Bernhardt's — Restaurant in Toronto

Bernhardt's is a restaurant by the same team behind Dreyfus, Vilda's, and a forthcoming restaurant that will apparently be called N.L. Ginzburg. Dreyfus is probably my favourite restaurant in Toronto, and a lot of its best features are also exhibited at Bernhardt's (namely, a variety of rotating dishes with fresh ingredients and delicious flavours).

Bernhardt's is fundamentally a rotisserie restaurant that offers vegetable sides and a good wine menu. The style is mostly French with some Jewish influence (if the food doesn't provide sufficient hints for the latter, the plate with the Magen David at the entrance of the restaurant, and painting of a man wearing a tallis and tefillin inside, are more explicit). I've been to Bernhardt's before (it's been open since 2020), but for the purposes of this review I'll refer to my most recent visit.

We ordered morel mushrooms with potatoes, asparagus with mint and labneh, turnips with parmigiano reggiano (which I ate a bit before remembering to take a photo!), and a whole rotisserie chicken with a mix of fries and roasted potatoes. The food was uniformly excellent. The asparagus was a personal highlight - the texture was perfectly crunchy, and the mint and labneh gave it a fresh summery flavour. The turnips were also scrumptious, if the fact that I started chowing down before taking a photo wasn't enough of a hint. The morel mushrooms were outstanding, although the potatoes didn't add much to the dish in our view. The centrepiece of the meal - the chicken - was presented beautifully and was cooked perfectly, with a delicious crunchy skin. I have something of a philosophic qualm with fancy rotisserie chicken, since in my opinion there is a relatively low ceiling for quality: that is, I think there's a right way to make it, and it's almost impossible to elevate the dish beyond that level (with the sole exception of one outstanding rotisserie chicken I once had in New York City, I've never had one that exceeds that ceiling). With that said, at Bernhardt's they definitely hit the top level for quality chicken.

Although I didn't take photos, I drank a glass of red wine and my wife had a cocktail (I cannot recall the name). Both were excellent.

Additionally, the service was fantastic. We were frequently attended to by the service staff, and they were all polite and helpful.

My only complaint about our recent experience is extrinsic to the food and the staff, but relates to the physical layout of the room where we were seated. The restaurant packs a large number of tables into a small room at the back, and while we were there, two separate groups were loud and making crude comments. I certainly don't blame Bernhardt's for ill-mannered patrons, but it was unpleasant eating amidst such a cacophony. We recently visited Japan, and during our dinner we were yearning for the culture of public quiet in that country! This unfortunately marred what was otherwise a uniformly wonderful experience. Accordingly, next time I visit Bernhardt's, I intend to be more choosy about where I am seated. But I definitely intend to revisit, and would still recommend Bernhardt's to anyone reading this review - it's one of the best...

Came in with a group of 6(all of us work in restaurants) after wanting to go to Bernhardt's for close to a year and never being able to organize it so we were all incredibly excited about it!

Sat down and our server was lovely, food and drinks came out quickly, we had one person join us late and miss out on the first round of apps but all the food was delicious! Everyone had a really great time until the last table left.

After the other table in the dining room left the servers began closing hard and fast. Chairs on tables, taking out garbage through the front door, wiping down the bar, sweeping around us, putting everything away…

Our server seemed a little more annoyed while getting our dessert order and trying to flag him down for more water to take the order took about five minutes of trying to make eye contact with both him and the other server/bartender working.

We were then ushered out pretty much immediately after paying the bills that weren’t split correctly(around 11:15, right on the dot for their 2 ½ hour seating limit) and were given dirty looks for using the bathroom before leaving during which apparently other members of the party were told by someone who did not serve us that two people did not tip but wouldn't say who(they don’t mention anything about automatic gratuity for larger tables anywhere on their website)?

After discussing it outside we found out that the lowest tip(again a table full of people who work in the restaurant industry) was me and someone else who both left 15% calculated by the card machine and for a bill that wasn’t properly split(I paid for two extra dishes 60$ more than the person across from me((which we weren't that upset about at the time and laughed it off)) when we’d asked to have everything split evenly so my tip probably came out to about as much as hers!).

I work with bad servers, forgetting orders or getting the wrong ones, maybe not being super friendly or attentive, it happens and I understand that we had stayed past closing and probably didn’t spend as much money as they were hoping but you just don’t talk to or treat guests that way and then complain directly to their faces about them about not tipping what you feel is ‘enough’.

I really hope that the service on a Friday or Saturday night is better than what we got and that most of the people last night were new or just having a really rough shift but even then the way we were treated was disgusting and I will not be returning to Bernhardt's or visiting Dreyfus which is a shame because we were looking forward to...

I was really excited to try Bernhardt’s as I heard really good things and know it is run by Joe Beef alumni, however it left us disappointed.

The restaurant has a small intimate atmosphere making it great for dates or a small group of friends. The service was also great as there was someone always checking in to see if we were well.

The negatives begin with the food and drinks. The wine menu had a decent list of wines, but since we had already come from pre-dinner drinks and had post dinner drinks planned, we only wanted a glass or two of wine, but the menu only listed bottles. Would be nice to have a separate section for by the glass.

We ordered 2 apps and the famous roast chicken. The first app was the squash and although it was the best dish of the night but still had flaws such as the squash being overcooked and lacking a structure. The second app was a mushroom dish. The mushroom was really overpowering and was a bit raw. Would have been nicer to seen a more balance as the earthiness took over the whole taste.

The final dish was the one which we came for as everyone says it is the best, yet it was the worst: the roast chicken. We got the chicken served with fries and the portion of fries was massive. A massive portion isnt always a good thing as we ended up throwing most the fries away and I do not like to waste food. I can see why they give plenty of fries as it’s a cheaper ingredient and provides more volume to the dish. The chicken itself was overly cooked. It was really dry and seemed as though it had been cooked and was sitting under a warmer all day. The legs and thighs which are the hardest to overcook were also overcooked. I tried drenching the chicken in the sub-par gravy but it was still too dry. The chicken did have good flavour, but flavour means nothing when you have no texture.

Unfortunately we did not have time to stay and wait for the waitress to fix our dish as we had a reservation for drinks at Mothers at 9:45, so the chicken mainly went to waste.

Overall, the meal was disappointing as for $150 I could have enjoyed a much better meal elsewhere. I just hope that the kitchen maybe had a bad night because everyone else says this place is great and I see a lot of potential in it. I would want to give them another chance but can’t risk another loss.

Thanks again for the great hospitality and...