What Happened to Sunnybrook After Restaurant Takeover? (Toronto, ON)

What happened after Restaurant Takeover?

Sunnybrook was the fifth restaurant on Restaurant Takeover (Food Network Canada), in an episode that aired on 2012-09-27. TVmaze's synopsis describes a restaurant whose dated menu and tired decor had left owner Piraba looking for radical changes, with new ideas and paying customers both in short supply. The show sent in chef Derek Minkensky and designer Cheryl Torrenueva. TheTVDB's entry for the episode gives the same outline, adding that the pair were brought in as a final push to revive the business, and TV Guide's season listing places the restaurant in Toronto and says two experts refreshed its menu and decor.

The series format, as the Globe and Mail's television listing of 2012-08-30 described it for the premiere, pairs a chef with a designer; they use hidden-camera footage to work out what the business is missing before planning a makeover. That listing is about a different episode, so it is cited here only for how the show works.

None of the entries I read gives a street address, a neighborhood or the owner's surname, and none itemizes the new menu, the decor changes or any change of name, or describes how the relaunch went. For that reason this entry cannot say what the restaurant looked like after the episode.

Locating the restaurant has been difficult. Sunnybrook is also the name of a large Toronto hospital and of a district in the north of the city, and a map search for the name returned only Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre on Bayview Avenue, which this entry does not treat as the restaurant. Searches that combined the restaurant name with the owner's first name surfaced the same episode listings and general roundups of Sri Lankan restaurants in the Toronto area, none of which named the restaurant. No dated article, directory entry or map listing that identifies the restaurant turned up, so this entry has nothing to report about it after the episode aired in 2012.

The South Bayview Bulldog reported on 2012-09-26 that The Uptown, for many years the Sunnybrook Restaurant at the east end of Sunnybrook Plaza at Bayview and Eglinton, had been remade for the show. Leaside Life reported on 2024-06-01 that Sunnybrook Plaza is gone and that its shops were replaced by a condominium development then under construction.