SANTA CRUZ — There is no typical shoot for the Food Network program “Restaurant Impossible.”

Each struggling restaurant the program remakes in 48 hours on a $10,000 budget poses its own set of challenges.

Monday, the television show, including celebrity chef host Robert Irvine, invaded Hoffman’s Bistro and Patisserie in downtown Santa Cruz. Along with Irvine, designers and a construction crew worked around the clock to revamp the restaurant’s decor, menu and service.

Tuesday night, the restaurant reopened more than two hours behind schedule. When Irvine finally emerged at 9 p.m. the patient crowd waiting to dine cheered and snapped photos.

“This was the biggest and toughest job we’ve ever done,” the chef said. “I think there is blood on everything.”

Even after opening, the renovation was kept under wraps with plastic covering the windows. However, it was clear that the gold paint still on the facade had been replaced inside with walls painted in white and varying shades of olive. Wood paneling was laid over the floor tiles, and the long chain of bakery cases was gone.

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The line to get into Hoffman’s Bistro stretched down the block Tuesday night – not because people wanted to get a glimpse of famous TV chef Robert Irvine – but because the makeover for the Food Network television show “Restaurant: Impossible” was hours late.

People with 6:30 p.m. reservations were being served at 9 p.m. and a crowd of diners lined Pacific Avenue, some starstruck and many hungry.

“It’s really good,” said Bob Smith, who sat outdoors with his wife, Donna at 10:15, only an hour past their reservation time. “I thought he catered to Santa Cruz, the town itself, with a lot of healthy choices like fish and hummus and salads.”

The couple had eaten at Hoffman’s before, but mostly preferred breakfast and lunch there. They said they would return for more dinners like the one they were eating of duck sliders, halibut chowder and the trio sampler of hummus, quinoa and tomato cous cous.

The English host with a checkered resume had been fired from the Food Network for embellishing some of his accomplishments but was hired back a year later, contrite after falsely claiming to have been knighted, to have been close to the royal family and to have cooked in the White House for presidents.

Read the article by Brad Kava in SantaCruzPatch

SANTA CRUZ – It takes passion and commitment to be successful in the rocky restaurant business.

Most restaurant owners shed sweat, savings and any hope of a solid eight hours of sleep each night in order to launch their businesses, and are loath to turn over control to anyone else.

That is exactly what the Hoffman family, of downtown Santa Cruz’s Hoffman’s Bistro and Patisserie, will do this weekend when the Food Network show “Restaurant Impossible” swoops in to revamp the restaurant’s menu and decor in 48 hours on a budget of $10,000.

In fact the patriarch of the family, Ed Hoffman, was reluctant to participate, and it was his daughter, Marie Hoffman, who applied to be on the show.

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