Bistro Manila — Restaurant in Toronto

My wife wanted to go out for drinks with her sister so we chose a place that reminded her of nightlife in Philippines. This small indiscreet bar is located at the intersection of Brimley Rd and Sheppard Ave E. The operating hours for this restaurant are below:

Tuesday 4pm-12am Wednesday 4pm-12am Thursday 4pm-12am Friday 4pm-2am Saturday 4pm-2am Sunday 4pm-12am

There's a cover charge of $6 per person during live band nights. We arrived there around 10pm and the place was already packed. The atmosphere is happy and joyful. Everyone in a good mood. There's a live band Super Diego performing Filipino songs and cover songs as well. They also had open mic and amateur performances as well.

The menu consists of pulutan (Filipino for bar food) to accompany your drinks. Or there's a large variety of Filipino dishes in their Bistro's All-time favourites list, Bistro rice combo plates, Pancit (Filipino noodles), Vegetables, and desserts.

We ordered the fried calamari, 2 sizzling pork sisig and crispy pata. 1 bucket of 6 bottles of San Miguel Pale Pilsen beer.

The crispy calamari $13.99 were as advertised and looked like giant onion rings with a light breading. Looks like ready made calamari rings but they were crispy and not too oily. Theres a sweet and spicy dipping sauce provided. Good to share amongst a small group.

The sizzling pork sisig $16.99 was served on a hot sizzling plate with a cracked egg on top. The pork consists of crispy bits of pork skin, cheek, snout and other parts of the pig. There were sliced jalapeno peppers, green chilies and onions mixed into the meat. Some places use mayonnaise to season the meat but this dish seemed to be season with salt, pepper, and some Knorr seasoning. A lemon was provided to add more acidity to the dish. If there was one critique for this dish, it seemed the first order had more crispy pork bits and less chewy pork cheek and snout pieces. It would have been better if there was a better mix of different pieces of pork. I prefer to have some pieces from lechon kawali (crispy fried pork belly). The second order we got was much better and we enjoyed it much more! Crispy pata $17.99 is fried pork hock chopped into bite size pieces and served with a vinegar and soy sauce. There two 2 large pork hock (leg) and the meat was juicy and tender. Great pulutan or bar food while nursing your ice cold beers.

Our bucket of 6 bottles of beer $39.99 was served with a small bowl of fried peanut and fried garlic. The San Miguel Pale Pilsen beer was nice compliment to the food. Please note Filipinos love to drink beer with ice. So this beer is a Filipino branded beer and is popular amongst Filipinos who want a beer from their homeland.

Overall if you want a nice night out with family and/or friends then Bisto Manila would be a good spot. Just be prepared to spend because the drinks and food do add up. Our bill came up $265.00 which included 5 BJ shots at $8.99 a pop. There's an automatic 10% gratuity added to the bill as per the menu. Next time I will try their pancit, chicken innasal and baked mussels. Service was pretty good and they brought extra ice, napkins and sauce. I recommend trying this place if you want to try some Filipino food and enjoy some nightlife in a friendly...

We Arrived at around midnight noticed that there were hardly any customers and alot of empty tables we were told that we had to scan a QR code to see the menu felt this was strange and could be problematic especially for people who are not tech savvy or the more elderly or simply dont have use to thier phone. Ordered the rice combo fried chicken and 6 bottle beer bucket kinda got a smug attitude for just ordering a combo but explained to the server we just had eaten before going and were not really that hungry. The food finally came rice was ok fried egg was something you would get at some high school cafeteria but the fried chicken was the biggest disappointment was beyond way over cooked hard as. A rock the skin of the chicken was extremely dry...so decided to order the seafood platter another server brought the platter which was swimming in A plate of sauce it was more like seafood Platter soup and the fried calamari seemed more like onion rings and the server did not clear our plates and cutlery we used for the fried rice combo and replace them with clean dishes so we had used dirty dishes and cutlery on our table finally our original server asked if we wanted new plates this should not even been asked and should have been done without hesitation.finally after some 10 minutes the server brought new plates and cutlery. At 1 am was told was last call for ordering food felt this was strange as most restaurants and bars would have thier kitchen open until closing this just showed me the cook didnt care and was just too lazy.Finally our bill came and was charged a $11 per person live band cover charge for a band that was just basically doing Karaoke with instruments and was charged an automatic 10% gratuity. No establishment should ever charge an automatic gratuity fee unless it's a large group or it's an 5 star establishment otherwise it should be left up to the consumer. Hopefully management and ownership will learn from this and become more engaged on what's happening in thier establishment especially in the kitchen and learn to interact with the customers and develop a rapport with them making them feel important and at home and they realize one unsatisfied customer means hundreds of lost customers as that one customer tells one person and that person tells another person and so on and so on Not worth it Food was horrible Service was subpar and lacking Management was inattentive and more with thier heads in the clouds People will not complain publicly they will do it with thier feet overall Negative ...

We came in at around 7:30 pm on Sep. 14, 2022 for dinner to celebrate my wife's 68th birthday. There were 3 couples (total of 6 adults, 2 were seniors) and my 5-year old grandson. Food were all great but service was not. Learned that our server's name was May. She missed to include 2 orders (sisig and tokwa't baboy) which came very late. We thought it was already being cooked but when verified, they were not in the orders. She also was not very responsive to our calls. Several times we were raising our hands to call her attention but it looked like she's always at a distance and ignoring our calls. Also, she served us with an almost empty catsup bottle and when we asked for new ones, she gave two additional almost-empty catsup bottles which rendered us "bitin" when using them to garnish our tasty foods. There was even not enough napkins. When asked about the schedules of live performers and karaoke, she told us that live bands are for weekends only and karaoke is on weekdays. But she did not even bother to ask if we want to try karaoke for that night because it's a weeknight. My grandson should have been overheard by her when he was greeting his Lola with Happy Birthday several times on the top of his voice and I was expecting our server to take some kind of initiative to verify about it but she seemed to be indifferent. I was expecting even a slight curiosity from her (May) to find out if it was really her birthday, maybe just a small gesture of offering a very small cake as a token just like what other restaurants were doing by being resourceful for impromptu situations. And your restaurant is not kid-friendly. My daughter asked May if you have a booster seat or a high chair for my 5-year old grandson and the answer was negative. Your server(s) should be more PROACTIVE to satisfy your customers not just with your great food but more importantly...