Trofí Restaurant — Restaurant in Ottawa

Came and got the Chicken & Kafta souvlaki brochettes, after seeing the images and videos in reviews, it looked really good and interesting.

I'm going to start with the good, because it is mostly good. The food itself was all delicious. The brochettes were perfectly seasoned, the rice was great, the pitas were fresh, the tzatziki was flavourful, and the salad was fantastic. The brochettes were cooked perfectly, juicy and flavorful, a nice bit of char but you can still taste the herbs and seasoning well through it. The service was great. A great ambiance and atmosphere, however, as someone else mentioned, if there is a party or something, it can get very loud very quickly.

I would say my biggest negative for this place, and really the primary reason it gets a 4 instead of a 5, is the price. It's not a cheap meal, and that's fine, the quality is great, nothing at all was bad on the plate. However, is the quality 2x higher than one of my favorite greek places a few blocks away from there where the portions are larger and the price is 1/2 as much? Unfortunately, in my mind, it's hard to justify that high of a price for something that I would say is maybe 30% better quality wise. It's just tough to justify, is my main negative, if the prices were a bit lower, this would be a 5 star review, no question.

My second negative is fairly minor, but from the pictures I've seen and the impression I had going in, the brochettes were cooked on the rack that's brought out. But I was able to clearly see them bring the plates out of the kitchen, and pour lighter fluid on the rocks and light it on fire then bring it over to my table. They did say that the skewers were already cooked, but to me, there is a difference in a restaurant between a novel experience, and a gimmick. To me, a novel experience is having skewers cooked at the table on a fire. A gimmick is bringing me cooked skewers and lighting a fire under it for presentation. Maybe most people don't think about it or sometimes they light it in the kitchen instead of at the bar in the dining room, but to me it kind of ruined the illusion and made the whole thing feel like a gimmick. And that gimmick I am sure is part of what contributes to my first point, the prices feeling steep for what you get.

Overall, the food is fantastic, I can't complain about that. But the gimmick and cost just knock this down to a 4...

If I could give this place 0 stars, I would. My friend reserved a table for 5 in advance and when we came in, table was still not ready despite us being a few minutes late. Not only that but at first they seated us upstairs and then moved us downstairs claiming that we would be more comfortable downstairs. However, they placed us in a dark corner next to the kitchen isolated from the rest of the restaurant and constantly disturbed by staff. We told the waitress that we didn’t feel comfortable there so she went to talk to her boss and he came and looked at us with the most uninterested face and bored voice and said we could move upstairs but the table would be small and it would be louder upstairs despite the upstairs being mostly vacant. As we got up to go upstairs, he asked us to carry our water glasses up the stairs ourselves because apparently they were short on water glasses. Begrudgingly we did as we are told and low and behold the table he took us to had empty water glasses. We all just stared at him as he scrambled to remove them from the table. At this point we were incredibly uncomfortable and decided to walk out. To paint the picture for you, we were 4 hijabi girls and one brown guy. I’ll let y’all decide what the issue was. I’m absolutely appalled at...

I was out this evening with two friends to celebrate a friend's 60th. When trying to decide where to go for dinner, the birthday boy mentioned he had a craving for calamari. We decided to check out Trofí, and it was the perfect choice.

We split amazing appys and dessert, and the service was excellent. The place was quite busy, but we scored seats at the bar. The bartender / server was great. It was our first time to Trofí so he explained the Trofí concept and menu, and answered our questions.

My friends and I decided to start with the crispy calamari and Mary's fattoush salad. Both were delicious and decent portions. The calamari was cooked to perfection. The birthday boy was very happy, as were the rest of us. Mary's fattoush salad was fresh and delicious and made an excellent side.

We then decided to go right to dessert and shared the baklava - vanilla. Two big scoops of vanilla ice cream with chunks of baklava, drizzled with honey and topped with chopped pistachios. It was perfect!

The three of us agreed we will return to Trofí another time soon with bigger appetites so we can try the grilled lamb chops or one of the other...