Gardel — Restaurant in Toronto

Came here for a bday dinner and I wish we never came here at all. It's Nothing like their website advertises..may be their reviews were paid for? I'll put my money on that. I was excited to try this place and boy do I regret it. Photos online are very deceiving..this is more of a small crammed space nothing like the actual space. Don't know where to start. Horrible waitress, bad service. Excuses galore here. Watch out. Prepare to be "proven wrong". They weren't busy at all and our food took close to an hour. Why does it take forever for a cold salad? And not advising customers that several things on the menu are unavailable is a waste of time for everyone. We ordered appetizers and waited for half hour before they came to tell us they didn't have several items as listed. Unfriendly inexperienced waitress was unprofessional and didn't care about inconveniencing us or suggesting something else. Focused more on people having drinks. Seemed like she was always disappearing so we had to find her instead. There were may be four people in this resto total and more attention was spent on customers having drinks? We waited for an hour for steak..prepared wrong even though we mentioned it twice. Waitress came back with oily over cooked fries, burnt bread. Everything took forever. We waited almost 45 minutes for a leafy green salad. Steak was good but not cooked to order.. Go here only if you want to wait an hour for a salad. Never...

We came here for brunch, and it was so bad that I tasted each item on my plate and couldn't eat any of them.

Both the quality of the food and the execution in cooking was problematic. All of the bread was grocery store bagged bread, the sausages overly spicy low quality chorizo, the bacon cheap grocery-like store very thin stuff. Perhaps worse was how it was cooked: my over easy eggs were cooked hard, the fries were so hard and didn't taste good at all, they were kind of old. And for brunch at 10AM, I would have expected breakfast potatoes, not fries. The salad was literally greens in an overly sweet dressing with no topping, and it was $3 to add it as a side to do half and half.

Our waitress was good, but she was alone serving 5 tables on Mother's Day weekend so we didn't get any top ups of water or coffee. I had to get up to ask for condiments. They also didn't have any vinegar and we never got a opportunity to ask for ketchup.

My Americano Misto tasted burnt and the milk wasn't actually frothed.

What's more, the fridge at the back of the restaurant was extremely loud, it sounded like there was construction outside.

I would have been fine if it has literally been just a plain diner style breakfast, the ingredients didn't have to be perfect, but between the execution and the low quality no one should...

Had a reso for 7:45....when I arrived they were surprised when we mentioned the reso....they actually said...we haven't even checked. Was told to sit anywhere we wanted (were the only ones in the restaurant ATM). Was swiftly told...oh not there....were having a party of 8 coming in later....I said why say anywhere then....please let me know where we can sit! Ordered on our drinks then main shortly afterwards. Meal arrived almost 45 min later. Thanked our server and proceeded to have our meal. Steak was stone cold... frites swimming in grease. We are still the only onesbin the restaurant. Called the server over and mentioned that our meal was cold...she mention that they could reheat the meal...but that changed a medium steak to a well done one. Party of 8 started to trickle in...meal came back...steak was warm..overdone...fries were non greasy but the overall meal... extremely over salted. Partner noticed that kitchen crew taking a break (after 2 orders) smoking.

I have been waiting to come to Gardel since it reopened after COVID. This was my experience and am not knocking that could potentially be a good restaurant....it just wasn't that when...