barRestaurant Takeover · Season 2, Episode 12 · Aired November 13, 2013
The Curzon
Toronto
The rescue did not hold; it later closed.
On the show
Season 2, Episode 12 · November 13, 2013 · party bar
P2 SPINE-FIX: city backfilled from status
What happened after
Party bar turned North American small-plates dining room (chef Deron Engbers) at 1192 Queen St E, Leslieville, Toronto. Closed per three independent sources: blogTO (marked CLOSED), Foursquare ("Now Closed"), and a Cobourg Beach weekly Toronto restaurant recap noting the closure directly.
What happened on the show
Near-empty weekdays and steep property costs had The Curzon staring at a grim future. The Leslieville party bar, on Queen Street East in Toronto, made almost nothing midweek, and general manager JJ, with his own money on the line, called in Restaurant Takeover to bring the one thing the room lacked: a dinner crowd. The show's six-day Food Network Canada format, a reboot of Restaurant Makeover, sent chef Corbin Tomaszeski and designer Paula Velez to convert a late-night party bar into a small-plates dining destination that could earn revenue when it mattered. The tension was financial and personal at once: JJ's home-away-from-home was close enough to being sold that only a working dinner service could save it. The team's task was to reposition the entire concept, turning a place built for weekend nights into one that could fill tables on a Tuesday, before the property costs finished the job.
After the cameras left
The Curzon is a confirmed closure, backed by the strongest paper trail in this batch. The party bar turned small-plates room at 1192 Queen Street East in Leslieville is closed according to three independent sources: blogTO, Foursquare, and a Toronto restaurant recap that noted the closure directly. Three corroborating records is more than most rooms in this file can offer, and they agree. The dinner crowd JJ was chasing never arrived in the numbers the math required. Converting a party bar into a weeknight dining destination is a heavy lift on a six-day clock, and here the reinvention did not outlast the costs that prompted it.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.