restaurantRestaurant Takeover · Season 2, Episode 11 · Aired November 6, 2013
Marky and Sparky's
Toronto
It closed and is no longer operating.
On the show
Season 2, Episode 11 · November 6, 2013 · deli
P2 SPINE-FIX: city backfilled from status
What happened after
A Southern-barbecue smokehouse under this name ("Marky and Sparky's Smokehouse," co-owner Marcus De Simone) operated at 520 Annette St., Toronto (the Junction neighbourhood) and has since closed per blogTO and Toronto Life coverage. The show's synopsis describes a to-go soup-and-sandwich deli, a different concept -- identity match to the show episode is inferred from the distinctive name and city, not independently confirmed by a source naming Restaurant Takeover.
What happened on the show
A third-generation butcher named Frank opened his deli mostly as a project for his wife Mirella to manage, and it showed. The to-go soup-and-sandwich counter, in the Junction neighbourhood of Toronto, was so easy to miss that it did not even have a sign, and passersby did exactly that, passed by. Frank's fix was to bring in a new player: Marcus, a barbecue enthusiast and longtime customer, to steer the deli in a fresh direction. Restaurant Takeover made that proposed partnership the story, sending chef Corbin Tomaszeski and designer Alison Milne in on the six-day Food Network Canada clock, the reboot of Restaurant Makeover. The tension was Mirella's, not Frank's: would she agree to share the dream she had been running, or hold onto it alone and risk losing it entirely? An overlooked family deli, a would-be new partner, and a wife being asked to make room were the pieces the team had to fit together.
After the cameras left
Marky and Sparky's is a probable closure, with a caveat worth stating. A barbecue smokehouse operating under that name, co-owned by Marcus De Simone, ran at 520 Annette Street in Toronto's Junction and has since closed per local coverage. The episode, though, described a soup-and-sandwich deli rather than a smokehouse, so the likeliest read is that the same partnership pivoted the concept after the show, from Frank's overlooked deli into Marcus's barbecue spot, before that closed. We match the identity on the distinctive name and neighborhood rather than a source naming the show directly, so treat the closure as confirmed for the successor concept and the deli-to-smokehouse link as a strong inference.
Sources
Confidence: medium. Last checked 2026-07-19.