Chicken in the Kitchen — Restaurant in Toronto

Amazing food, but absolutely horrendous service. LONG READ BUT TRUST ME: I was in a party of 9 celebrating my friend's birthday. We booked a reservation through Yelp on Google Maps and were given a 60-90 minute waiting time. That's fine, busy restaurant, makes sense. We came early and asked to sit in the outdoor dining area to wait and were allowed by the staff. After 60 minutes, we weren't seated and the staff hadn't talked to us beyond the first conversation at all to give any updates. A few members went inside to ask to split up the group to sit inside in 2 different booths, staff were not polite and refused saying there were other reservations (although we were first in line on Yelp). 90 minutes passes and once again, no staff has given us an update. We notice the table that can fit our group of 9 has a party currently there, however they are done food, cake, and are simply talking. We seek out staff again, and ask if we can sit at 2 different tables inside, staff refuses. We ask about the big group we are waiting on and staff says they "can't kick them out". We ask to politely inform them there's a group waiting and staff refuses. Mind you, it has been over 100 minutes since we got there, and no staff has uttered a "thanks for waiting" or "sorry for the delay". We had to seek out staff every time, and we had to propose solutions, which staff would promptly refuse again and again. They finally offered us something, however it was 2 booths in the outside dining area (where we had been waiting) that weren't even connected. We reluctantly agree as we are hungry, but while getting seated we ask to waive the 15% gratuity as we are effectively dining as a group of 4 and a group of 5, not the big group of 9 together celebrating my friend's birthday. Staff refuses....again. They say store policy is groups larger than 8 results in a 15% gratuity fee added on, despite the fact that we are at two different tables now. Even on the receipts at the end it indicated two different tables. Again, food was great, but staff have ZERO conflict resolution skills and do not know how to make their patrons feel welcome and work with them to solve problems. If the group had received just one "hey so sorry for the delay, thank you so much for waiting guys. I know you've been here for an hour already, but we unfortunately aren't able to give you a time estimate for when you'll be seated. Do you want to perhaps split up the group to sit sooner?" we would've felt like we were actually valued customers. Instead we got staff that constantly skirted around us, were slightly rude and unwelcoming when we did try to ask for alternate solutions, and didn't offer anything in compensation, not even a "sorry" or "thank you for waiting". My advice would be to hire more staff if your current ones are so overworked they can't do their duty of being good servers. Furthermore, if you're going to die on the hill of the "15% gratuity" policy so much, why don't you impose a "seating time limit max" policy as well to reduce the likelihood of these scenarios happening again. The MANAGER of the restaurant fully said to me "if they stay for another 1 or 2 hours there's nothing we can do". Finally, learn some conflict resolution skills for God's sake. Offering up nothing in compensation to a group of 9 people who have waited 1.5 hours is crazy business. You're lucky the food is actually good, otherwise if the staff were supposed to be the selling point the place would be out of business...

This is the first time i write a one star review on google map. I just experienced the worst restaurant service tonight. My friend and I went there around 12am and one guy with arm tattoos took our order, he was kept asking me anything else super quick even I didn’t finish talking. We didn’t get our water and even side dishes till 12:30am then I asked the girl server with pink hair if they forgot our order she said she will go check. She came back told us they didn’t have our order and maybe they forgot without saying any sorry. Then she just left and another guy with stone island shirt came, he’s very polite and kept saying sorry to us. We said ok we will order again, we waited till 1:10am to get all of our food. The guy with arm tattoos(who forgot our order) took our food to the table, he was so rude and didn’t say sorry as well, ok that’s not very important. So during our whole eating time, we were sitting in the patio and we were out of water and napkins, nobody ever came to serve us. After then I took my card walked whole way from patio to the counter inside to pay, still the pink hair girl, she said to me ‘you can go back to your seat I’ll come to u later’. Excuse me?I already came all the way from outside to here with my card and trying to pay, you are telling me to go outside and wait you? May I ask what’s the difference? Even the machine is right In front my face. Ok my friend kept telling me to not give any tips because we didn’t received any service(except the stone island shirt guy he’s good) but I still gave some tips because the pink hair was staring at me when I’m entering tip amount. After I paid she just took the machine away and went inside without even saying a thank you? I came here couple of times before and never experienced things like this. Can you guys train your servers to be more polite and say sorry/thank you at the right time? As well as train them to stop staring at customers when they are entering tip amounts, you should know how much you service costs right?I also work in food industry as a part time and I will never do this kind of thing to my customers. The only good thing tonight is that they made two side dishes for free to us because they forgot our order. And the chicken still tastes good. But it doesn’t mean their service don’t need to be amended. I will give 5 stars for food but 0 star for the...

Stopped by not too long ago for another fried chicken fix given my last experience was relatively positive. I considered trying one of their other chicken main dishes this time but was persuaded by the employee who boasted of their Cheese Volcano chicken specialty to order it again.

As delicious as the combination of the crispy boneless chicken, chewy tteokbokki, seasoned potato wedges, and rose sauce was, it was unfortunately VERY cold that night and since we were seated by the window, our cheese bowl hardened within minutes. After the first "cheese pull" that I did for my photos, the cheese was too cold to dip anything into. It's also too dense/heavy to eat on its own so unfortunately, it just ended up being leftover at the end of our meal. I would highly recommend if you order this dish to eat it on a warmer day or at least try to eat it as soon as it arrives to the table (..but this is hard to do since it's so tempting to do a cheese pull photo)!

Asides from the main dish, I also got a chance to try the seafood pancake and the coconut shrimp. The pancake was an interesting take - unlike the crunchy batter that I was expecting, it had a chewy texture much like a fish cake with pieces of octopus, green onion, and peppers spread throughout. The green onion dipping soy sauce that came with it was delicious though! The coconut shrimp was just average - the outer deep fried coconut shell was aromatic and added a nice crunch to the shrimp but I felt it was slightly over-fried and too crispy.

To wash all of this food down, my date and I each ordered a juice - I got orange while he got pineapple. Both were mediocre, they tasted like what they were supposed to but we could definitely tell that they were coming from a can or a carton and not freshly pressed.

Overall, I can still see improvement from the food perspective of this restaurant though I commend the service of the staff. We were asked multiple times throughout the meal how we were doing and if we needed...