ARDO Restaurant — Restaurant in Toronto

My girlfriends and I got a last minute reservation tonight at Ardo. We chose this restaurant based on our love for Italian food and the excellent reviews we read online. We were very excited for some great eats and wine. We asked for a 6pm reservation and were told to come anytime between 5:30 and 6, we just had to be out by 8 as there was a reservation - no problem, we thought, we had somewhere to be too! We arrived and immediately loved the atmosphere, the restaurant is cozy and clean with an open kitchen. That's where the positive part of this review stops.

It's a Monday night and it was before 6pm, we were the only people there when we arrived - you would think there would be amazing service. But where do I begin...

First of all, we asked for bread while you were waiting, and you have to pay for it. I love fine dining and am happy to shell out on a high quality meal and fantastic wine, but having to pay for bread?! That's terrible customer service. Two of us got pasta - I got the ragu and my friend got the lobster ravioli on special - they were both ok, but nothing great. Our friends got arancini and pizza and seemed to like them a lot more, so if I ever do go back, pizza it will be. My ragu wasn't overly flavourful (truthfully I like Cibo's ragu much better), and desperately needed pepper, but after our food was delivered, we didn't see a server again until our plates were cleared. The portions of the pasta were quite small, and my friend who got the pasta and I were both still so hungry when we were finished that we wanted to order a pizza to split, but no server came by to see if we wanted anything else. Also, the wine list is terrible. They only have 2 red wines by the glass, and I can safely say the one I tried wasn't great. I would have loved to have tried the other one, or really have a second glass of anything considering I had finished my small 5 oz glass by halfway through my meal, but... you guessed it.. we didn't see a server until the plates were cleared.

After our plates were clear, we waited over 20 minutes before a server came by again. To be clear, this restaurant is quite small (15 tables top), and we were seated right by the kitchen, so they couldn't exactly miss us. Finally we ordered dessert from a different server, and then waited 20 more minutes without any kind of attention. We flagged her down, asked about status of dessert, and she responded with a very rude "it's coming". It ended up being over 45 minutes from the time our dinner plates were cleared until we got dessert. It also took her forever to bring our bills and cash us out, so not only did we hold the table unnecessarily long, but we were very late leaving for our other commitments too. I'm usually quite generous with tipping, and I would never hold back part of a server's gratuity based on the taste of food, but this is quite honestly the worst service I have ever seen. There was no reason for a table to go unattended so long, and I would have loved to have tried more things to improve my opinion, but not only were we not attended to, but one of the servers was quite rude. Aren't you supposed to be selling patrons on more drinks? My bill ended up being quite low for a normally pricey restaurant because I only had one drink and needless to say there wasn't much of a tip, but I would've loved to have spent 3 times this amount for a better quality meal with service.

The atmosphere of this place is great, but I can recommend about a dozen other Italian restaurants in Toronto that have way better wine selection and better service. Two stars was generous for my...

Ardo is a small Italian (serving Sicilian style food) restaurant. The interior is clean and simple. However, the tables for two are extremely small. It didn't help that the plates are large.

For a weekday lunch, it wasn't a full house, however, make reservations to be safe.

The service was slow; The attentiveness of the server could be improved.

Food: Polpo (Grilled octopus tentacle): The octopus had a pleasant smoky flavour from the grill. I don't recall much about the accompaniment, other than that we ate everything on the plate. I do wish the octopus was a bit more tender as it was ever so slightly tough. I will caveat that I asked the octopus not to have too much char. Overall, a simple and tasty dish.

D'oro: Lightly dressed salad with lots of arugula and some golden beets. The freshness and slight sweetness of the golden beets is the highlight of this salad. The almonds at the bottom add additional texture contrast, though I would rather another type of vegetable. A simple light salad to balance out the rest of our meal.

Pollo Porchetta: This was one of the specials of the day. The chicken was cooked to perfection. It was unbelievably tender; probably best cooked chicken I've ever had.

The sausage is the porchetta. Unfortunately, it was overly salty and too rich due to the amount of fat used in the sausage. I'm glad my companion was open to sharing all the dishes because if I ate the entire dish, it would be too rich, heavy and salty. The cauliflower was also charred to an inedible black crisp on some sides.

They need to rethink this dish.

Ragu: While they didn't have the acclaimed duck ragu, they do have a regular ragu on the menu. The sauce was made with dry aged beef.

The pappardelle, made in-house, has a gorgeous deep green colour. The pasta was coated well with the sauce and had the most pleasant texture. This dish tasted light (especially in comparison to the porchetta sausage), and well balanced. It was not salty or too rich. While the portion looks small, if one has a starter, main and dessert, IMO, it is the perfect portion.

Gelati: Each order comes with two flavours. We opted for pistachio and cherry. The silkiest and smoothest gelato I have ever tried. I enjoyed the cherry more than the pistachio. It had actual cherries and the slightly sour cherry flavour was present. The pistachio tasted nutty, but it could have benefited from more pistachio flavour (maybe add some pistachio pieces?).

Also, the each gelato had the perfect amount of sweetness so the natural ingredients could be tasted.

While the gelati is not made in-house, it is of very high quality.

Lastly, they were kind of enough to let me sample their extra virgin olive oil. It had a great dark golden/yellow colour and it was viscous. I also felt a great spiciness that hit the back of my throat. Overall, characteristics of a very high quality extra...

This review is written after my second visit to Ardo

The first time when I visited with my significant other, it was marred by various issues - this small resto was too packed, and my water drinking glass smelled funky (like the moldy smell from a dirty rag) which my server had to change several times because the new ones smelled too. Other patrons had the same issue, so it wasn't just me. But anyway, after that was resolved, I thought the food was alright.

My second visit was with a group of friends, and the night started promising. We ordered the crochette, octopus and the cavolo salad as starters. I didn't try the crochette nor the salad (both looked just ok, nothing special), but the octopus was delicious - it was tender and flavourful.

For my main course, I went with the sardine pasta. Long story short, it was "meh". I did not love how the toasted bread crumbs tasted and hated the texture it gave to the dish; the pasta was al dente but the flavor was weird due to the sauce almost being "too sweet", which did not go with the flavor profile of the sardines.

My companions ordered the truffled gnocchi, the etna pizza (fior di latte, sicilian sausage and rapini) which I had the first visit and liked, and the seafood cous cous. The person who ordered the pizza did not like the bitterness of the rapini (which I would have liked); the gnocchi was mushy and did not have any truffle taste to it, and the friend who ordered the cous cous obviously hated it since she barely touched the dish at all.

For dessert, we ordered the cannoli, the affogato and the torta all'arancia. The only thing that looked good to me was the affogato, which is almost impossible to screw up. The cannoli looked a bit dry to me, and the torta looked like an ordinary cake.

Overall, me and my companions had high hopes for this visit, and we left disappointed. The food is not "horrible" per se, but for a place that seems to have all the hype going for it and lots of patron-packed nights, I think the popularity might be...