National Toronto — Restaurant in Toronto

⭐️1/5

I had an okay time at The National Bowling at The Well, but overall the experience was disappointing and definitely not worth the regular price.

I visited with a group of four during their happy hour promotion, which offered half-price bowling. This was the only good thing about our experience (hence the 1 star). Even with the discount, we felt the original pricing (around $120 per lane) was extremely steep—especially for a venue with just six lanes total. Two of those lanes were broken and closed during our visit, which left only four available. This created a very cramped and crowded environment with too many groups packed into too small a space.

The space itself is stylish and modern, but most of it felt underutilized. It’s surprising that a large venue dedicated to bowling offers so few actual lanes, while the rest sits largely unused(can see in photos).

Service was another major issue. It was very difficult to get the attention of staff, and they seemed like they just didn’t care. The front desk host seemed very confused and didn’t even welcome us in. She was also unable to answer basic questions (for example, we asked how bowling shoe sizing works, and she couldn’t give us any guidance). It didn’t feel like staff were trained or prepared.

Unfortunately, our experience got worse when the group in the lane beside us began hoarding bowling balls from the broken lanes, well beyond the 6-ball-per-lane limit. This caused a jam in the ball return system, and when one of our friends tried to gently move one of the stuck balls, it resulted in an injury—his finger got slammed and was left bruised and swollen.

When we asked staff for assistance, instead of helping, we were told to walk onto the lane ourselves to remove the balls from the gutter. This is not only unprofessional but also dangerous, especially after an injury had just occurred. We also asked for ice for the swelling, but were told by the bar staff that there was no ice—at a bar, no less.

The venue itself is aesthetically pleasing and does have a small arcade that could be fun. The concept has potential, but our experience was marred by poor service, lack of organization, and safety concerns.

Sadly, I wouldn’t return or recommend...

First time and last time I’m going here. Had the worst experience on my birthday! First mistake was that one of my friends wasn’t allowed to bring their kids inside, I had to deal with the manager to get an approval so my friends couldn’t go back home full of disappointment. The manager allowed it at the end but kids couldn’t play bowling, just eat which was even worst feeling for me as a host. On the website, not even on Open Table mentions anything about children not being allowed or saying that only people 19+ can have access. No one even told me about it when the reservation got confirmed. Why there’s no communication about this anywhere? This is so embarrassing! Second mistake was that my reservation was booked for two hours of bowling and was told that the price I paid for two lanes covered those hours. Then suddenly whoever was in charge decided out of the blue to decreased it to one hour without me being notified at all and said that I wasn’t allowed to extend it since there was other people coming after me… technically my reservation of two hours wasn’t honoured and the price wasn’t reduce accordingly, making it the most expensive experience ever!!! Third mistake was that after each of us paid our drinks and food, the 20% gratuities were added on each bill automatically and without the option to either reduce it or skip it! And again, no one ever told me about this during reservations, either the website or Open Table says about gratuities being included automatically… Other restaurants says it beforehand if the party is over 6 persons, but The National never said that anywhere, not even being communicated in person at all… I will not recommend this place to anyone at all! This place is very disorganized, they don’t have a phone to answer calls like any other place. You only can communicate via text or email which is very unprofessional! If is because their employees are lazy to answer phone calls, then this place needs to reconsider how customer service works… or else shut it down completely because is just creating chaos and issues at the time of the event…

If you’re rich and don’t mind about wasting your money and getting robe, then go to this place; otherwise, don’t...

We went here for a friend’s birthday and had booked in advance. I’ll start out with the pros which was the vibe inside was quite nice and made us hopeful for our experience. Our server as also such a sweet woman. But unfortunately things beyond that went downhill. We were put in lane 6 and there was 8 of us bowling. In the middle of our game, we noticed the lane “glitching” and giving out fouls to people when no one was crossing the throw line, which was causing incorrect scores and put a damper in the overall fun as it happened over 10 times. We let the front desk staff person know in hopes that they could fix it and they sent the manager that evening to talk to us. We expected that perhaps we might get to restart the game or switch lanes, but instead she simply just told us this was a known problem and there was nothing they could do about it. Our group was pretty shocked considering their lanes are $180/hr but because of the glitch they can’t fix, our group just “had to deal with it.”Pretty disappointed in the customer service especially as the place is new, it’s pricey and they’re putting groups on this broken/not fully functioning lane. It was also a Sunday night and not peak busy time which made us even more confused. The ball return also stopped working at one point for our lane and another groups. Totally understand that this is a new business and that they’re still working out certain elements. But myself and the other friends who spoke with the manager as well as the front desk person working there felt they were both rude, standoffish and not very pleasant or equipped with the problem solving skills you’d anticipate the business having. The staff member that was super sweet was our server, who was super lovely. All in all, I think we had higher expectations for how they would handle a “broken” lane, even if they were just much nicer about it, I think our experience could have been very different. For the price for the lane as well as drinks (my partner got bar rail mixed drink and it was $24) in comparison the overall experience, I don’t think it was worth it and would explore other...