Rayah — Restaurant in Toronto

The colours, architecture, and thoughtful design details at Rayah are truly phenomenal — absolutely fantastic! There's plenty of seating both indoors and outdoors, making it a welcoming space for any kind of visit.

We came for brunch and ordered the Tajine Kefta, Moroccan Taboule, and chicken. All three dishes were delicious and easily met — if not exceeded — our expectations.

The Pear-Chocolate Brioche Perdue was generously filled with sliced pear. While visually impressive, it leaned a bit too heavily on sweetness. The vanilla cream and the pool of chocolate sauce created a “sweet on sweet on sweet” effect, and the texture lacked contrast, making it feel one-note despite the richness.

I love supporting new places, and Rayah has a lot of potential. That said, a few service elements could use some polishing. Our drinks were forgotten until we followed up — by that point, our food had already arrived. The water jug came out, but we didn’t receive glasses until dessert was served. When it came time to pay, we had to walk up to the front and wait as several staff members passed by or stood nearby. Eventually, it was the owner who noticed and had to prompt someone to assist us — only after addressing bathroom cleaning tasks first.

I understand Rayah is a new establishment, and these are likely growing pains. Still, the service hiccups were a bit disconcerting and didn’t reflect the level of hospitality expected in front of guests.

Overall, the food was solid, the ambiance beautiful, but there's definitely room for improvement — especially in the service experience.

*Returned to try this place again. I experienced the same issues during their dinner service. In fact, it was worse. I brought new people with me in hopes to have improve in this area but it was not good at all. We had to ask multiple times with several servers for the same thing before receiving simple things like water or drinks we ordered. The food during this service definitely suffered. The dishes were okay but the tagine failed to have the wonderful aroma and barely any broth. Though the meat was tender - lacked the delicious depth I would expect from this style of cuisine.

In addition, One table ordered chicken and was told sold out and another was able to order it. For our table we ordered dessert and were told what we wanted was sold out yet slices of them were available in the case.

I am unsure. In both instances, customer service was below par. A sign should have been the server/host that brought us to our table - her tone was quite harsh and abrupt. I truly hope this...

Had dinner with a couple friends here last night. We grabbed the Kemia to share which was good. The baghrir (Moroccan pancake) themselves were good to the point that you may want to have them on their own without the dips and ask for some extra bread for the dips. If I were to pick a favorite off the dips served it would be the eggplant for me but all three were good. Two of us order the Tajine (including myself) and another ordered the Poulet Frites. The tajine itself was excellent, every bite was delicious. I have to admit that the gratin it’s served with lacked in comparison but the bread that it’s served with had the perfect texture and pillowy-ness to have along with the tajine. While I didn’t get to try the poulet, I did steal a few fries, those were really good too, perfectly salted and fried, not too crispy but not too soft/soggy either. For dessert we decided to split 3 items amongst the 3 of us: the chocolate flan (which our server claimed as his favorite), hazelnut flan and Mille Feuille (an item not found on the menu being served last night). A word to the wise here, the dessert portions are substantial and I would say you should get 1 for every 2 people at the table rounded up. All three were great and we had a hard time picking favorites. While I liked the initial bite of the chocolate flan better the that of the hazelnut, the richness of the chocolate gets heavy fast making it a difficult option for me to consider having by myself. The hazelnut on the other hand was also quite good but less rich in initial burst of flavor but with a pleasant after taste, much more palatable in the quantity served. The Mille Feuille was also all around a great dish with both the pastry and crème being delicious and well executed, though it does make for a bit of messy dish as the pastry cracks and scatters while you try to eat it. We finished our meals with some wonderful Moroccan mint tea to warm up before heading home in the cold November air.

Overall the service was quite good, though they did forget our Kemia before bringing out our mains, it was a busy night and the Kemia came out a few minutes after our mains so no harm there really. All the staff seem to speak French, one of my friends at the table being from France spent the night speaking to them en francais. The restaurant itself is quite small with fairly limited seating so I was surprised when I managed to get a last minute reservation yesterday but it’s also quite cute and comfortable, homey even.

Needless to say, all of us are hoping to be back for both brunch and dinner to try more...

My friends and I were super excited to check out this restaurant so we decided to go on a Sunday. We tried to look for a phone number or website to make a reservation, but there was no number and the website said they are not taking reservations at the moment, so we decided to walk in. We got there and they took our phone number and told us it will take an hour to get a table. We were told you have to email to book a reservation, but we did not find this information anywhere or we would have done so beforehand. I am not sure where to even find the email.

After 1.25 hrs, we did not get a call so we came back. They had tables of 2 and 4 that they could have combined for our party but they said they have to wait until a table of 6 is empty to seat us. They told us theyre very sorry but it will take another 40 mins to get a table. So we said okay. Another 40 minutes passed and still no table. After 2 hours they finally prepared a table for us. We wish they had told us honestly from the beginning that finding a table wont be possible right now, or atleast called in the middle to let us know it is taking much longer than anticipated. We ended up staying after the 1st hour since all the nearby hand-slaughtered halal spots were not walking distance, or we would have left.

The food was hearty and tasted good Alhamdulillah, however our Maakouda was cold and the cheese inside had not melted, was looking forward to the cheese pull everyone posted. The couscous dish was okay and did not have much flavour, but the non-couscous dishes were much better. Overall though most of the food lacks flavour and is pretty bland. Creme Brulee is AMAZING.

When it was time to pay our bill, we waited for 30 mins for a waiter to come take our bill. After 30 minutes, we went up to find someone and were told their machine is not working and we have to pay at the counter (nobody had informed us about this while we waited, but we expect a waiter to inform us so we wouldnt have had to waste so much time). We went to the counter to pay and there was an 18% gratuity already applied to our bill (which is totally fine). However, the waitress never told us this information and we ended up tipping them an extra 18-20%, which made our tips upto 40%. Even when everyone from our group kept paying an extra 18-20% tip, they didnt inform us. It was not mentioned on the menu or by any of our waiters at any point.

The food was not bad and ambience was great, but honestly the service was very disorganized and poor, which made our experience of coming here really...