Overcoming Impossible

January 2, 2023
What does it take to be successful? asks Irvine (Fit Fuel), restaurateur and host of Food Network’s Restaurant: Impossible, in this self-involved business manual. Drawing on stories from his career, Irvine dispenses familiar advice on how to run a business: “invest in your people,” “lead by example,” and adjust one’s business model when scaling up. His enthusiasm is evident, but the takeaways from his stories sometimes conflict—as when he exhorts, “Don’t delegate. Don’t manage. Just do.” despite earlier recounting chastising a restaurant owner who “refused to delegate”—and it’s not clear how advice about cleaning grease traps and taking a sullen maître d’ to task apply to other work environments. Irvine’s rambling presentation shows more enthusiasm for telling his own story than imparting guidance, as when he oddly suggests that the implosion of his first marriage, torpedoed by his 18-hour days “in the kitchen and pitching TV shows,” was a “trade-off” business owners might expect to make, because “sacrifices are worth it.” Irvine’s zeal for his work may inspire some, but the hazy recommendations and self-congratulations are a letdown (“I have always been possessed by big ambitions, and so I am eternally grateful that I was also blessed with a work ethic to match”). This lands with a thud.