What Happened to Kokkino Restaurant and Lounge After Restaurant Makeover?

Kokkino Restaurant and Lounge, in Toronto, was the fifth episode of Restaurant Makeover's third season and first aired on 2006-10-30. Rotten Tomatoes' episode guide describes it in one line as a nightclub being transformed, and Wikipedia's list of renovated restaurants names Lynn Crawford as the chef and Meredith Heron as the designer. NOW Toronto, in an article dated 2010-03-30, described Crawford as the star of Food Network's Restaurant Makeover, which gives background on the chef's role in the series but nothing about this episode. According to Wikipedia's article on the series, the owner's funds were matched up to $20,000 in the early seasons and up to $15,000 later, and most featured restaurants were in the Greater Toronto Area.

Beyond that single synopsis, the sources reviewed do not describe the venue's condition when the team arrived, the owners' situation, what the new decor or menu looked like, whether the name changed, or what the relaunch involved.

Wikipedia's list of renovated restaurants marks Kokkino as no longer open and adds a note naming 2010 as the year it closed. A Google Places lookup on 2026-10-19 for the name in Toronto returned Koochini Restaurant & bar, a Thornhill business with a different name and address, which was not used. Two web searches that day, one pairing the name with Toronto and the word closed and one pairing it with the words address and nightclub, returned general lists of Toronto business closures, nightlife roundups and a Global News video about a Kokkino Cafe in the NDG neighborhood, which does not appear to be the Toronto lounge and was not used.

The Serial Diners, a group that works through the Toronto Yellow Pages in alphabetical order, listed Kokkino at 414 Danforth Avenue, at Chester Station, for a dinner dated July 23, 2010, in its published agenda. Dolce Gelato's own website, checked on 2026-10-19, gives 414 Danforth Avenue as the address of its Danforth shop, and a YellowPages.ca search of that address the same day returned only Dolce Gelato. Neither page gives a closing date for Kokkino, and no page read names Restaurant Makeover in connection with the Danforth address, so the link between the episode and that address rests on the shared name.