restaurantRestaurant: Impossible · Season 15, Episode 1 · Aired July 20, 2019
Josephine's Cooking
Chicago, Illinois
Still open. It kept its doors open after the show.
On the show
Season 15, Episode 1 · July 20, 2019 · restaurant
episode title: "Hard Times at Josephine's"
What happened after
Soul food restaurant reopened after a car crashed into the building in Nov 2024; CBS Chicago covered the ~3-month closure and reopening. Menu format changed post-show (weekend traditional soul food, new weekday fare).
What happened on the show
Josephine's Cooking, a soul food restaurant on East 79th Street in Chicago, opened the show's fifteenth season hoping Irvine's two day reset could steady it. Josephine's got the standard rebuild on the program's lean makeover budget, the usual run of a tasting, a blunt read, and a reopening. Because no Wikipedia synopsis exists for the Josephine's episode, its on camera particulars are not pieced together here. The restaurant's story since is one of resilience: after a car crashed into the building in late 2024, it reopened following a roughly three month closure that CBS Chicago covered, and it adjusted its format to serve traditional soul food on weekends alongside new weekday fare. Josephine's appears to be operating, a South Side soul food kitchen that weathered a literal crash and kept cooking.
After the cameras left
Josephine's Cooking is open, and it has proven resilient. After a car crashed into the building in November 2024, forcing a closure of roughly three months, the soul-food restaurant reopened, a recovery CBS Chicago covered directly, and its own menu shifted post-show toward weekend traditional soul food alongside new weekday fare, so this is a high-confidence call. The East 79th Street spot is confirmed operating as of our latest pass, having weathered both the show's intervention and a literal crash into its walls to keep serving.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.