Pigeon Café & Bar — Restaurant in Toronto

Originally, this review would've been 4 stars because I liked the food and overall atmosphere, but what ruined the experience was near the end, when server Asia with a Y did her bit of self-promotion for a bonus while acknowledging her service wasn't the best. She asked for 5 stars on Google reviews, while also mentioning how she knew she didn't give our table much time and attention because she was overloaded with other sections and tables. To be very honest, if she had just not said ANYTHING at all, it would've been an easy 4 stars for me. With some time and consideration, I may have even boosted it to 5 because i don't like offering negative reviews unless it's deserved. As someone who works in service and deals with limited staffing, i get it. But asking for 5 stars when you know and admitted you didn't perform at a 5 star level does not motivate me to give 5 stars in any way. At that point, it's best to just work hard and show you're working hard and not ask for anything, and that rating could naturally come. Minus 2 stars.

Beyond that, my actual review: I've been wanting to visit since they first opened. What caught my eye was the tree in the middle of the restaurant with string lights, offering this beautiful glow when peering in at night.

I visited on an evening ~8pm a few months ago with friends. I delayed on posting this review because I honestly forget I had this drafted. It was quite busy with most seats taken, but we were able to be seated within 2 minutes. The hostess was very friendly and efficient! So please reward the Asian girl with the light dyed hair. She gets my 5 stars.

I ordered the truffle pasta while friends ordered the 1/2 chicken, burger with side citrus salad, and the tahini tacos.

The tahini tacos were so good and came with 5 pieces. I think it's important to note that they're actually lettuce wraps and not dough based. They were served with 2 types of sauces, but the sauces were served with small tongs.....which was very confusing......they didn't skimp with the filling and actually provided generous portions per taco.

The 1/2 chicken was served with well made fluffy and soft white rice. Whoever's back there cooking knows how it's done. Whew. I got to try a bite of the 1/2 chicken. I thought it just tasted like baked/roasted chicken marinated in a basic BBQ sauce.

I usually don't like ordering Italian foods because I feel it's overpriced. I thought the truffle pasta was OK. Could have used more topping beyond shaved truffle pieces and oily sprinkles of cheese. The portion size was good enough for me to save to another meal.

Shoutout to the male server who assisted with organizing ourselves on the small table my friends and I...

I’ve always wondered why people actually take time out of their day to write a Google review. Well… today I finally get it.

I feel bad slandering an entire establishment on the internet, but when your experience is the stuff of legends are you supposed to not share?

My wife and I really wanted to like this place. In fact, we were in denial for a good portion of the meal (if that’s what you want to call it).

Our first round of drinks showed up 45 mins after we sat down, which gave us ample time to observe the myriad of half eaten abandoned dishes in neighbouring tables that went un-cleared. I now feel foolish for not assuming that much food went uneaten for a reason. The shakshuka I ordered was so burnt, it was barely edible, and my clothes even smell brunt as I write this review hours later. My wife’s avocado toast was fine, no issues there, but our second round of drinks just never came. Like at all. We had to go to the bar to ask to pay and leave because we were just left there to rot, along with the table of two beside us that were fighting to find a way to leave too. We entertained ourselves by watching 5 people get food at a table of 10, while the rest were made to just sit there for the 30 minutes before their meals arrived. Once our water ran dry, that was just it. If we didn’t take initiative to pay at the bar and leave, we would have just perished. Skeletons in our chairs.

I tipped 10%, which honestly felt high at the time. The total bill came $100, but at least for that I’m left with a dinner party story for the holidays.

I’m truly sorry Pigeon Cafe, but oh man that was the worst dining experience in my life - there isn’t even a second place. I might tell friends to come, because we were honestly floored and haven’t stopped laughing since. Sorry, that is kind of mean.

Wifey here: just wanted to add the reasons we brainstormed about how and why the staff were capable of such levels of comedic failure which include: their boss did something terrible and pissed them off so much they were purposefully trying to sink the place and/or we were on tv and getting punked. My darling husband also forgot to mention the fact that upon finally leaving, we had to go directly to buy a pack of gum because the flavour of burnt shakshuka was so intense. The gum didn’t work. I think it...

I want to preface this review with saying that I am very sympathetic to the service industry as I know they are often short staffed and so I try to be patient when things get slow. But, this was probably one of the worst service experiences I have had in the city and I’m hoping this review will help improve how they run the restaurant.

Firstly, reservations were for 2:30pm on a Saturday and it was not listed anywhere nor were we notified until we were sat down that the kitchen closes at 2:45pm. The restaurant should list this on OpenTable, or stop seatings 30 minutes prior to the kitchen closing at the very least.

Secondly, after we quickly ordered our food before the kitchen closed, nobody came back to order our drinks, so we didn’t get a chance to order them until our food came. We tried to find someone to order drinks before our food arrived but there wasn’t a single staff member in sight. We had to remind them of our drink order when they came back to clear our plates after we were done eating, so we didn't even get our drinks until after lunch. This was crazy. I get things happen and it can get busy but the server didn’t even apologize for the mix up on drinks or anything at all. While waiting for our drinks, we noticed that four servers/ staff members were just standing around talking and laughing by the bar instead of checking on patrons etc.

Lastly, When we asked for the bills she came with the machine showing us our total but they didn’t have itemized bills which I find to be a bit strange. I had to ask to see the bill because we didn’t know if were paying for the correct items.

Most of us ended up still tipping the 18% because the server was standing over us while we were paying on the machine and felt uncomfortable, but the service we received today did not deserve a tip at all if I’m being quite honest. Reflecting back on the situation she should have comped our drinks at the very least considering we didn’t get them until 10+ minutes after we were done our meals. We didn’t even get a “sorry”.

We did enjoy our food and drinks (although they were out of quite a few things on their menu including to-go boxes so we couldn’t even take home our unfinished food), but based on the service alone, I would not recommend...