What Happened to Lüb Bistro Lounge After Restaurant Makeover?

Lüb Bistro Lounge is the Toronto venue behind the episode titled "Lub Lounge", which aired on 2007-02-05 as the seventeenth episode of the third season of Restaurant Makeover. That HGTV Canada series had a chef and a designer rework one restaurant on a limited budget and a short schedule, with the owners adding matching money. Rotten Tomatoes' season listing describes the episode in one line: executive chef David Adjey tries to bring something new to the venue. Wikipedia's list of renovated restaurants names Adjey as the chef and Glen Peloso as the designer, and places the venue in Toronto without giving a street.

No source read for this entry describes the owners, the problems on screen, the menu, decor or staff changes, or the relaunch. Architect magazine's website carries a project page, dated 2013-02-11, for a Toronto venue called Lub Lounge on a busy stretch of Church Street. It credits Taylor Smyth Architects, gives 2004 as the completion year, and describes a two-floor café converted into a casual lunch and dinner restaurant that turns into a martini bar with live DJs in the evening. The page does not mention the TV show, so it is treated here as a probable but unconfirmed description of the same venue, and no street number came with it.

A search for the venue's address turned up no listing, news item or review giving a street number or any date after the episode. A Google Places search returned a business called Lume Kitchen and Lounge on Park Lawn Road in Etobicoke; its name and location differ from the Church Street venue and nothing read ties the two together, so it is not used here. Wikipedia's list marks the venue as no longer open, but it gives no date or citation, so that entry is treated as a lead and not as evidence.

City of Toronto business licence records list Lub, operated by 2029589 Ontario Inc at 487 Church Street, licensed from 2003-10-06 until the licence was cancelled on 2007-01-06, a month before the episode aired. According to the same records, the address was later licensed to Elevate Bar Lounge (2010 to 2011) and Statlers on Church (2011 to 2019), and The Well Bar Toronto has been licensed there since 2020.