Classico Pizza & Pasta

What happened after

Pizza/pasta restaurant with locations referenced at 2547 Yonge St and 2457 Bloor St W, Toronto. City of Toronto business license for "2196774 Ontario Ltd o/a Classico Pizza & Pasta" (license #B71-3948470) was canceled March 14, 2016.

Closure date on record: 2016-03

What happened on the show

Sam thought he had bought a turn-key restaurant when he took over Classico, a busy Italian pizza and pasta spot in Toronto. The reality was closer to a money pit. The used-and-abused room was missing the mark badly, and Sam, genuinely passionate about the business but stressed past his limit, found himself pleading less for profit than for a life: he wanted the work-life balance the restaurant kept denying him. Restaurant Takeover took the case with its six-day Food Network Canada format, the reboot of Restaurant Makeover, sending chef Andrea Nicholson and designer Montana Burnett to make Classico work well enough that its owner could finally breathe. The tension was a common one on this show, an owner who loved the industry but was being crushed by a specific failing restaurant, and the makeover's job was to fix the room so thoroughly that Sam could step back from the daily grind that was consuming him.

After the cameras left

Classico Pizza and Pasta is a confirmed closure. City of Toronto business-license records show the license held by the numbered company operating as Classico Pizza and Pasta was canceled in March 2016, a few years after the episode aired. Two possible street addresses surfaced for the business, on Yonge Street and Bloor Street West, which may reflect multiple locations or a relocation during its life, though we could not disambiguate that further. What is firm is the ending: the municipal cancellation gives a solid, dated closure. The work-life balance Sam wanted did not, in the end, come with a business that survived.