What Happened to Cocina Lucero After Restaurant Makeover? (Toronto, ON)

The Restaurant Makeover episode titled "Arre Burrito" aired on Food Network Canada on 2009-01-07, the twelfth episode of the fifth season. The Rotten Tomatoes episode guide describes it this way: Chef Lynn and designer Cherie helped the restaurant's owner move toward upscale Mexican dining. Wikipedia's list of the show's renovated restaurants gives the post-makeover name as Cocina Lucero. The sources read for this entry give no further account of what the episode showed. The problems at Arre Burrito, the menu and decor changes, the budget and the relaunch are not described, so none of them appear here.

A blogTO restaurant listing for Cocina Lucero, which carries no date, places it at Yonge and Maitland in Toronto, says it was formerly called Arre Burrito and was once on Restaurant Makeover, and lists a menu of ceviche, tacos, burritos, fajitas and homemade guacamole. The listing says the owners also ran two other Toronto restaurants, both La Mexicana locations. That listing is what ties the name Cocina Lucero to the restaurant from the episode. As read on 2026-10-19, it carried no closure notice.

A Google Places listing for Cocina Lucero at 523 Yonge St in Toronto, read on 2026-10-19, is marked permanently closed. Google's data gives no closing date, and a listing flag records that the business was reported closed to Google, not when or why. The address is consistent with blogTO's Yonge and Maitland placement. Wikipedia's table, which is compiled by editors and was used only as a pointer, also lists the restaurant as no longer open, with no date or note.

The sources read do not say when Arre Burrito became Cocina Lucero, whether the new name came with a change of owners, how long the restaurant operated under either name, or what now occupies 523 Yonge St. The one-line guide entry is the closest available description of the makeover's aim: upscale Mexican dining, with Chef Lynn and designer Cherie leading the work.