Salad King — Restaurant in Toronto

My family visited Toronto for the day and we ate dinner here.

To summarize, the service is amazing, the food is good, but amazing with their chilli, bathrooms are okay, and the whole restaurant is mobility aid accessible. And they have deals throughout the week to save money. Has STD&UE

When we arrived, there was no parking, but it's in the downtown so you can just take TTC there.

There is no step and there are buttons to open the doors automatically.

The restaurant is on the second floor but there is an elevator, so our friends with mobility devices don't need to worry.

Once we got in, we were greeted under a minute and we could get a nice booth close to the middle of the restaurant.

They didn't have four menus at our booth but by the time we sat down, they had already given us 2 more for everyone.

We all got water, and it was brought to us before I could finish reading the first part of the menu. Our waitress was extremely kind and enthusiastic and would be refilling our water constantly. I think the longest I went without my glass completely filled was around 45 seconds.

One note about the waitresses, they are multi lingual. Across their staff, they can speak English, Mandarin and Indian. So you don't have to worry about communication.

One thing I noticed is at the table, they do not have salt or pepper, but they did have chilli oil and a house made chilli sauce. My brother and father tried the chilli sauce, and oil, the oil was extremely spicy. However the magic is in the sauce. My brother and father praise the sauce HIGHLY, they liked it so much they wanted to buy a bottle even though they do not sell it. However after talking with the waitress, she offered to just give us some for free and put it in a plastic container for us at the end of our stay.

When ordering they have specials, on Monday the bigger your group, the more of a discount you get. There are other specials on other days, I cannot remember the details but I will attach photos.

Students with a valid ID get 20% off their orders Monday to Friday from 2-5pm

So once I finished reading the menu I decided to get the fried rice with chicken balls and the sauce on the side (I'm quite a picky eater). And it took 18 minutes to get to us.

The rice was delicious, fluffy and tasty, the veggies (carrot and peas) were alright, but the egg blended into the mix WONDERFULLY, they were fluffy and light. The texture of the mixture was consistent and it all blended well together. Though a little bland on its own, then again I didn't use the sauce on the rice.

The chicken balls were a little soggy, though I had to wait a few minutes before eating, that was likely the cause.

On their own, they chicken balls were okay, but when combined with their sweet chilli sauce... IT WAS AMAZING!!!

The texture and taste complimented each other well and it was delicious.

Also side note, you can ask for chopsticks and they will give you wooden ones.

We finished eating, no one got desserts or drinks of any kind.

However they do have a unique variety of alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks. Their beers have names and ingredients I've never seen before. They have many house made juices/sodas and also some fountain drinks.

As we ate I couldn't help but admire the lovely ambiance, artwork and lighting. Everything was stylized and it was a great experience (Would recommend for dates). They had music that I couldn't put a name on it, but it was quiet as not to disturb you, but loud enough to fill silence.

After our meal i had to use the restroom, I used the family bathroom. It has a baby changing station there (and mobility aid accessible).

The bathroom was alright but it was dimly lit and kinda hard to see. The sinks faucet was a little awkward and had low water pressure which made it somewhat difficult to wash my hands. There is only a blow dryer to dry your hands, but it gets the job done in a few seconds.

Overall it cost us around $76.00 for the four of us to eat there (only ordering main dishes) so definetly come in on Mondays and with...

Service: There's an Asian guy acting very rude to us from the beginning, like rushing us to order and put down cups on the table heavily, I understand it was a busy night, even though it's a weekday, so I didn't put much thoughts in it. Things went really bad when I gave him a discount card when I get the bill, I thought the discount is gonna apply to all the main dishes, so I was confused when I get the bill and asked him if I can have a look at the card again, he showed me and it says "applies to your NEXT main dish", so I just asked "oh, so it's only for one main dish? ", all in a sudden he escalated his voice and repeated the words on the card very loudly without adding any explaination, as if I just can't read, I also feel embarrassed because he attracted attention from other tables and made me looks like I am bargaining and can't afford the meal, while all I did is asked a clarifying question, wanted to make sure the bill is right. Honestly a simply "No." would have served it better. It was so rude and so unnecessary. Talked to the manager to reflect about the unclear terms on the discount card and the attitude of that particular waiter. The manager explained the terms, promised to rely it to management and offered me a dessert as compensation, but I didn't take it because I am not complaining for the money, but for the fact that I think they should review their customer service standard. He apologized for the action of the waiter, but also said he is the best server they have, which actually it's the worst thing to learn about out of the night, the waiter might be very efficient and fast, but if that's at the price of reasonable service, I am not coming back and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, there are places with better food and service at similar, if not lower price point.

Food: I ordered fried squid, chicken satay, Panang curry. Fried squid, batter is good, not too thick, well-seasoned. But the squid itself is plain, probably didn't brine it, so the taste of this dish is a very fragmented. Chicken satay is pretty good, it's not as dry as the beef satay I tried last time, but wish they dust it with more oil and go with higher heat, so that it can have a stronger grilled flavor. Panang curry, like the sauce, but the protein is tasteless, and the texture is tough. The quality of meat is low.

Atmosphere: one of the worst interior arrangement, it was like a brunch of tables in the middle of the house, encircled by tables that is arranged as a square lining the wall, two area are separated by an aisle and glass. It was weird for people in the middle of the house, cuz they are being looked at constantly by the tables encircling them. For the tables that is lining along the wall is the worst, those are suppose to be booths, but it's not really booth, it's just bench that has a 15cm gap from the wall, so basically you have to be vigilant on your coat or belonging sliding through the gap to the ground. The place generally looks very crowded and feels uncomfortable.

Suggestion: Gave me an impression that this branch is targeting on people who want budget friendly food, with lower price point, they try to maximize revenue by having very high table turnover rate. But there are places with better food and service at similar or lower price point. I think the rasturant need to put more emphasis on service quality, not simply efficiency and provide training to their staff accordingly. Also consider putting more time in preparing ingradients like marinating and...

Was in the city for the Pride Parade and decided to stop by Salad King for lunch along with two other people. I had eaten here once before with some friends and had a pleasant experience and I definitely do not regret coming back again today!

We had stopped by a few minutes after opening and were seated immediately and served drinks. I really want to commend the service we got before anything else. Our server (not sure about the name but she was the kind Asian lady with a short black haircut!) was extremely attentive and friendly.

While I enjoy spice, I may have ordered 1 spice level too high so I ended up going through my glass of water quickly but there was never a single time that I had drunk my glass empty as our server came by frequently to refill our glasses. Especially with the heat outside and our exhaustion from walking through the city, this was very appreciated!

There was also another man (who I assume may have been the manager?) who came by a couple times to have some friendly conversation which was quite nice as well! The two people I visited with were fairly new not just to Ontario, but Canada in general, so I feel like this experience left a positive impression of the people here.

Now when it comes to the food, I did mention that I ordered my dish (The Bankok Stirfry Noodles pictured) a tad bit spicy but that did NOT stop me from finishing the plate. The flavours were excellent from whatever sauce they used to the subtle char of the ingredients from the wok- it was perfect. And the portions were very fair for their price- I’ve had worse “Thai” food for similar prices but this? It’s both authentic and well-worth the price. My uncles who came with me also thoroughly enjoyed their dishes (pictured as well) and were happy about the large portions as they were able to take some home for later!

All-in-all Salad King is a favourite stop of mine whenever I’m in the city and I will always recommend it to people both new and old to the area!! Eating here was one of the highlights of...