Marlowe Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Richmond Hill

I organized a birthday dinner/celebration for a friend of mine and some guests. Now, let me tell you about our night.

First, the seating was prompt even though we were a large party and arrived early. The venue is beautiful! It’s been about 6 years since I was there before everything has changed. It’s much more upscale and so I was excited.

Then our waiter showed up to take our drink order. I was a bit concerned he didn’t write anything down, and so I was not surprised that our drink order was incorrect. That alone wouldn’t have been enough to spur my mood, but factor in that it took about 30 minutes to get our round of drinks set the tone for the evening. This, unfortunately continued throughout the evening.

Our party ordered dinner - which also took about 45 minutes. But there was a larger group there who arrived at the same time and we are also 12 in our party, so I could look past the delay. But, like the drinks, the order was wrong. One member of our group never received his order, despite placing it 3 times. We ended up sharing a portion of our meals with him. Another member ordered gnocchi and it arrived cold, dry and sauce was almost powdery. At this point, we were 2 rounds in and 3 hours of our time was lost by the time we saw dinner.

Dessert didn’t fair better. Although the food was really good for most of us (well, those that got our orders) the dessert never came. And we were now waiting for an hour before our drink orders were filled.

We had to complain to the manager before our waiter was replaced with someone extremely competent. She did this really novel thing and it was utterly innovative - she wrote down our order and got it out to us in 10 minutes! She was excellent! I don’t understand why we couldn’t have had her in the beginning.

So, to summarize: Venue - 4/5 - it’s gorgeous there Food quality - 3.5 / 5. Majority of the food was great and flavourful, but some dishes could have been made better Service - -3/5 with the first waiter; 5/5 for the second.

It’s hit or miss with who you will get to serve you, but if your drink orders start off wrong. Pay the bill and leave. The whole experience just really soured...

Shoutout to LIEL! who was our server tonight. She’s blonde curly/wavy hair. Probably the most miserable server we have ever encountered. Theres about 20 of us or so. I literally asked her if we can still order appetizers (it can even go with the entreé, it doesn’t matter) she said no, its too late now. She just started taking our orders and drinks, would roll her eyes at us if we ask questions about the menu. She treated us like we are a nuisance in the restaurant and just wanted us out. Listen, we know the reservation is only until 8:30pm we dont plan on staying longer than that as we do understand there’s another reservation for 9pm, but girl its only 6pm and she got so much attitude? Idk but she is not fit to be a server at all. She can roll her eyes somewhere else. One of my friend ordered cappuccino, served her a lame luke warm and even reasoned out “oh its the machine that does it?” Then do something about it? But its not worth the argument that time. I wanted to order one for myself but changed my mind, she pushes us as if we are no longer welcome to order our time isnt up yet. One of my friend asked for another spoon, arrived 30 mins after, the food is done already we have figured it out. Jeez. Liel made us really feel unwelcomed at all, she was very unapproachable the moment you try to open your mouth to speak she’s already on you rolling her eyes to shut you up. The bills included the gratuity, which was a big advantage for liel so she can show so much negativity to customers and still get tips which she hella does not deserve at all. If we were only able not to include the gratuity we would not leave a single cent.

Also, prior to this reservation which was a month ahead, they just called us and said we cannot stay for the dancing and if we want to we have to spend $100 each customers.. which they never mentioned this before we reserved, they just called us after. Like I get it you guys want more money from us, but we are not letting ourselves be fooled. And good that we did not stay longer, the atmosphere is dead, miserable LIEL server, ugly music, its not worth the penny.

And yes, this will...

2nd review (see original below). Came here with a group of 20 ppl, Saturday, Dec 15, 2018. Our food didn’t come till 2 hours later, waitress kept forgetting our drinks and water. My friends had some salmon that were undercooked. I had the seafood whiskey bake and some calamari. I do not have any allergies to seafood as I’ve eaten it all my life. However, whether it was from the unventilated dance floor or the fog machine or the drinks or their food, after dancing for an hour or so, I suddenly had rashes all over my arms, neck and face. My fingertips got numb and blue, my knuckles got red and my heart slowed down, I was about to faint. Went to the washrooms with doors that don’t lock and I was trying to vomit but couldn’t. Ended up going to Scarborough Grace hospital. Luckily, the reaction had subsided and now I’m back to normal and awaiting an allergy test to find out what happened.

In all my life, I’ve never had a reaction to food or drinks till that night. I have no idea what triggered it. Never will we ever go back here again.

P.S. The waitress did not issue separate billing. It was a nightmare trying to figure out what to pay for.

Review 8 months ago:

Food was ok, ambience was alright. They put paper on top of the table cloth which is something I would expect at a Jack Astor’s...not from this place which charges more than a Kelsey’s. My mushroom rigatoni was good, but my mom’s chicken supreme was a bit dry. Their seafood linguine could feed two people though. My friend’s steak was not well done as ordered.

We were a group of 15 and understandably the waiter was quite stressed but that wasn’t an excuse for him to display it in front of us (exasperating and quite dismissive), instructing is we can’t switch seats, forgetting our water, etc. The bus boys were quite attentive too.

The dance floor was quite small so on a Friday night with hip hop and top 40 music (DJ played mostly hip hop songs), it was packed! Our group made the most of it and still managed to have a lot of fun! We enjoyed the belly dancer from 9-9:30ish. Overall experience...