barRestaurant Stakeout · Season 1, Episode 2 · Aired March 14, 2012
Lexington Grille & Pub
Bardonia, New York
Good outcome here: the business is still trading today.
What happened after
Bar/restaurant (New American, burgers) at 120 Route 304; active Facebook page (no closed banner) and current listing on RestaurantJi.
What happened on the show
In Bardonia, New York, Degel put his surveillance kit to work on a New American bar and pub, and the stakeout ran the familiar arc: cameras in place, the owner watching the feed beside him, and a floor full of habits the boss had never seen from the outside. As aired, the footage gave Degel the leverage he needed, a documented picture of how the room actually behaved when management assumed no one was counting. His fixes followed the show's playbook, resetting service standards, tightening the systems behind the bar and the kitchen, and pushing the owner to run the place with a firmer hand. Degel's whole pitch on this show is that a stakeout reveals the gap between how an owner thinks the business runs and how it truly does, and this early episode leaned hard on closing that gap through discipline rather than reinvention.
After the cameras left
Lexington Grille and Pub is still trading. As of our latest verification pass the bar and restaurant at 120 Route 304 in Bardonia was operating, with an active Facebook presence carrying no closure notice and a current directory listing. The evidence is solid enough to call it open, though we hold it at moderate confidence because recent post dates were not visible on the fetch. For an early stakeout target, quiet survival years later is a good outcome.
Sources
Confidence: medium. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.