Restaurant de l'ITHQ — Restaurant in Montreal

My evening at a grand dinner was ruined by being horrifically surprised by the hotel staff early afternoon on my first day. A deeply disappointing stay at a hotel that failed its mission of hospitality

I’ve stayed at the ITHQ Hotel in Montreal several times over the years, and have enjoyed dining in their restaurant. But this visit was an emotionally distressing and unforgettable disappointment, made worse by the very institution that’s supposed to represent the best in hospitality education.

From the moment I arrived, I was met with cold, rigid, and robotic treatment from the junior front desk staff (students in training). When a minor mistake occurred—my partner smoked a single cigarette on our suite’s balcony before we noticed the “no smoking” sign the following morning—I was hit with an automatic $580 penalty. When I tried to explain, I was shut down with dogmatic replies like “it’s the law,” with zero empathy, flexibility, or willingness to listen. The so-called “hospitality professionals” in training treated me like an offender, not a guest.

For three days, no manager was available to speak with me. I waited patiently, explained my distress in writing, and made it clear that I felt unwelcome and might leave early. No one followed up. Instead, mid-level supervisors deflected, refused to escalate the issue, and blamed their policies—or Expedia—for their refusal to offer any compassion.

As a result, I left the hotel a day early, on my birthday, emotionally depleted from the constant stress and total lack of human connection. The staff had made me feel so unwelcome, I couldn’t bring myself to stay another night. And still—they charged me for the unused final night, citing Expedia’s 72-hour cancellation policy. They took no responsibility for their own three-day failure to respond, and hid behind the booking platform’s policy instead of owning their part in pushing a longtime guest away.

Only after I escalated my concerns to senior management did I receive a personal and heartfelt call from the hotel’s Director of Accommodation, Senior Director of Business Development and Communications - Directrice de l’Hébergement, Direction principale du développement des affaires et des communications. She listened, apologized profusely, and generously waived the $580 smoking fine. I appreciated her sincerity—but the final insult came when the hotel still refused to refund the last night, even though I left because of their own mishandling of the situation.

This hotel brands itself as a teaching institution of hospitality. That makes the experience all the more unacceptable. If this is how their students are being trained to deal with guests in distress—with inflexible policies, cold indifference, and no emotional intelligence—then I worry about the future of hospitality in Quebec.

A lovely building and a good restaurant cannot compensate for a complete failure of human kindness. I urge future guests to think twice, especially if booking through third-party platforms. If something goes wrong, you may find yourself at the mercy of a policy—and a team unwilling to rise above it.

I’ve stayed here for years. After this experience, I won’t be back. I will miss the...

We had dinner at this place tonight because it’s highly recommended by a coworker who has stayed at the hotel and had breakfast. The pictures posted by others look nice and exquisite so I would like to try while visiting Montreal but the food is quite disappointing and below my expectation.

Complimentary bread - cold and hard / tough to chew on.

Appetizer - we had a vegetable dish which is eggplant. The sauce is very sweet plus a bit sour. It’s not a good taste for eggplant in my opinion so we have leftovers when the portion is already small. Another dish we had is grilled oyster covered by cheese. Got to say it’s the smallest oyster I have ever had, like a clam sized. It tastes better than the eggplant but nothing special.

Main - the veal is ok, very tender but portion is too small. There’s vegetable sides but only one slice of black mushroom, one cauliflower, one tiny radish, you could imagine. The halibut is steamed and has a bad fishy smell and doesn’t taste good. It’s as plain as water. I don’t think it’s fresh “catch of the day” as indicated by menu. There’re 4 small mussels that taste better. Underneath the fish is a layer of stir-fried pepper slices in tomato sauce. They’re editable but usually are leftovers in other dishes from other restaurants while here it’s playing a main role which makes you wonder what you’re paying 40-50 for.

Dessert - the only highlight of the meal that exceeded expectation. Not too sweet, has strawberry sauce to provide a bit sour flavor to balance the hazelnut ice-cream and coffee moose. Very delicious, and why I gave two star for.

Service - the restaurant is not busy when we dined in and there’re several empty tables in our area. Maybe that’s the reason our waitress is constantly disappearing and make us wait for more than 10 mins after dessert just to collect the check. We waited and waited but no one is showing up so we have to find other people to reach out to the waitress to pay the bill. When she finally showed up she went to other tables to attend to customers before getting our check. Overall not good service in my opinion.

This restaurant is highly rated and had many praises from other people. I was drawn in by that and plan to take pictures for the dishes to post on social media but end up not taking anything because the presentation of the food is nothing but ordinary. I don’t know if I ordered the wrong dish but that’s just what I got and there’s not many choices on the menu. Sharing this review based on my experience to provide another...

Reservation made online was painless. They have a 3 course tasting menu for 39$ Tuesday and Wednesday and a 5 course tasting menu 59$ Thursday to Saturday.

The tasting menu changes every day possibly, depending on what's in season, the waiter tells you what is on the menu, it's not written anywhere. You'd only know the day of. The staff is made up of students, graduates of the institute and employees.

We were served by a mix of different people, and the service was mixed. We had one that gave us the bread, didn't tell us what it was (and it ended up being bread from a local boulangerie with a special kind of butter, so this needed an intro) I had to stop him to ask him to explain as he was rushing out. He also later spilled water everywhere while serving the water, saw it, but did not clean it up and it wasn't that busy on a Tuesday. At any decent restaurant, I'd note this. On top of this, we're at the institute of hôtellerie and restaurant where I would think, this is more important than anywhere else. For an institute of hôtellerie, the service wasn't out of this world. I'm knocking a star down for this, as in, when I tell friends about this, the service isn't what I'll be impressed with.

The food itself was good and inventive as I'd expect and I was not dissapointed. Plating was gorgeous. Everythjng was delicious and tender, my vegetables on my main were a bit too salty though. For our main, we had duck breast and porc fillet (part of the special 3 course tasting menu) and they were both perfectly cooked. The porc fillet was not like anything I've ever had it was so juicy and tender and flavorful, not usually how you'd describe porc. I was very impressed and would go back for another occasion with friends or family for the food.

The decor is very cute and the atmosphere is relaxed, it's a slightly more upscale type of restaurant and crowd. There is a small patio where you get to see out but have some privacy, the interior is beautiful. There people on dates, small friends and family gatherings, we saw a few solo people eating outside enjoying a book as well.

UPDATE: to the reply of the restaurant to my review, I'm not a dude.... I'm not sure how much time you actually spent reading this review but I'm...