Mark your calendars and set your DVRs. The Food Network’s “Restaurant: Impossible,” featuring Michele’s restaurant in Corry, will air at 9 p.m. Wednesday.

Chef Robert Irvine, a designer, a builder and a team of volunteers spent $10,000 and two days in June to remake the restaurant, located at 13230 Route 6.

The owners, Michele and Andew Sventek, are forbidden by contract from speaking with the media before the show airs.

Visitors, however, tell us that the look of the restaurant has improved.

There’s also word that Michele’s, which reopened with a much smaller menu, has returned many of its old offerings to an expanded menu.

A posting on the Food Network drama hints at the drama that will unfold in Corry:

“In two days, Robert must choose a new cook, teach Michele basic management skills, refurbish the interior, and address Andy’s critical and harsh attitude.”

The show airs on Channel 48 on Time Warner Cable.

Chef Robert Irvine always finds plenty of things to fix when he signs on to help failing restaurants on his Food Network program “Restaurant: Impossible.”

Viewers of his hit cable TV show will find out what — if anything — needed to be changed at Michele’s in Corry. The restaurant, located at 13230 Route 6, will be featured on the Sept. 19 edition of the show.

A brief description of the upcoming episode on the Food Network’s website suggests that Michele’s needed as much help as any of them:

“Of all the owners Chef Robert Irvine has worked with on Restaurant: Impossible, none may have been more unprepared than Michele and Andy, owners of Michele’s in Corry, who purchased their restaurant at auction on a whim, despite having no experience in the business. In two days, Robert must choose a new cook, teach Michele basic management skills, refurbish the interior, and address Andy’s critical and harsh attitude.”

Restaurant owners, who receive help from Irvine, a designer, a builder and a team of volunteers with a $10,000 budget, have to agree not to comment prior to the program being televised.

Erie County tax records, however, identify the owners as Michael, Michele and Andew Sventek.

They bought the property, formerly known as Perry’s Inn, in December 2008.

Irvine, who has cooked at the White House and for royalty, was in Corry to make over the restaurant on June 13 and 14.

The show featuring Michele’s will air at 9 p.m. Sept. 19.

Chef Robert Irvine, the take-no-prisoners host of the Food Network’s “Restaurant Impossible,” is coming to Erie County next week.

Irvine and a crew of about 30, including an interior designer and a professional builder, will visit Corry Wednesday and Thursday for a makeover at Michele’s Restaurant at 13230 Route 6.

Each week Irvine and crew visit a restaurant whose owner has identified it as failing.

In two day’s time, Irvine, who has cooked for the British royal family and at the White House, will spend $10,000 to physically transform the restaurant.

But the show, now in its second year, doesn’t stop with new table coverings and a coat of paint.

Irvine typically reinvents the menu, trains the wait staff and, at the end of the second day, reopens the restaurant, typically to a large crowd.

The process appears to be anything but painless.
Irvine often speaks in an excited yell, and has been known to pronounce that a restaurant’s food is garbage.

Tears are not uncommon.

Producers for the show advertised for volunteer help last week on an Internet site that was only up for a short while. The ad did not identify the name of the restaurant that would be given a makeover.

The identity of the restaurant was confirmed by Jill Littman, a supervising producer for the show.