What Happened to Old York Bar and Grill After Restaurant Makeover?

The Old York Bar and Grill was a neighborhood pub on Niagara Street in Toronto, according to BlogTO. Its episode of Restaurant Makeover, a series on Food Network Canada and HGTV Canada, aired on January 1, 2006, as the eighth episode of the second season. Rotten Tomatoes' season listing describes the owner, a single mother, deciding whether to put her children's college fund toward renovating the restaurant. BlogTO's profile of the pub, whose web address is dated June 2021, says the Old York took part in Restaurant Makeover; nothing read describes the menu, decor, staffing or name changes the show made, or how the relaunch went.

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.

Ownership and the pub's last day are documented by BlogTO. Its 2021 profile says two Greek brothers started the place as a tavern in the 1970s, Erin Dowse took it over in 1998 and turned it into the Old York, and Fabi Letarte-Tessier bought it from her in 2018. A BlogTO article of December 2022 reported that the pub's last day would be December 23, 2022 because the lease was up; Letarte-Tessier cited rising costs and uncertainty, and she was negotiating with the landlord over the name and licenses, which left it unclear whether the next tenants would keep the Old York name. Wikipedia's list of renovated restaurants gives the same December 23, 2022 date.

BlogTO's separate page for the venue says it opened again under new ownership after the closure. Co-owner Katie Bradley runs it with David Le and Saad Ali as a French-leaning bistro with seasonal small plates, weekend brunch, beer, a small wine list and cocktails, and the original sign has returned. The Old York Tavern's own website, loaded on October 19, 2026, describes a neighborhood wine tavern at 167 Niagara Street serving brunch, lunch, dinner, oysters and cocktails, lists weekday and weekend hours, and links to a Tock booking page. The site does not say who runs it, and Google Places showed the business as operational on the same date.