What Happened to The Empress… After Restaurant Makeover? (Toronto, ON)
Current status
As of October 2026, The Empress Restaurant is listed closed on Google, reviewed by our team on October 20, 2026; not yet independently confirmed through direct contact with the business.
Last verified
What the source shows: No Google Maps listing, website, Yelp page or recent review for The Empress Restaurant in Toronto was found on 2026-10-20.
- Season / episode Season 2, Episode 12
- Original air date
- Address Toronto, ON
Address
Toronto, ON
We have not geocoded this record yet, so it is not on the map.
What happened after Restaurant Makeover?
The Empress Restaurant was the subject of the twelfth episode of the second season of Restaurant Makeover, a series on Food Network Canada and HGTV Canada, which aired on February 6, 2006. Rotten Tomatoes' episode page carries a one-line synopsis: best friends pooled all their resources and bought an aging cruise ship called the Empress. The page lists Food Network Canada as the network but gives no location for the vessel, no word on where it was moored or what it served, and nothing about the owners' difficulties, the changes made to the menu, decor, staffing or name, or the relaunch.
The series paired a chef with a designer to rebuild a restaurant on a small budget and a tight schedule, and TVmaze's listing for the show says the owners put up half of the funding, watched the demolition and returned to see the finished room. The Rotten Tomatoes episode page names six chefs among the season's hosts, Brad Long, Rene Chauvin, Lynn Crawford, Massimo Capra, Corbin Tomaszeski and David Adjey, but nothing read says which of them or which designer worked on the Empress.
Wikipedia's list of renovated restaurants marks the Empress Restaurant as still open, with no note, no date and no address. No other page read mentions the Empress as a restaurant, and no dated hours, review, listing or news item was found, so the claim on the Wikipedia list is not corroborated. A Google Places lookup for the restaurant's name returned no business that could be matched to the ship restaurant.
A Google Maps search for The Empress Restaurant in Toronto, checked 2026-10-20, returned no listing for it, open or closed, and web searches the same day found no website, directory page or recent review for the restaurant featured on Restaurant Makeover in 2006.
Featured on Restaurant Makeover
- Show
- Restaurant Makeover
- Season / episode
- Season 2, Episode 12
- Original air date
- Episode title
- The Empress Restaurant
- What was featured
- Makeover of a restaurant on an aging cruise ship called the Empress
- Role
- Featured restaurant
- Name on the broadcast
- The Empress Restaurant
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Visit info
- Address
- Toronto, ON
- Venue type
- restaurant
- Official website
- None found
- State hub
- TV restaurants in Ontario
Businesses change fast. Always confirm directly with the restaurant — call ahead, or check its own current website or social media — before making plans around anything on this page.
Sources
- rottentomatoes.com — https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/restaurant_makeover/s02/e12
- rottentomatoes.com — https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/restaurant_makeover/s02
- Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restaurant_Makeover
- api.tvmaze.com — https://api.tvmaze.com/singlesearch/shows?q=restaurant%20makeover&embed=episodes
- Google — https://www.google.com/maps/search/The+Empress+Restaurant+Toronto
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Record rmk-024 · last verified .