Conejo Negro — Restaurant in Toronto

Conejo Negro has mastered the art of making things look good but not taste good.

Overhyped, overpriced, under flavoured, and underdelivered. To the influencers who promoted this restaurant, I can’t believe you hyped this place up like that. I really wanted to love this place, but I can’t get past the flavourless, unauthentic food.

As a Caribbean person, Let’s just say the closest thing to “negro” during my visit to Conejo Negro was me. Where were the caribbean, creole and latin flavours? The flavours were far from it. I dont know if the influencers were lying, their tongues were broken, or this place has just worsened in quality recently, but man I was severely disappointed. On my first bite, i was expecting bold, delicious flavours, and was met with cold, tasteless corn.

Tried the corn ribs, cornbread, cheese puffs, mac and cheese, fried chicken and jerk chicken. The only thing i liked was the fried chicken and the pickled jalapenos that came with it. But coming in at $20, a side (like some fries, rice, or salad) should have come with it too. Not just some chicken and a little bit of pickled peppers.

The owners have priced this menu so that if you want a balanced meal with meat, vegetables and a starch (like provisions or rice), you are paying at least $40 here. Literally i can go to a hundred other restaurants and get fried chicken AND a meal that comes with it, i.e. fried rice, salad, fries etc for less than $20. Not JUST chicken.

I didnt even bother to try the shrimp for nearly $20 for a lousy three shrimps. thank the Good Almighty Father I didnt. I mean what nonsense is this that 3 shrimps cost nearly $20 here. I can get literally TWO full meals with fried rice that’s FILLED with shrimp from any hakka, chinese, or chinese caribbean place for $20.

The quality simply doesnt match the price, the heart and soul in this food has left or was never here to begin with. It just seems like this place has been severely gentrified.

The Cornbread was absolutely garbage, despicable. Zero flavour. It was the least cornbread-tasting cornbread I have ever tried. The cheese puffs were ok if you love cheese I guess, but oily. The mac and cheese was SO dry and flavourless. The corn was a damn shame. Worst corn of my life. The only flavour on the corn came from the crema. The actual corn had no flavour, it didnt taste like it was seasoned or marinated at all. Just thrown some plain corn on the grill and topped with crema and pickled onions. The actual corn quality was very poor. It was not a sweet, juicy corn, it tasted like straw. The Jerk chicken? Dry and tasted like they just threw some premade Grace Jerk seasoning from Nofrills on it.

I had leftovers. I didn’t even bother bringing it home because it would’ve ended up in the trash anyways.

There is literally nothing positive to highlight about this experience. Other than the food being a total fail, the actual space is tight, cramped, loud and overall not a good place to hang out. Service was relatively slow (but not nearly as bad as some of the other reviews I’ve read for this place) and no one refilled the water. I wish there were more honest reviews out there— I would have spared myself the time and money.

I’m usually very generous with reviews and enjoy supporting small businesses, but this place deserves the one star. Judging by how the management here responds to non-favourable reviews, I’m sure they will just have some petty response, if at all, and not take any...

Recently came here to celebrate one of my girl’s birthday. We had a reservation at 8:30pm, arrived on time and the whole group arrived at 8:40. However, at 8:30, we were told to wait 5-10 minutes because the previous group was just paying and ready to leave. After standing outside for half an hour, a worker comes asks us to wait inside for another half an hour. We waited about an hour to just sit down. They did not do their due diligence to prepare for our reservation that was made a MONTH in advance; huge lack of punctuality.

The seating arrangement was completely disorganized, our group had to step up to ensure there was enough space and proper table and seating arrangements, prolonging our dining time. This is now over an hour of waiting and 30 minutes of our group setting up the seating arrangement. This shows the lack of preparation.

Knowing the restaurant was busy and that we were obviously a large group of people (15 people), we helped out with handing out cutlery and plates, clean up, and providing help to the staff. We did not mind doing that, but watching the waiters (not including the waitresses) get annoyed by filling our glasses with water, or asking them to repeat themselves (it was loud) was off-putting. We weren’t expecting magnificent service, but ended receiving less than the bare minimum.

The food was okay, some dishes that were better than others. The main course was a family style, wherein only ONE dish of macaroni and rice was served for a table of fifteen (15), some dishes came out cold (meant to be served hot), and our drinks come out during our THIRD course. It was the fixed price of $80 per person with 20% gratuity. The fixed menu and price was not worth it.

Moving onto the cake part, there was a lack of ccommunication. We told our servers we are ready for the cake, however the service was very slow to clear the table for this special moment, and some of us went to the restroom. They brought the cake out when half the group was still waiting in line for restrooms. They did not bother to check or even look at our table to see if we’re all there. They even mentioned how they didn’t know who the birthday girl was, very lucky that she was still at the table when this happened. This could’ve been easily avoided by glancing at our table or communicate with us.

It felt like since they were already getting gratuity, they did not need to perform well. Even with the help of our group. Throughout the night, there were countless deficits on the staffs’ part, and on top of that, there was no apologies given or compensation offered. This restaurant clearly displayed that they cannot handle or service large groups. They could have simply declined our reservation if they knew they could not handle a large group. If they put more consideration and effort in to preparing for the reservation, this may have ended differently.

We all left extremely disappointed and unhappy. Considering we were patient, and helped out to make their night easier, if we had not, this experience would have been worse.

Do not come here if you’re over a group of 6-8 people, or trying to celebrate anything with a...

If you’re looking for great tasting Caribbean and Latin food Conejo Negro is not the place.

Overhyped, overpriced, under flavoured, and underdelivered. We decided to visit this restaurant for our anniversary so we made reservations just in case as the influencers who promoted this restaurant mentioned it gets pretty full. I can’t believe they hyped this place up like that. I really wanted to love this place, but I can’t get past the flavourless, unauthentic food.

My husband is from Trinidad and I am from El Salvador, Let’s just say the closest thing to anything Latin was the tequila . Where were the Caribbean, creole and latin flavours? The flavours were far from it. I don't know if this place has just worsened in quality recently, but we were severely disappointed. On my first bite, I was expecting bold, delicious flavours, and was met with over seasoned beef and burnt chicken.

Tried cornbread, braised beef and jerk chicken. The braised beef comes with grits and collards but seemed like it was a mess of stuff on my plate coved with over salted beef with chopped collards that you couldn’t even taste.

The owners have priced this menu so that if you want a balanced meal with meat, vegetables and a starch (like provisions or rice), you are paying at least $100 easily here for food get a somewhat balanced meal. Even the going to two separate restaurants that offer Caribbean and Latin cuisine would been a much better choice for the food received based on the price at least you get a full course meal with left overs that you would definitely want to finish the next day.

The quality simply doesn't match the price, the 5 star reviews seem to be from paid sponsors who didn’t even really try the food or were provided something different .

The Cornbread was absolutely garbage, despicable. Zero flavour and very oily. It was the least cornbread-tasting cornbread I have ever tried. The braised beef was too salty and the grits you couldn’t even taste they were like mush and added cheese made it so greasy it was hard to finish.. The Jerk chicken? Dry and tasted burnt with over cooked rice that they just added some Jerk seasoning on it to say it was jerk.

We were so hungry that we ate the food because we were starving as we were expecting great food and had not eaten much in the day.

There the only positive thing is the cocktail s were tasty. Other than that the rest of this experience was that it would not be on my recommendations list as a must try. Other than the food being a total fail, the actual space is tight, cramped, loud and overall not a good place to hang out. Service was okay based on the time of our reservation at 10:30pm. I wish there were more honest reviews out there— we definitely would have spared the time and money and went to a much better place. For what we spent we could have gone to the keg. At where at least we would have been able to ENJOY a full bottle of wine, two steak dinners, appetizers plus dessert.

I’m not one to rant, I usually provide very generous with reviews and enjoy supporting small businesses, but I am also honest which is why this place deserves the one star for...