Is Monkey Bar and Grill Still Open? Restaurant Makeover Update

Monkey Bar and Grill, at 3353 Yonge Street in Toronto, was the subject of the eleventh episode of the second season of Restaurant Makeover, a series on Food Network Canada and HGTV Canada, which aired on January 30, 2006. Rotten Tomatoes' season listing describes cleanliness problems, including dirty fixtures, a cluttered menu and a grill that had not been cleaned in years. Nothing read describes what the chef and designer changed in the menu, decor, staffing or name, or how the relaunch went. Wikipedia's list of renovated restaurants adds a note that the restaurant was renovated again in 2015; no page read corroborates that.

The series paired a chef with a designer to rebuild a restaurant on a small budget and a tight schedule, and 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.

The most recent dated description comes from a podcast. A Toronto Eats episode from the Eats + Beats + Bar Seats feed, released on November 26, 2024 under the title Monkey Bar - Booked 5 Days a Week, described Monkey Bar as a bistro-style restaurant blending Canadian, Italian, French and Asian cooking, at 3353 Yonge Street in the Yonge and Lawrence area and established more than 25 years earlier. The restaurant's own website, loaded on October 19, 2026, lists the telephone number (416) 486-2288, hours of Tuesday to Saturday from 5 p.m., private-party bookings seven days a week, and a line saying the restaurant is in its twenty-ninth year.

The page carries no date. Google Places showed the business as operational on that date. Rotten Tomatoes names six chefs among the season's hosts, Brad Long, Rene Chauvin, Lynn Crawford, Massimo Capra, Corbin Tomaszeski and David Adjey, but nothing read says which of them or which designer worked on the Monkey Bar episode, and the listing places it between the High Point Restaurant episode of January 23, 2006 and The Empress Restaurant episode of February 6, 2006.