restaurantRestaurant Takeover · Season 1, Episode 7 · Aired October 11, 2012
Vindaloo
The trail goes cold here; we could not verify whether it is still open. The last confirmed sighting we found dates to 2012.
What happened after
Family-run restaurant (Indian/South Asian, per name) that the show's synopsis says was "facing closure" from red tape/bad contractors even before the makeover. No current business by this name could be located in the Toronto area, and no location more specific than "Toronto" (unconfirmed) surfaced.
What happened on the show
Red tape and bad luck nearly killed Vindaloo before any TV crew arrived. The family-run Indian restaurant had spent a year fighting a run of poor decisions, bureaucratic obstacles, and unscrupulous contractors, and by the time Restaurant Takeover reached it the place was already teetering on the edge of closure. That made it an unusual case for the show, whose six-day Food Network Canada format, a reboot of Restaurant Makeover, normally targets restaurants failing on food and decor rather than ones nearly buried by paperwork and bad hires. Chef Richard Andino and designer Montana Burnett were sent in for what the episode framed as a genuine last-ditch rescue of a family business. The tension was less about a warped menu than about survival itself: a family that had poured everything into an Indian restaurant and watched forces mostly outside the kitchen push it to the brink.
After the cameras left
Vindaloo is one of the batch's true unknowns. No location more specific than a general Toronto-area inference ever attached to it, and the name, a common dish rather than a distinctive brand, makes it nearly impossible to trace to any current listing with confidence. We could not confirm whether the restaurant reopened, survived, or closed. The honest status is unverifiable: no reliable current-day signal surfaced under this name. Given the episode itself described a business already facing closure from red tape and bad contractors, the lack of any later footprint is unsurprising, but it is not the same as a confirmed ending, so we leave it open.
Sources
Last checked 2026-07-19.