Remember how Torontoist hates Restaurant Makeover?<\/a> Last night they aired the Church Street Diner episode, shot sometime last summer\/fall and like some of the post-RM shows, Church Street Diner is closed to this day. Churchies who are in the know, know that CSD was opened and then closed sometime soon after the Restaurant Makeover crew left their special brand of reality tv drama all over the scrapped bunkheads. The title card at the end of the show mentioned that Alfredo and Richard “continue to have hope for the business”, or some such fluff. Well they’re off the radar, apparently, with the diner surreptitiously having an “opening soon” sign on their door through the winter.<\/p>\n

This show is approximately 22 min long (with commercials) and contains 20 minutes of fake drama built up between the designer and the contractor<\/a>. With clever editing and lots of recycling shots of people dancing while they work, they’re able to pad out the show to the hour (with commercials). In last night’s episode, Richard and Alfredo were treated nicely, compared to some snide comments the show hosts would utter on camera regarding the restaurant, the owners, the working conditions. As I suspected, the menu was perfect, with only a few edits and no real complaints to speak of by the hosting chef (she actually complimented them on their use of home made sauces), but the reason the diner was doing poorly was the cramped room it occupies, which (in my opinion) killed the previous restaurant in that space, The Five Alarm Diner. Backing up that theory is the surprise reveal of the owners acquiring of the second floor, sprung on the designer to jazz up just before the makeover started. Act surprised, everyone! Now act worried about time. Now act worried about money.<\/p>\n

All my Googling and gossip searching came up with no leads as to why the diner is still closed. I suspect they might have had some issue with licensing the upstairs part of the diner because at one point the designer mentions having problems with “red tape” and mysteriously it’s never mentioned again. The upstairs was a clothing store prior to the makeover and I suspect they couldn’t get a food service license within the 5 days allotted for the show and they went ahead and reno-ed the upstairs anyway. There was a curious lack of discussion regarding the upstairs space, other than the old Restaurant Makeover standard drama of a “load bearing wall” that befuddles the designer (shock!). <\/p>\n

I’m saddened by Alfredo and Richard’s struggles since I knew Richard when he was the manager of my local Starbucks (and did a pretty damn good job making the place a fun cafe!). I’d go back to the Cafe if it opened, but it doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon.<\/p>\n

One more for the Restaurant Makeover deathwatch!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember how Torontoist hates Restaurant Makeover? Last night they aired the Church Street Diner episode, shot sometime last summer\/fall and like some of the post-RM shows, Church Street Diner is closed to this day. Churchies who are in the know, know that CSD was opened and then closed sometime soon after the Restaurant Makeover crew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[11,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WjY-RU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}