La Spada — Restaurant in Montreal

Visited on Wednesday, October 29. I had high expectations after hearing incredible things and seeing glowing reviews online.

The evening started strong. The hostess was warm and welcoming, and we were seated quickly. The space itself is breathtaking. Elegant, sophisticated, and thoughtfully designed, La Spada feels like a hidden gem the moment you walk in.

Unfortunately, the service and food did not live up to the setting.

We ordered the Pappardelle Ragù d’Anatra, Carbonara Special, and the Arancini Specials. Our friends chose the Caesar Salad and Radiatori alla Vodka.

The servers were kind, but the execution needs refinement. One of our appetizers was missed, and when it finally arrived, the plate was dropped onto the table, splattering cheese onto my pants. They apologized and cleaned up quickly, but the experience set the tone for the rest of the meal.

When our mains arrived, the same server accidentally dropped half a block of grated Parmesan into my pasta. Thankfully, I like cheese, but it added to an already shaky service experience.

As for the food: The Carbonara Special was nearly inedible, overwhelmingly salty to the point where even water would not have helped balance it.

The Arancini were excellent, crisp, flavorful, and well-seasoned.

The Pappardelle Ragù d’Anatra was also very good. Tender duck and rich flavor brought that dish together beautifully.

The Radiatori alla Vodka and Caesar Salad were fine, but unremarkable.

Overall, La Spada delivers a gorgeous ambiance but fails where it truly counts, which is consistency, flavor, and service. At this price point, expectations are naturally higher, and unfortunately, the experience did not meet them.

It is a shame, because the space and potential are there. But after this visit, I highly recommend everyone to avoid. You can easily find better Italian food with better...

Coming La Spada is like taking a trip to Italy right in the heart of Montreal with having a beautiful restaurant where the ambiance matches the food that is being served. High-quality casual so that anybody who does come there has an amazing fun night with a journey of flavours.

The restaurant itself is designed very well with the very casual type of nighttime dining where there is a bar there are multiple areas where you can see the kitchen from, overall the photos and painting all around the restaurant just give it a more cosy and vibe. With having that fine dining feel. And the iconic photo on the outside just gives it everything that you need to know that this is a simple but amazing Italian restaurant.

Going to the food, the dishes that we were given were all high-quality, and made with the upmost care for the best combination of flavours. I would definitely recommend the bone broth tortellini, which is just Out Of This World and in flavours, the Caesar salad was made with care, and was so good. The veal wrapped in prosciutto was amazing as well. Overall, the food here is definitely worth the price that it is being served at and I definitely will come back again to try other items off their menu.

My overall experience with the service, and the people who were there was amazing, the waiters and the maître d’ were very attentive. My hats off to the host Liam, who gave us the best experience we could ask for and shout out to to one of the owners, Scott, who explained how the flavours were being combined to equal what I was tasting. Everything was top-notch to the point where I feel like this place deserves a Michelin star. I was done with one plate. The servers came and gave me a new one, water was always filled no matter when I looked at it. I definitely can’t wait to see this place grow into an iconic location...

TLDR - don't leave your umbrella unattended but great food, generous portions and not so great hostess.

We booked reservations for this restaurant a month in advance and were really looking forward to eating delicious food.

For entrees, we got the suppli, focaccia, tortellini brodo and fried calamari. The tomato sauce tasted amazing. Portions were very generous too.

For the main dishes, we had the beef ragu and ravioli. These dishes were all easy to share between a party of four.

We finished the dinner with a strawberry shortcake which was light and sweet. We did have to remind our waiter about the dessert a couple times though.

What soured the overall experience at the end was the interactions we had between the waiter and hostess - one of the waiters had offered to put my umbrella at the front entrance on a coat hanger. As we were leaving, I couldn't find my umbrella anywhere. We asked the hostess about it and she looked at us dumbfounded and asked our waiter where the umbrella was. They had a small back and forth and proceeded to ignore us. The hostess continued sitting people down and answering the phone while we stood at the front entrance for over ten minutes, waiting for an answer.

We ended up asking help from another server and the hostess came back to us saying "what do you want me to do? just send us the bill".

There was no apology or compensation offered whatsoever. We found the hostess to be very rude to us and left disappointed with how our...