hotelRestaurant Takeover · Season 1, Episode 3 · Aired September 13, 2012
Peninsula Resort
Pefferlaw
This one survived. It remains in business.
On the show
Season 1, Episode 3 · September 13, 2012 · lakeside restaurant/resort
P2 SPINE-FIX: city backfilled from status
What happened after
50-year-old waterfront restaurant/resort at 202 Holmes Point Road, Pefferlaw ON, on Lake Simcoe. Official site is live with current property description (lakefront suites, cottages, private beach, waterfront restaurant); Facebook page shows 620 likes / 2,161 check-ins.
What happened on the show
Fifty years is a long time for any family business, and the Peninsula Resort was closing in on that milestone when Restaurant Takeover arrived at its lakeside property in Pefferlaw, on the shore of Lake Simcoe. Profits had thinned, and the strain was testing the family loyalties holding the place together. This was the six-day Food Network Canada makeover formula, a reboot of Restaurant Makeover, and the pair on the clock were chef Derek Minkensky and designer Montana Burnett. Their brief was to revive a tired waterfront restaurant and resort that had coasted on its half-century of history without keeping up. The episode framed the stakes around that anniversary: could the team modernize the dining room fast enough to carry the property into its next fifty years, or had the place aged past the point a week could fix? A lakeside institution, a loyal family, and a countdown clock.
After the cameras left
The Peninsula Resort belongs in the survivor column, and comfortably so. As of our latest verification pass the waterfront property at 202 Holmes Point Road in Pefferlaw is operating, with an official site describing lakefront suites, cottages, a private beach, and the waterfront restaurant, plus an active Facebook page carrying thousands of check-ins. That is one of the strongest open signals in this entire Restaurant Takeover batch. A fifty-year-old family resort that was wobbling on camera is, more than a decade on, still trading on Lake Simcoe. When the underlying property has real draw, as this one did, the makeover tends to stick.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.