Restaurant Allegro — Restaurant in La Malbaie

Food-safety & health concerns. Allegro will be out of business soon. I know this for two reasons. First, they keep low inventory. We were a table of four and three items we wanted were sold out. When any business is struggling to pay the bills they have to reduce inventory to save on costs to try and stay afloat.

Second, they charge customers for inedible items which weren’t eaten. None of the items we ordered were good, but one item was so bad, we sent it back after two bites, and they charged us for it. When I asked the waitress why we were being charged for something we didn’t eat, she said, “lately we’ve been charging customers for the items they don’t like.” When a business is experiencing a cash flow crises they simply can’t afford to comp anything. Think about it, the reasons a restaurant removes inedible items from your bill is because they want you to come back, and they want positive word-of-mouth. Well, if they’re not going to be open in a few weeks, there’s virtually no chance of repeat business and positive word-of-mouth doesn’t matter. But, earning those extra few dollars right away is meaningful when you’re about to go bankrupt.

All this to say, you don’t want to roll the dice with a restaurant that’s cutting corners as they’re frantically drowning. This could lead to food-safety and health related issues for you. I won’t bore you with the specifics, just know that everything we “ate” was terrible. No one thought the food was decent or tolerable.

Although Allegro’s average star rating is relatively high, this is misleading. If you sort the reviews from newest to oldest, you’ll notice that the new reviews are mostly bad. The reviews from years ago are mostly positive, which maintains the inflated...

Extremely mediocre food. Had the calamari as an app, which came out with hair in the sauce. Whatever, mistakes happen. The second attempt at the dish had no hair, which is a plus, but alas was made up of the tiniest bits of calamari batter, and we only got a couple bite sized pieces of actual meat. We had high hopes for the mains, which unfortunately were dashed yet again. The “medium rare” steak had the consistency of shoe leather - beyond well done - and tasted like ash. Perhaps someone forgot it on the grill? The fries at least are hard to screw up, right? Wrong. It’s as if the whole restaurant ran out of salt - though they were quite crispy. The lobster ravioli was “fine”. Definitely better than frozen ravioli from Costco, but not the best we’ve had. For sure better than the steak, and this keeps it from being a one star review. To top it all off the drinks we were served were warm with no ice in them. Having read some of the other reviews, I fully anticipate a salty response from the owner. But it doesn’t matter because we’re not coming back here again. Maybe they can use some of that salt to season the...

We’ve eaten here two days in a row now, because we enjoyed it so much the first time.

They took our lactose intolerance into careful consideration. For example, we were offered bread with olive oil and salt instead of butter. Due to the language barrier, our waitress asked a colleague for help with taking our order to ensure we were given the right advice. Bonus point: today she even remembered our preferences from yesterday, so everything went smoothly!

The portion sizes were just right. Not overly large like in the rest of Canada and the USA, but modest, well-balanced servings that were still very satisfying.

All our dishes were packed with vegetables, and our pastas had just a hint of oil. In short: a very pleasant experience. We would have loved to...