La Sala Restaurant — Restaurant in Toronto

After several weeks of research and based on the glittering recommendations of friends and review sites such as Yelp, Bookenda and OpenTable my husband I decided on this beautiful restaurant. First things first, lets be clear- the restaurant is wonderful and the ambiance even better, which was obvious by the fact that it was full this past Sunday afternoon.

Although the service was slow the gorgeous menu and the fact there was only one waitress on a clearly busy day- we overlooked it excited to taste the food. I ordered the linguini Contadina-which features wild mushrooms garlic and spinach. Before the food even hit the table, I was surprised to see that it was not the linguini that was advertised, rather capellini which I did mention to the very apologetic and flustered waitress.

Now had it just been the wrong pasta, there would not really be a cause to complain., what was trully baffling to me is that your chef found it expectable to serve garlic that was so burnt that it resembled and tasted like a nuclear disaster and that's not even mentioning the three pathetic strands of charred spinach and no visible" wild mushrooms. Realizing I was upset the waitress offered to make me another dish, to which I reluctantly agreed (my husband was already halfway through his meal at this point).

Despite this, all could have been forgiven and put down to just a series of unfortunate mishaps had it not been what ensued as the waitress led the charcoal laden capellini back to the visible kitchen pass.

My husband and I along with several other startled diners had to then watch the chef aggressively throw the plate of food and yell as if it was our fault we were served inedible food.

By the time my substitution had arrived my husband had finished his food and we both quite literally had a very bad taste in our mouths and simply wanted to go home. As our bill arrived( after 20 minutes), we were shocked to not only see that we had not only not been compensated for so much as a glass of wine but to add insult to injury we were told that the manager was not on the premises and that if we had any grievances we would have to address it to the chef, yes the same chef that had so distastefully hurled my pasta.

No matter how busy a restaurant is there is absolutely no excuse for such a lack of disrespect whether one is at a diner or a Michelin starred restaurant. My husband and I paid close to $200 for a meal to mark our 25th anniversary and it turned out to be unforgettable due to all the...

The interior of this restaurant felt cute and cozy (which the exterior might not suggest). The service was very good. The prices were reasonable. It is clearly a popular spot with many repeat customers. The mussels were very good - a generous portion with a lot of sauce full of chunky tomatoes. The lobster tail appetizer came in a tasty sauce with a little bit of seasoned mozzarella; however, the lobster tail was tiny and a bit overcooked. The linguine carbonara was enjoyable but it was swimming in sauce. Every element of the black cod with baby potatoes and veg was pretty much perfectly cooked, but the sauce it was in was bizarre - again, there was way too much of it, even for this sauce-loving gal, but more importantly the taste and consistency was like a marinade or salad dressing from a bottle, not a from-scratch sauce as you might expect, and very peppery and lemony (both flavours I love, but in this case it just felt like the whole dish was smothered in it - I ended up scraping it off the fish as much as possible and not finishing the vegetables). We were considering going there again for my husband’s birthday in a couple of weeks and trying other dishes, but then I went to the ladies room… the area leading to them and passing by the kitchen were filthy including food on the floor. The washrooms clearly hadn’t been cleaned thoroughly in some time and there was toilet paper all over the floor in one stall. This really put me off so I don’t think we are...

We were here for Valentine's Day and I had made a reservation requesting a romantic table weeks ahead. So i was surprised to see that we were given a table right by the kitchen where it is a constant coming and going with staff hollering orders in to the kitchen and the chefs yelling back. We asked to be moved and were given a much nicer table upstairs, although it still had to be set. We ordered a glass of prosecco which was nice and truth be told, the generous helpings of wine is what made me give this place 2 stars rather than less. We were given a plate of bruschetta which was nothing more than some thin toast with chopped up tomato - no herbs and it was soggy. My starter was the arugula caprino which was nice with a generous helping of goat cheese. The honey was needed to mask the overly bitter arugula. My wife's beef carpaccio was nothing to write home about, as was her salmon for the main. My main, lquine di mare, was served with spaghetti. Asking for recommended wine pairings is a waste of time - the waitress doesn't know anything beyond white or red and to be safe recommends a popular wine. The tiramasu was drenched in whap appeared to be a whipping cream that had sat in the fridge for two days. The limoncello was good. Overall we had an OK evening but not the quality of dining I was expecting given the setting of La Sala, which is in a house. I would...