Restaurant Elena — Restaurant in Montreal

Food was delicious. Service was abysmal.

First let me say that the food at this restaurant is outstanding. Really lovely dishes executed well.

I made a reservation for 12 for my Best friends bachelorette weekend, and recut very kind very encouraging email back ensuring that they were extremely accommodating for dietary restrictions/preferences.

As soon as we arrived I informed our waiter that we had one vegan in the group and if there was a way to accommodate her in the pre-fix menu courses. She said “of course, no problem.” Great!

Dishes start to arrive, including a delicious ceasar salad and asparagus dish . Nothing has been modified.

Ok…. Maybe they’re taking a while with the vegan options.

Then the pizzas came, nothing. Our vegan friend had starting eating our crusts.

Then the pasta dishes, at this point it’s been an hour and a half since we sat down and our friend is starving. We politely asked our waiter several different times in between courses of the vegan fooos was coming, a salad dressed with a vinegary would suffice, and they kept saying “yes yes., sorry.”

They sent out a complementary drink for the table to apologize, but it was half finger of Paloma or some batch chill, hardly anything.

I finakky got up out of my seat and go over to the bar and say “hi you know our friend still hasn’t had anything to eat and she’s very hungry, where is her meal?” And the waitress said that it was her mistake, she’d forgotten to put the orders in with the vegan modification, but she’d make sure the meal was made right now. Right now? It had been hours and we’d already prodded them three times. One of my friends even said “I thought we were being annoying with how many times we asked about it!”

So then our friend FINALLY gets a bowl of pasta with red sauce. Everyone else has finished eating. She’s like, hurrying to finish since they have a 2.5 hour limit for big groups. Then, insult to injury, I get the bill and the prefix menu has been charged for all 12 of us, including the vegan. I take a look and say, “please remove her from this bill she didn’t get to eat anything.” And they agreed. But then they came Back and handed our friend HER OWN BILL??!! Charging her for a kid’s menu $17 charge. I was floored. We had bought several bottles of wine everyone got at least one cocktail, the bill was well over $1000 and here they were trying to charge our poor friend for her pathetic meal. We insisted she not have to pay, but the waitress countered that she had comp’ed some drinks for the table and wasn’t that good enough? We were silent and in disbelief and the manager came over to ask what was wrong. We finally got them to drop her charge but OH MY GOD. I’ve never felt more absolute disregard or a lack of care for a group. We were polite, spent a ton of money and the least they could have done was eat the $17 dollars.

I think that if they’re not plant based friendly, they need to own up to that fact. (Several reviews on here suggest that they’ve treated other vegetarians and vegans similarly) or do better. Other restaurants email beforehand to gather any restrictions BEFORE the party even arrives so that everything goes smoothly. They should consider one of these...

I almost never write negative reviews, but I had such a weird/bad experience here, I feel like I have to.

We had a reservation on Monday night for 8pm. When we arrived, we were told that our table wasn’t ready; that’s not super unusual. What was unusual was that we were asked to wait in the front for forty minutes until our table was ready. While we were waiting, a server came by to give us a menu and to ask if we wanted anything to drink: we said that we would, but needed a minute to look at the drink menu. They said sure, but never came back. While we stood for forty minutes, I tried to ask other servers if we could order a drink, but they would avert their eyes and ignore us as they walked past.

When we finally sat, we were seated at the bar near the front of the restaurant where other patrons were packed in waiting for their reserved tables that weren’t ready yet, meaning there was a constant crowd of people bumping up against our backs.

Our server didn’t come to our spot for ten minutes after we sat. At that point, we had been at the restaurant for almost an hour, so we were ready to order food and drinks. Our appetizers came instantly, as if they had been sitting under a heat lamp waiting to be served. Drinks seemed to take forever, and didn’t come until we were essentially done our appetizers. Really strange cadence for the meal.

Throughout the meal, servers kept whisking our plates away (while there was still food on them) without asking if we were done. It felt like they were trying to rush us out, which I get, they probably had a reservation after us. But maybe if we hadn’t been seated forty minutes after our reservation time, that wouldn’t have been a problem? Unfortunately, at 9:30, we noticed a party the same size as ours waiting for a table and glaring at us; clearly they now had a reservation that we were holding up, but we had only been sitting for 40 minutes…

When I went to the bathroom, servers were fighting by the expo/pass.

Ultimately, the food was good, and the restaurant is cute. But would I pay close to a hundred bucks a person to eat normal pizza and green salad at a restaurant where the servers either ignore you or act like they want you to leave the whole time? When they have a cookbook you can by that explains how to make everything at the restaurant? Yeah, I’ll pass next time.

I wasn’t going to write a review, but if you filter Google reviews by “Lowest” you’ll see a ton of reviews from people saying the same thing: that they made a reservation and had to wait over 40 minutes past their reservation time for a table, or were sat at a table too small for the party they reserved for. I dunno who is running front of house here, but there seems to be some kind of issue with booking more reservations than the restaurant can handle. There’s lots of great pizza in Montreal – in my opinion, try...

The westward migration continues down Notre Dame. Welcome Elena to the hood. This thoughtfully designed, warmly lit space from the people who brought us Nora Gray has resurrected an underappreciated, unused bar location into a bustling pizza/pasta/wine bar and St Henri's newest 'must try' table.

Due to a slight mix-up with our reservation we started our evening at the white marble bar which is dimley light by some nice looking golden light fixtures. With an extensive list of natural/imported wines and alcoholic concoctions there is no lack of variety even for those with a more refined palate. The Vlan pear cider is a must try and has an interesting back story which the bartender recounted to me.

We started with baked clams, arancini and puffed gnocco frito servef with salami, prosciutto and marinated eggplant to stuff the gnocco with. All the starters were delicious.

We then moved to our table in the main dining room which is stunning. Accent lighting unintrusively fills the room from under the banquets and behind the ceiling moldings creating a very intimate setting. A well placed wine bar is the center piece of the room and creates a wonderful divide of the space. Our waitress was also a real treat. Enthusiastic, friendly and knowledgeable, she cracked jokes with us all night. She really knew how to read and understand her tables and worked the room well, this definitely added a lot to the positive experience we had.

We shared the tagliatelle with ragu, Diavolo pizza and the side of carrots. The pasta was perfectly Al dente and the sauce was delicious but I found it was lacking a bit of acidity. The pizza was devine. Born in their custom built wood burning oven, this expertly baked pizza hit the mark on all fronts. Dough perfectly puffed, generous amounts of cheese, sauce, meat and hot peppers, this was the winner of the night. Carrots were also a nice touch topped with smoked almond cheese and brussel sprout leafs.

We finished with some homemade ice cream balls - pistachio, hazelnut, vanilla and chocolate and a slice of the torta di riso, essentially rice pudding in cake format topped with whipped cream, caramel sauce and tasetfully finished with some Fleur de sel and lemon zest. Delicious.

Overall we were very pleased with everything dispite the initial mix-up with our reservation. Looking forward to visiting Elena and hanging out with my new favorite...