Astoria Shish Kebob House - Danforth — Restaurant in Toronto

This place used to be the best Greek restaurant in the city! Not anymore! The original owner, named Tommy, passed away many years ago. He ran the place light a tight ship. He was the best. Always had sufficient staff to run the restaurant, and everything was fresh and all orders were always correct. Nowadays, Astoria has really gone downhill. We have had major order mess ups. One time we had a table of 10 people, granted it was busy, we were served by a really nice young man, he tried his best. But the food took 2 hours, and when it came, not one of the 10 orders were correct. He was so sorry about what happened, and even brought the order list that he printed off the computer of what we ordered. It wasn't even his fault, he entered all the orders in correctly, it was the kitchen that messed up. When I say not one order was correct, I truly mean it! Side dishes were wrong, food was not cooked as we asked. Then the owner, or manager, a Sri Lankan man, came to us and would not apologize, and had the nerve to accuse the young waiter for the mistakes. That is when the two guests at the table who were fitting the bill lost it. Actually we all lost it, because we knew it was not his fault! How disgusting to blame the person who was not wrong. At the end of the night, us, and the other family we were with refused to pay the bill, and after a bit of banter with the manager, the manager let us leave without paying. We did pay for the wine and alcohol, but not the $350 food bill. We also did give the poor young waiter $100 as we assumed he was going to be fired that night. We felt so bad for him. After that, you would think we would have not returned, but we did...

The next time we went, a drink we ordered had a fat fly in it, we called that manager over, and his response was "well I didn't put it in there"! HOW RUDE??? No one accused you of putting it in there, you should have apologized and given us a new drink. Which he did when he asked "what do you want me to do about it?". And he still charged us for the drink. You would think it would be on the house after that?

The last time we went, also not a good experience.

The service is very average, can't even get the waiters attention. The food is not nearly as fresh, the tomatoes in our salad were gritty and soft! I ordered 4 lamb chops, cooked at medium. 2 of them came medium, and 2 came well done! Some of the tzatziki was rotten. Not a great experience. The food also gave us all severe stomach aches for 2 days. Something else must have been expired.

I guess what was, was! There must be another greek place to try in the area that is...

January 2023:

This review hurts me to write; more on that later though.

1. The food was decent, but overpriced. I get that we're all dealing with inflation, but $30 for a large chicken dinner (that isn't even that large), is wild. I can name a handful of other spots where you can get a better chicken souvlaki dinner for under $25. One star reduced.

2. The service was not very good at all; we had to flag our waitress down to ask for a beverage refill, and by the time the refill came, we were almost finished dinner. We also had to ask for our empty appetizer plates to be removed. It was so bad that another (more seasoned) server noticed the dirty plates sitting there during our dinner, and she came and removed them herself. I appreciated that situational awareness. One more star reduced for the service experience.

3. Finally, the restroom was gross. Wet floors all around the urinals, and no paper towels or operative hand dryer. That's basic stuff; another star reduced. The manager on duty was too busy on his cellphone to tend to these issues. The days when the mature silver-haired gentleman managed the restaurant, and even the days when Nixon managed it, were WAY better. It's a shame because I grew up coming here after my GTHL games, with my entire team and our parents, and now, I wouldn't even consider carrying forward that tradition.

Astoria isn't what it used to be.

Update as of June 9, 2023. Food was still decent. The washrooms were clean this time, but the service was even worse and the Manager was just as disengaged as last time. What a waste of time and money. Never again...

The restaurant was just over quarter capacity on a Friday night at prime dinner time, so perhaps others are also going elsewhere to spend their hard...

This once great Greek restaurant was terrible tonight. We have been coming to the Astoria for 30 years and it has been a favourite of ours. As we are moving from Toronto to BC we decided it would be a super choice to have one of our last dinners out with friends. What a mistake. The waitress took our order. Brought the drinks to the table getting them all mixed up in the process and forgetting the waters. Next up were 2 salads. Given to the wrong people at the table. So as they were eating we asked where the other salads were. Our waitress asked who ordered what. As we reminded her she told us that two of the meals didn’t start with a salad. She didn’t care the wrong people were eating the salads, she just walked away. Next came our meals. When we asked where the appetizer we ordered was her answer was that she must have delivered it to the wrong table. No apology, nothing. She just said she would take it off the bill (how nice of her.) My meal which was a small beef souvlaki had 4 pieces of beef for $26.95. The beef which was to be done medium rare was way well done. The veggies which included a nice portion of broccoli, which wasn’t cooked at all. To the point it was raw. Yikes. My husbands med rare lamb chops were well done too. The only thing that seemed remotely similar to our yummy meals of the past were the roast potatoes and rice. Sadly when we were offered coffee and dessert we couldn’t ask for the bill fast enough. We understand Covid has wreaked havoc with the restaurant industry but tonight was one of the worst meals we have ever eaten out. Disappointing way to remember a place we used to line up...