Nord Lyon Queen St West — Restaurant in Toronto

Overall, I’d recommend this cafe for a pick-up only, as there needs to be a number of changes for a better experience in line with standard cafe processes. There needs to be signs of where to order, pay, pick-up, and labels of what everything is and their prices.

It’s a busy place so there is mayhem and A LOT of unnecessary time wasted waiting in the wrong section because of lack of staff, each customer asking what each pastry/cake is and how much it is. It’s frustrating and a health safety issue, as people need to know what they’re eating, what’s in their food for allergy purposes, and they seem to charge whatever price they want depending on the customer. A simple label, even a written one, is sufficient, but a label is standard in every cafe!

We waited around 20-25 minutes before we were able to sit down…! My husband was asked to pick-up our coffees at the back even though some people got served theirs to their table and I was sat at a table. For a sit-down place where people may get served and for their prices, it was a little disappointing to get the coffees in paper cups rather than glasses.

The decor at the front at the seating area needs improvement too, it looked a little cheap and felt like they ran out of money in this section, as the pastry/cake display area looked fine and the room at the back (closed area when I went) looked pretty nice.

It’s an expensive place compared to other casual cafes. We only got two coffees ($6 before tax) and two “croissants” and it came up to over $30. This may be justified if the decor at the front where everyone sat was nice and gave a more elevated experience, because there are fancier looking cafes for this price range. It’s standard for average casual cafes to have nicer chairs/tables, aesthetic looking paintings, warm LED lighting etc - a few subtle changes and it’d make a big difference.

The coffee was pretty good. The white chocolate and lemon curd filled New York roll was better than it looks - it was flakey, had a good crunch and flavour, although each layer was shiny because of the sheer amount of butter used. The milk chocolate and chocolate filled New York roll was pretty good too, but tasted a bit more tough and hard to cut through. Both New York rolls were a little stale - we were there around 4pm so it’d been sitting there for a long time and you could taste that.

If they made pastries and cakes throughout the day, it would obviously taste fresher, the place would have a beautiful aroma, look less cluttered on the shelves, and perhaps have space to put labels as to what each item is and their price. They’ll find handling each customer much more efficient.

With the improvements recommend above, this place has a lot of potential to warrant a 5* rating. It’d be nice to come back to try the lunch buffet as that room looks pretty nice and that’s earlier in the day so perhaps the food will be...

I stepped into Nord Lyon on Queen West with fluttering expectations—after all, I’d heard whispers of buttery croissants that could make your heart sing. My past dalliance with their almond croissant left me… amused, but never enchanted. Today, I was seeking redemption in their famed brunch buffet. Little did I know I was about to be cast as the lead in a culinary tragedy.

The first act unfolded at the pastry display: a basket of croissants so sunken and pale they might have been excavated from last week’s leftovers. I bit into one, only to discover the soul‑crushing crunch of cardboard—drier than the Sahara and twice as unforgiving. I cornered a waiter, demanding to know how something “fresh” could taste like a two‑day‑old relic. He smiled apologetically, insisting they’d “just been cut fresh”—a weasel‑worded confession that whatever baking once happened, it certainly didn’t happen today.

Act Two brought the buffet’s more theatrical twist: a strict “no waste” rule that threatened a surcharge if plates didn’t emerge spotless. So there I was, gnawing at my lifeless croissant like a condemned man forced to devour his own shroud, all to avoid the sting of an extra charge. Meanwhile, the “pistachio” croissant betrayed me completely—no nutty whisper on the tongue—while the chocolate version offered only a faint echo of ganache, as if the real filling had eloped with better ingredients.

Yet every dark hour has its flicker of light: the make‑your‑own omelette station shone like a beacon, and the smoked salmon—a silken slice of brine‑kissed perfection—was a momentary reprieve from this buffet noir. Cakes and tarts lay limp and stale, as though they’d been waiting for a revival that never came, and the crepes collapsed beneath their soggy shame, tasting more like a damp gym towel than a Parisian treat.

In a final, bitter curtain call, I glanced around at the cheerful staff, whose warmth felt like a cruel irony against the backdrop of culinary ruin. The décor was elegant, yes—glowing bulbs, polished brass, and potted ferns—but what are pretty surroundings when your taste buds have been betrayed? At CAD 35 a head, with not even a latte to soften the blow, this buffet felt like a heist of my hard‑earned after‑tax dollars.

I will never return. Let this be your warning: Nord Lyon’s brunch buffet is a drama of dashed hopes and stale pastries. Don’t let the friendly smiles and gleaming décor fool you—behind the curtain lies a wasteland of...

A bakery that has an all you can eat brunch from 9 am to 2:30 pm on weekends. The ayce brunch is now $34.99 per person (starting April 2024), instead of $30.00 per person (May 2024).

We made a reservation for the ayce French brunch... But because of TTC construction and downtown driving, the 2/3 of us arrived late to our reservation. Nord Lyon said that they can give us a 1 hour leeway to our reservation. We made it there before our 1 hour was up.

The bakery is at the front of the building, the bakery has its own very small area for tables. In the back of the bakery houses the ayce brunch restaurant buffet. Both the bakery and the ayce brunch was very busy. Lots of people packed into the small area within the building. People lining up in the bakery portion and people lining up in the ayce brunch section.

There's a salad/fruit/desserts table, a pasta/hand food/cold meats/dried fruits/crepe/omelet table, and a hot food/soup/breakfast food/dessert bread table. There's also a orange slices floating in water water/what seems to be apple juice/orange juice/coffee table.

There were no names to the foods, so you had to go on by looking at what looked appetizing to you. There were a variety of foods (sunny side up eggs, hard boiled eggs, very chewy and not edible bacon meat, sausages, pancakes, croissants, dessert breads, some tomato looking soup, lasagna, egg in beef, hotdog pieces in some tomato sauce, chicken with vegetable filling, some creamy white sauce and vegetables thing, french toast, cinnamon sugar waffle that tasted like a donut, pasta, cheese, cold meats, a omelet/crepe(?), dried fruits, various salads and fresh fruits, and mini pieces of cake/cheesecake, a cup of cream cake thing that tasted really good... And when the food is done, they replace the food with new food and not the same food from before.

It's a pretty good ayce french brunch. If we had more time to digest the food, I would have given the salad/fresh fruit section a try. And the soup a try too. For whatever reason the bacon was hella chewy. Wasn't edible in any way. But everything else was fine and dandy. Would probably come again, if TTC didn't screw me over and if downtown driving wasn't as...