Is Simply Thai Still Open? Restaurant Takeover Update (Toronto, ON)

Simply Thai, in Toronto's Bloor West Village, was the tenth episode of Restaurant Takeover (Food Network Canada) season two, aired on 2013-10-30. According to TVmaze's episode page, it was the first Asian restaurant in its neighborhood when it opened ten years earlier. The area's dining and nightlife scene had since grown, and the restaurant had come to look like many other tired Thai places in the city. Chef Corbin Tomaszeski and designer Cheryl Torrenueva tried to persuade owner Ooy to embrace change in what the synopsis calls a last-ditch effort to save the business. The synopsis asks whether the show would push Ooy, described as a traditional owner, too far.

The location needed checking, because the sources disagree. TV Guide's season-two listing places the episode in Vancouver. TV Foodies, a fan directory of TV-featured restaurants, lists Simply Thai Cuisine at 2253 Bloor Street West in Toronto as featured on the show; its page was published on 2014-08-03. The restaurant's own website points the same way: two photo files on it are named Simply Thai Restaurant Takeover After, with upload paths dated 2021-11. The site also says the restaurant sits in the heart of Bloor West Village and that readers of the Toronto Sun voted it the city's best Thai restaurant in 2003. Taken together, this entry treats the Toronto restaurant as the one on the show.

What the makeover changed is not spelled out in the pages read, apart from the After photos on the restaurant's site. On 2026-10-19 that website carried a 2026 copyright notice and links to order online and to reserve a table. A Wanderlog page for Simply Thai Cuisine at 2253 Bloor Street West lists hours of noon to 9 pm Sunday through Thursday and noon to 10 pm on Friday and Saturday, along with Google reviews, the most recent of them dated 2025-12-15. A Google Maps record for the restaurant, retrieved 2026-10-19, also shows it as operational.