to update the restaurant while also keeping the tradition of the restaurant alive.  As I normally do with Restaurant: Impossible episodes, I searched around the Internet to read stories, comments and reviews about the Green Beret Club to get an idea of how the restaurant is doing since Robert Irvine visited, and here is what I found (note - all reviews are post Restaurant: Impossible):


Reviews:


There have been no reviews since the makeover


Other News and Links:

• During the makeover, the restaurant was renamed from the Green Beret Club to the Smoke Bomb Grille.
• Here is an older website for the Green Beret Club. 
• Here is the Smoke Bomb Grille website, and their menu.
• Here are some photos of the interior after the makeover.
• During the makeover of the Green Beret Club, Robert Irvine went skydiving with the US Army Golden Nights, and here is the video.
• Here is a forum thread on a Professional Soldiers website titled "The destruction of Green Beret Club is Complete."  As the title implies, there are people complaining about the Restaurant Impossible makeover and are wondering if memorabilia went into the dumpster.
• Here is another forum thread about the makeover, and one post said, "The show had no choice about the name it came from Corps. I think the staff has pushed back a lot."  There were also people there talking about the pictures being taken down and replaced with digitized memorials.
• Here is a media release about the Smoke Bomb Grille, which states everybody is now welcome.
• From a recent article, "The goal of the renovations was to change the food and the facility to attract more customers."  One soldier didn't like the changes, stating, "the name change takes away the unique identity of the Special Operations Forces and makes the facility more of a generic place for customers."
• Another article about the makeover states things such as:
• The quest to make over the club began when the vice chief of staff, Gen. John F. Campbell, wanted to show a different side of the Army, and Army officers were connected with officials from the Food Network.
• As part of the agreement to film the show, McCollum said Irvine was asked to scale back his somewhat aggressive attitude.
• The Green Beret Club has mustered out a profit that's just enough to keep the doors open.
• The comments on that article also have people talking about the pictures being removed from the walls.

Conclusion:

There haven't been any reviews of the restaurant since the makeover, but there have been a lot of opinions.  Some people are sad to see their old club gone and now turned into a restaurant, while others do not like how the pictures of fallen soldiers have been taken down and replaced with digital frames.

As this was a special episode of Restaurant Impossible, it seems as Robert and his team had limitations and agreed to some stipulations before the show.  According to some comments, the name change and concept change may not have been the idea of Restaurant Impossible, but the idea of the ownership.  Robert Irvine always likes to give back to the troops, so he was probably OK with everything that was suggested.

UPDATE - The Green Beret Club closed at the end of March 2022 according to this review.


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