What Happened to Innocenti Restaurant After Restaurant Makeover?

Innocenti was a restaurant at 587 King Street West in Toronto, according to a BlogTO review of its Winterlicious menu, dated by its web address to February 2006. Its episode of Restaurant Makeover, a series that aired on Food Network Canada and HGTV Canada, aired on September 18, 2005, as the first installment of the second season. Rotten Tomatoes' season listing sums up the episode this way: the restaurant sits in one of Toronto's culinary hotspots and needs a makeover to keep up with stylish new neighbors.

The series paired a chef with a designer to rebuild a restaurant on a small budget and a tight schedule. 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. None of the pages read for this entry identifies the chef or designer assigned to Innocenti, and none describes what was changed in the menu, decor, staffing or name, or how the relaunch went.

It gives the King Street West address and a telephone number, and it describes a Sunday-night visit during Winterlicious, the city's prix-fixe dining promotion. It does not mention the television series.

Wikipedia's list of renovated restaurants carries a note saying the restaurant was later KiWe and later still Ruby Soho. A separate BlogTO page for Ruby Soho (undated, with a pandemic-era reference to an arcade game being out of service) describes a King West restaurant with a patio along Portland Street that replaced a brunch spot called Portland Variety. That page does not mention Innocenti or KiWe.

NOW Toronto reported on 2019-11-12 that Ruby Soho would replace Portland Variety at 587 King West (at Portland), the street address BlogTO's Winterlicious review gave for Innocenti. Daily Hive reported on 2019-09-27 that Portland Variety would hold its final service on 2019-09-28. A Serial Diners agenda for 2010-06-04 lists Kiwe Kitchen at 587 King St. West with the telephone number 416-203-0551, the same number BlogTO's review gave for Innocenti, which fits the Wikipedia note that the address was later KiWe. None of these sources says when the Innocenti name was dropped.