What Happened to Cork & Cabbage After Restaurant Makeover? (Toronto, ON)

Restaurant Makeover, a Canadian series shown on HGTV Canada and Food Network Canada, paired a chef with a designer to overhaul a struggling restaurant on a limited budget, with the owner's own funds matched by the production. The episode aired on 2007-10-01 under the title 'Bistro Aubergine' and featured a French bistro in Toronto. Rotten Tomatoes' synopsis describes the bistro as in trouble and says it was transformed into a pub.

TV Guide's season listing gives more of the story. The owner, Shelia, wanted to sell, while her husband, listed as Awesome, wanted a new gastro pub in the space. Designer Cherie Stinson created the pub's look, and chef Lynn Crawford wrote the dishes and taught Awesome to cook them. TV Guide spells the pub's name as Cork and Cleaver, while Wikipedia's list of Restaurant Makeover restaurants gives it as Cork & Cabbage, so the sources read do not settle the name. None of them describes the menu, the budget or the relaunch night.

Wikipedia's list adds a note that the restaurant closed before the episode aired and later reopened under new ownership as JAM Cafe; the list gives no source for that note. Toronto Life reported on 2013-04-29, in a piece by Michelle Reddick, that a bistro called Jam Café on Carlton Street in Cabbagetown had closed about ten days earlier and that a restaurant called Fare Game was about to open in the room. A Globe and Mail review, undated on its web page, describes Jam Café at 195 Carlton Street as a French bistro. Neither page mentions Bistro Aubergine or Cork & Cabbage, so the sources read do not show that this café occupied the same space.

A BlogTO page for The West Cork Irish Pub at 701 Queen Street East describes a bar that opened in fall 2024 and does not mention any earlier restaurant, so it is not treated as connected.

City of Toronto business licence records list Bistro Aubergine, operated by 2077773 Ontario Inc at 195 Carlton Street, licensed from 2006-05-16 until the licence was cancelled on 2007-08-01, two months before the episode aired. According to the same records, JamCafe, under a different company, was licensed at the address from that day until 2013-11-01, followed by The Irv Gastro Pub and Revelstoke Kitchen and Cafe, and Pisac Peruvian Bistro has held a licence there since 2024-02-05.