Saint John's Tavern — Restaurant in Toronto

UPDATE JAN 2025:

After our first visit, management reached out and invited us back to make up for the experience. Alia, the manager, quickly arranged a reservation for us during the same happy hour that brought us in the first time.

Long story short: they more than made up for it. Jeremy, our server, was fantastic and went above and beyond to ensure we had a great experience, and the manager even stopped by to check in.

The speakers are still a bit loud, and the lighting is still dim, but overall, this place is worth visiting. Kudos to the team for listening to feedback and making things right—we’ll definitely be back! ORIGINAL REVIEW NOV 2024 2/5

We were excited to try the Happy Hour here after hearing good things, however this review is barely going cover the actual food or restaurant as our visit was largely overshadowed by the unnecessarily unfriendly experience with our server, Malissa.

We had a reservation for a group of us and were instructed to head upstairs to be seated. Upstairs was practically empty except for one customer at the bar and 3 workers behind it - 2 who were busy prepping, and one, we assumed was a bartender, chatting with the lone customer. The bartender saw us but made no effort to engage so we assumed she had to stay behind the bar. With no other obvious host or server on the floor to seat us, we looked and wandered around awkwardly for a couple minutes before finally turning back to the bartender. She looked up at us reluctantly and just said “yes?”. I explained we had a reservation and asked if we had a specific table or if we can just sit anywhere, and before I even finished my question she turned away and muttered dismissively “yeah”. This was Malissa.

After seating ourselves, Malissa brought some menus and told us about the 4-6pm Happy Hour, but her attitude was cold and uninviting. She looked and talked to us like one would to their least favourite co-worker. She truly did not care if we lived or died. A couple of us don’t drink and asked if they had iced tea or tea, and both times she coldly said “no” with no offer or suggestion for other non-alcoholic options. Each interaction felt like we burdened her with the highest level of inconvenience. Anytime she wasn’t serving us or the eventual other tables, she would be facing away chatting with that customer at the bar who was clearly a friend. She came by around 5:45 to start clearing the table. She started reaching for a platter that still had a few oysters on it, which we tried to grab so she could take it away, but she decided to leave it and just cleared the other plates. We decided to get 1 more round of oysters, but could not find her until she finally returned from the other side of the bar at 6:02. We were conscious that happy hour is until 6pm so I asked if it was still possible to get a dozen more. The look of disdain on her face when I asked was unmistakable. Our whole table just looked at each other bewildered, but her curt “ok” suggested that we were in the clear. After all, she was MIA for almost 20 minutes. It wasn’t until we got the bill that we saw she had charged us full price for those last oysters without telling us. And even as we were clearly confused, she made no attempt to inquire or clarify.

In hindsight, I regret tipping her. She certainly didn’t deserve one. It’s clear the hospitality industry is not for Malissa. I truly hope she finds peace and happiness in her next career or life, whichever comes first. For management, I’d consider replacing her, even with an iPad - it would be cheaper, more efficient, and undoubtedly more welcoming.

Food wise, the oysters were ok, on the smaller side as expected for buck-a-shuck (which I personally prefer anyway). Only one was kinda off and a few had some shell in it. Truffle fries were good, and honestly was impressed by the amount of aioli that came with it! Space was nice, but there were only a handful of booths and they all had a large speaker next to them blasting music which wasn’t ideal. Could use some slightly...

Made a reservation for the oyster house during buck-a-shuck, and thought the overall experience was mediocre at best. Of course for $1 oysters, they were not super large (honestly some were kinda small and shrivelled) which was fine and as expected, and I did enjoy the hot sauce and vinaigrette that came with it.

Though, I was mildly suspect as we had a view of the area where the shucking was happening, and we observed them sniff every single oyster as if they were worried some may smell off?

I think most disappointing part was the service. Off the bat we ordered 3 dozen oysters which we knew would take some time. The first dozen came on time which we enjoyed, however we waited 15+ minutes for the next round. The waitress even cleared our table thinking we had finished and were seemingly waiting around. It then came to her attention she accidentally gave our oysters to a different table. They apologized and brought our second platter, which was short 6 oysters (especially after they said they would be sure to throw in some extra free ones for our wait lool). No one checked on our table unless we tried (very hard may i add) to flag waiters down to get utensils, or to flag issues with our order.

We 100% understand mistakes can happen during busy hours! I think it was a bit disappointing it took over 1.5hours of dining just to get through 36 oysters and there are many more buck-a-shucks in Toronto to...

So fun story, I’ve been going you this bar for a while and never had any issues. This time around though, I had reserved the snug booth for a first date cause i wanted to hear my date talk than the loud groups around. Upon entering, we were put at a table with a bunch of crowd around screaming. After multiple times of asking, they moved us to another table with less noise but we had to change our table 3 times the entire night. On top of that, the cherry on top was getting charged for more beers than we had. We paid at the table before where we had 4 beers between us 2 and 4 beers at the last table, the waitress charged us for 2 extra beers. Tbh if I can afford 8 beers, I can afford 10. After politely telling the waitress 2 times, she first added more money to the bill for some reason and then she said that we have had more than we said and said “you guys have been drinking all night so you wouldn’t know”. Extremely surprised we had to eventually pay and on top of that its not about the money, after changing 3 tables a night, paying extra for drinks, the server called us out on the less than 15% tip haha. Honestly its sad that I have to let go of a great bar due to few unfortunate people but would never go here again especially with so many options around. Apologies for the rant, but had to be honest for the next few customers, track your damn beers cause a few servers are money...