restaurantRestaurant Takeover · Season 1, Episode 12 · Aired November 15, 2012
Frankie's
Toronto
Yes. This one is still open.
On the show
Season 1, Episode 12 · November 15, 2012 · diner
P2 SPINE-FIX: city backfilled from status
What happened after
Greasy-spoon diner at 994 Queen Street W (West Queen West/Ossington strip), Toronto. Yelp listings (both .ca and .com) show recent update stamps ("Updated July 2024/2025"), same address, same name, ~200-225 reviews.
What happened on the show
Frankie's was a greasy spoon that had run out of shine. The rundown Toronto diner, on Queen Street West near Ossington, had seen better days, and profits had dwindled to the point that the man whose name was on the door was ready to walk away from it. That fatigue, an owner emotionally done before the business was financially finished, is the softest kind of failure and often the hardest to reverse. Restaurant Takeover took it on with its six-day Food Network Canada format, the reboot of Restaurant Makeover, sending chef Derek Minkensky and designer Montana Burnett to see whether they could make Frankie believe in the place again. The episode's question was less about recipes than about resolve: could a fresh room and a sharpened menu rekindle an owner's faith in a diner he had already half given up on? Belief was the thing the makeover had to restore.
After the cameras left
Frankie's earned its spot in the open column. As of our latest verification pass the diner is still trading at 994 Queen Street West on the West Queen West strip near Ossington, with Yelp listings on both the Canadian and US sites showing recent update stamps, the same address, the same name, and roughly two hundred reviews. For a greasy spoon whose owner was ready to give up on camera, more than a decade of continuous operation is a genuine turnaround. The makeover seems to have done what it set out to do here: keep a neighborhood diner alive and Frankie behind it.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.