restaurantRestaurant: Impossible · Season 13, Episode 2 · Aired March 16, 2016
De Rican Chef
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Open. The rescue stuck and it continues to operate.
On the show
Season 13, Episode 2 · March 16, 2016 · restaurant
episode title: "Ambush: Beneath the Surface"
What happened after
Puerto Rican restaurant confirmed currently active with very recent reviews; now has two locations.
What happened on the show
The De Rican Chef, a Puerto Rican restaurant in Virginia Beach, Virginia, got its thirteenth season visit as one more struggling family kitchen hoping for an Irvine turnaround. De Rican Chef got the show's typical forty eight hour rebuild on the program's lean makeover fund, a run of sampling, hard truth telling, and a fresh relaunch. Since the Wikipedia listing preserves nothing here, the particular failings Irvine found are kept off this writeup rather than guessed. The aftermath is a clear success and then some: the restaurant not only kept operating with current hours and online ordering but grew to two Virginia Beach locations, with reviews running through mid 2026. De Rican Chef lands firmly among the thirteenth season winners, a Puerto Rican spot that turned its televised reset into expansion.
After the cameras left
De Rican Chef is open and has grown. A direct load confirmed current hours, active reservations and online ordering, and two Virginia Beach locations, one on Holland Road and one at the Oceanfront, while TripAdvisor reviews run through the summer of 2026, so this is a high-confidence call. The restaurant is confirmed operating as of 2026 and has expanded to a second location since the show, one of the ambush season's clearest success stories, with the Puerto Rican concept the makeover targeted now spread across two rooms.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.