Cocktail Bar — Restaurant in Toronto

The Black Hoof is massively overrated. They certainly have a unique selection of items on the menu, but it appears that is being used as an excuse to provide terrible service and to ratchet up the prices. They don't take reservations, so in our case on a Friday night this means that we face a 30 minute wait to get into the cocktail bar across the street from the main restaurant and then another 2 hours to get seated at the main event.

No biggie, we were out for a casual night out anyway. The drinks service in both venues is excruciatingly slow, on the cocktail side this was mainly due to the fact that only one person was making cocktails for the entire room for most of the time we were there. There were other oddities though like when we ordered drinks to have with the food across the road the cocktails came out first and then the beers came out some time later??? Additionally they had Cider on the drinks blackboard but when I asked was promptly told me that they didn't actually have any, I thought the benefit of a blackboard was that you could change the contents. My bad!

Like another reviewer we ordered the cheese platter, big mistake. $18 for an inconsequential amount of everything on the plate. As for the food at the main event it was relatively good, despite the very small serving sizes. Like everything else though it was extremely slow to come out. Additionally, given how pretentious the place seems I found it odd that when the food came out the server chose to shove their hand in it while they told us what each bit was.

Overall, if you are after the novelty of the food on offer then I guess this is the place for you, but even then only just. Otherwise don't bother. If you really must check it out I would recommend don't even bother going on a Friday/Saturday and prepare yourself for bad service, maybe you will be pleasantly...

I've been meaning to go to this place for a while and when I heard they were closing I went with my partner. With everyone telling me to go when it first opened it was really difficult to get a seat since they don't do any reservations. When we got there we were greeted by a server who asked where we wanted to sit. It wasnt busy but considering it was a Sunday it made sense. We ordered a few shared plates and had olives to start off with which were warned and they went on eating the bone marrow, the horse tartar, asparagus salad and a few other shared plates. It was pretty good. The plates were small. And everything on the plate was very well balanced in flavours and as for the plating everything was nice to look at And the food was good. I kept banging onto the cutlery and since there was only one table of two beside us it was really loud. The space on the patio is cramped it was hard to get comfortable. The ambiance seemed alot better in the restaurant. Then the bartender brought out my cocktail called tea and harmony. Omg it was out of this world. So balanced and everything was so harmonious and ever so subtle that you couldn't stop drinking it. The bartender just needs to open up his own bar and just sell this and people will come. Overall it was a nice dinner date with my partner. Im going back just to sit at the bar and enjoy all the cocktails. It...

What a huge let-down! To begin, they should post a sign that says "Babies are not welcome". They have no high-chairs and management would not help find an appropriate chair - so we held our baby the entire time. CAUTION! THE SALT SHAKER RUNNETH AMOCK! MANY DISHES OVER-SALTED! NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THOSE CAREFUL ABOUT BLOOD PRESSURE! The $10 glass of red Rioja was unmemorable. All bread is charged. Pickles, a staple of tartare, are also charged. The spicy tartare had no sensitivity for the meat and the citrus and salt and spice masked the other delicate flavours - including those of the meat. The house charcuterie had only one stand-out meat. The potato-roe soup was completely dominated by salty roe, with, again, no sensitivity to the other ingredients. AND $18 FOR 4 HALF-CENTIMETER SLICES OF CHEESE??? Sigh... THE WORST PART: Prepare to be mocked by some of the wait staff if you make a sincere comment when they ask you about a dish. They obviously feel that they are infallible. I have sold vintage wine, been a regular at premier wine and food events and been at the city's best resto's and this isn't one of them. $150 for two people for this sort of experience is not what I recommend. Oh yeah... the music is...