What Happened to Classico Pizza & Pasta After Restaurant Takeover?

Classico Pizza & Pasta, at 2457 Bloor Street West in Toronto's Bloor West Village, was the eighth episode of Restaurant Takeover (Food Network Canada) season two, aired on 2013-10-16. The series paired a chef with a designer to overhaul a struggling Ontario restaurant. According to TVmaze's episode page, owner Sam had bought Classico when it was a busy restaurant and assumed it would be a turn-key operation. It was not: the heavily worn Italian restaurant was, in the synopsis's words, missing the mark. Sam was passionate about the industry but stretched thin, and he asked for help so that the restaurant could succeed and he could have the work-life balance he wanted. The show sent in chef Andrea Nicholson and designer Montana Burnett. The TVmaze page names Sam as the owner and lists no other family members.

TV Guide's season-two listing places the episode in Toronto. TV Foodies, a fan directory of TV-featured restaurants, lists Classico Pizza & Pasta at 2457 Bloor Street West as featured on the show. Its page, published and last modified on 2014-08-03, says the restaurant had reopened with a new look and a new menu and lists a website address and a Facebook page. The page does not say what the new menu contained or what the decor looked like, so the specific changes are not documented in the sources read.

Nothing from after 2014 turned up. No news story, owner statement, dated customer review or current listing for the restaurant was found in the checks made for this entry. A Google Maps search for the name returned Classico Louie's Pizzeria on Yonge Street, a business with a different name and a different street, so it was not treated as the same restaurant.

City of Toronto business licence records list Classico Pizza & Pasta, operated by 2196774 Ontario Ltd at 2457-2459 Bloor Street West, licensed from 2009-03-02 until the licence was cancelled on 2016-03-14; before 2009 the same premises were licensed as Classic Pizza & Pasta under another company. According to the same records, The Station was licensed there from 2016-03-14 to 2019 and Bagel Time Montreal Style from 2020 to 2023.