Restaurant Impossible - Lake Arrowhead Sports Grille Update

Photo - Food Network

Tonight on  Restaurant: Impossible, Robert Irvine and his crew are in Blue Jay, California to makeover Lake Arrowhead Sports Grille.  In this ambush, Konnor, who is the son of owners Keith and Karen, reached out to Restaurant Impossible for their help.  Konnor thinks that everything is falling apart, such as his parents marriage, the business, his dad's interest in the restaurant, and his mom's health.

As I normally do with Restaurant: Impossible episodes, I searched around the Internet to read stories, comments and reviews about Lake Arrowhead Sports Grille 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):


Positive Reviews:

• "Dinner with 8 friends, so separate checks.  Service was outstanding, food great.  Could not have asked for more. French Onion Fondue, grilled salmon, steak dinner, chicken salad, soups and burgers.....all was done well and attractively presented.  Looking forward to returning"
• "Good food and great service.   Sandwiches and salads were all good and was pleasantly surprised with the entire experience."
• "Super friendly staff. The best restaurant I've been to in Lake Arrowhead so far. My boyfriend and I had the French dip with the garlic fries (yummm) and the turkey burger. Both were delicious, all ingredients seemed to be of great quality. I am very happy to give this restaurant 5 stars :)"
• "They have good beer on tap, and then they also have stuff like Stella Artois. I haven't eaten anything --I'm usually at the bar with headphones on and working-- but I can't say I'm eager to pay the cost for the food. I'm sure it's good though. They get some good traffic through there!"

Negative Reviews:

• "What a bummer!!!! This use to be a great place to have a good lunch or dinner? Always great food. Lately we have been in for lunch and dinner, it has been terrible!! This is really too bad ever since the makeover it seems the quality went to hell and prices went up...sad it was our favorite place on the mountain. Not anymore!!!"
• "Good customer service and atmosphere. Poor quality food for the cost....I understand I wasn't at a steak house, but still was disappointing considering the cost.....Great for junk food/bar food and beers. Just not ideal if you're a foodie that seeks out quality finds."
• "Phew, I don't even know where to start here, I'm not sure but this may be my first bad review on a restaurant. Although we had bad service (took 15 minutes to get water/soft drinks and two of our ordered meals never showed up) Im going to focus on the food itself...... I'm in my thirties and my wife and I have visited tons of restaurants all over the country. This place by far has the worst food I've ever eaten. Nobody finished their plates."
• "I'm super sad to do this. Restaurant impossible failed. I had stopped eating at this restaurant when I had had too many bouts of horrible service to tolerate and the food was not good enough to compensate. Tonight when I walked in hoping maybe something had changed I sat with my children for over 15 minutes before we were approached for the first time. But don't worry, the owner and two of her servers were all standing 20 feet from us talking... This is typical, so I wasn't surprised but I was disappointed....When the owner doesn't care about your service and doesn't know what that looks like the place is going to go to hell in a handbasket fast. Very disappointed for the last time. Oh- and I ran into another customer I know well that left zero tip and said he wouldn't be back either. FYI- it was not busy at all. Bummer."
• "Service was horrible and the food not much better....I guess certain deficiencies can be accounted for at times, but when it is not at all that busy and there are two tables full of restaurant employees that apparently had just got off work, it makes for a bad experience for a customer who really wanted to like the place."

*Reviews from Yelp


Other News and Links:

• The Restaurant Impossible makeover happened in early September 2015.
• Here is the Lake Arrowhead Sports Grille Website and their menu.
• Here is the Lake Arrowhead Sports Grille Facebook Page, which is kept up-to-date. 
• The Facebook page advertises a lot of the beers they have on tap, so it looks like it operates like more of a bar than a restaurant. 
• The Yelp reviews before the makeover were not too bad and there are a lot of 5-star reviews. (Link)
• The liquor license lists the owner of Lake Arrowhead Sports Grille as Harriottmorey Inc.  Keith and Karen are listed as stockholders/owners and there are also two others with the last name Morey listed as stockholders of the company/restaurant. (Link) 

Conclusion:

The reviews of Lake Arrowhead Sports Grille since the Restaurant Impossible makeover have been mixed with there being complements and complaints about the service and complaints about high prices vs. quality of food.  The restaurant seems to be more of a sports bar, which could be the reason for the complaints about food prices.

*Side Note - Marc Summers (producer of the show) recently commented on an earlier blog post here calling the commenters "losers" for criticizing the ambush concept. (Link).

UPDATE - Lake Arrowhead Sports Grille closed in March 2018 according to their Facebook Page.


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