What Happened to Rosedale Diner After Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives?

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Season 17, Episode 5 Aired May 20, 2013

Guy Fieri visited the Rosedale Diner, a long-running Toronto diner at 1164 Yonge Street, for the episode "Peppers, Pork and Poutine" (aired 2013-05-20). CP24 reported on 2023-12-27 that the kitchen surprised him with duck poutine and sticky barbecue ribs. Daily Hive reported on 2023-11-20 that the diner opened in 1978 and served bistro-style comfort food with a Middle Eastern influence, including shakshouka, burgers and brunch dishes such as waffles and eggs Benedict. The same article reported that owners Dubi and Esti Filar were retiring and would stay open through the end of 2023.

CP24 reported that the last brunch service would end at 4 p.m. on 2023-12-31 and quoted the owners as saying it was time to "hang up our aprons and retire." The diner's own website, last modified 2024-02-05, carries a notice that the owners have retired after more than 45 years, and a public Google listing checked on 2026-10-19 marks the diner permanently closed.

Restaurant Makeover, Season 1, Episode 1 Aired April 5, 2005

Restaurant Makeover, a Canadian series shown on HGTV Canada and Food Network Canada, opened its first season with a Toronto diner. Google Play's listing for S1E1, 'The Rosedale Diner,' dated 2005-04-05, describes a 23-year-old Toronto landmark that had begun to look dated and whose owners were reluctant to change it. Rotten Tomatoes lists the same episode on the same date and says only that the diner was being renovated. IMDb's season 1 episode list also shows 'Rosedale Diner' first, dated Tuesday, April 5, 2005, with no plot summary attached.

RealityTVWorld's show page pairs the episode with chef Brad Long and designer Cherie Stinson. As RealityTVWorld and Wikipedia's article on the series describe the format, each chef and designer team had a very limited budget and time to overhaul a struggling restaurant, with the owners' own funds matched up to $20,000 in the early seasons and up to $15,000 later.

None of the pages we read say what the team actually changed in this episode. We found no description of new menu items, a new layout, staff changes, a new name or a relaunch night, and no record of how the owners reacted to the finished room. The only tension the listings identify is the one Google Play names: owners who did not want a long-standing room altered. Because the listings are brief, this entry stays at that level of detail rather than supplying a redesign from memory.

This record covers the Restaurant Makeover appearance only. The diner is tracked as its own restaurant elsewhere on this site, and nothing in the episode listings or the show page tells us what became of it after the episode aired. The sources behind this entry are the Google Play episode listing for S1E1 (2005-04-05), Rotten Tomatoes' season 1 episode list, the IMDb episode list, RealityTVWorld's show page and Wikipedia's Restaurant Makeover article.