Taverna 13thirtyone — Restaurant in Ontario

I live with pacreatic disease, and as a result, I have some pretty demanding dietary restrictions that while depressing, keep me alive. I came here with my husband for our 12 year anniversary after the first place we went to took forever to seat us and the whole place smelled not wonderful, and am SO happy we did. A few of the food photos on the reviews here drew us in, because it looked like I'd be able to eat some things.

Let me tell you... we walked up to the front door and when we were still like 12 feet away, the friendliest guy with a big bright smile opened the door for us and welcomed us in. First impressions matter so much!

Our server Megan was super kind while I explained my restrictions. She came back like 5 times to confirm things, which is a testament to both her and the kitchen for wanting to manage all precautions. But Megan was super attentive throughout the entire meal, and very sweet. It was a chilly evening on the patio but she helped create a warm and welcoming atmosphere.

The food... Incredible. My restrictions make it hard for any chef to add flavour because I can't have any added fats. I eat a lot of good food with my work in event production, and eat out a lot when I travel. However most of the time with my limitations I'm stuck with dry salads with limited toppings and no dressing. But this was above and beyond all expectations. Even my husband liked the bite he stole and said it's just as good as his own dish (which he raved about as well). I've worked with a lot of chefs to know that it's a total pain in the rear to get a guest like me that's this limited. But the kitchen worked some sort of voodoo to pack that much flavour onto my plate.

I'm a professor at a school for hospitality, tourism, and culinary arts. This was by the book exactly what we hope our students blossom into when they arrive into our industry. To the owners, your staff is doing a freaking stellar job and I hope they are recognized accordingly. I will 100% be back with my family, friends, and clients. 10/10

(ps. Wish we took photos, but we got that food in our bellies so fast there was no hope to document the great...

The Trout dish was very delicious and a pleasure to finish.

The burrata cheese with prosciutto and butternut squash sauce was tasty but small compared to other sharables.

The oysters, tuna dish, the chicken, the mixed seafood dish, and ribs were complimented by others at the table as being tasty and filling.

I would not recommend the churro/neutella/ ice cream dessert. It was way too sweet, and too crumbly, to the point where there was a constant failure to get a piece onto the fork. Also it had little dry crunchy bits that were effectively just plate decor, and the ice-cream was minimal. So yeah, it's not worth the price and unfortunately it was not finished even when shared among the group of us.

So overall, the food ranks quite high.

Though some people I was with were dissatisfied with the steak not being prepared to their satisfaction, and either sent it back for an adjustment or just simply begrudgingly accepted it to not make a fuss.

The atmosphere is nice. It was simple but nice.

A good amount of parking.

It appeared that there was an option available within for barn door divider to segment off a part of the restaurant if someone were to come with a group wanting some more privacy.

The service could have been a bit more present. Though the doormen letting us in quickly out of the cold was appreciated.

The particular server we had at our table would address us in a rotation or dear or sweety. Personally, these were a bit of an annoyance. Would have preferred the server to stick to sir or miss/ madame. But I guess the method the server did address us with was more 'neutral' and avoids making particular assumptions about guests.

But yeah that is one small element out of overall a...

To begin with we saw this restaurant driving by one day. We looked it up online and saw it’s happy hour menu. Excited we gave it a shot.

When we arrived we were informed that online was out of date.

Since one of the online items was a steak taco for $5.00 and steak tacos were still on the regular menu for $18 for 2 tacos and a side. Since we were only interested in the tacos we asked if we could get the steak instead of the new tuna taco that was now on the happy hour menu.

We were told no.

We were disappointed since this was one of the reasons we decided to go. Honour what you have advertised.

The server took our drink order (after telling us some of the features were not available). She said she’d get our food order in a moment. She left to go clean tables. Who does this?

We ordered the Korean fried chicken off the happy hour menu and the steak tacos off the regular menu since they were taken off the happy hour menu.

The Korean chicken was clearly either old or just severely over cooked and dry. It came slightly warm at best.

There was a good amount of meat on the steak tacos but we weren’t asked how we liked it cooked and over cooked and it was way over cooked for us. For 18 dollars you could get more and better just about any where else. There was Maybe a trace of chimichurri but were pretty underwhelming. For that price they better be the best I’ve ever had.

So a place we were excited to try was a disappointment from start to end.

If you have a website. Make sure...