Shalimar Grill and Banquet — Restaurant in Toronto

I urge anyone planning to hold a banquet event here to take their business elsewhere. Management is full of completely unprofessional, dishonest, and immoral people. The front desk representative (Raheem T. according to the name on the receipt) has no customer service skills. You will not get any fair treatment here.

In January 2020, I had booked a wedding-related party for early July 2020. I put down the requested down payment of $500 plus tax. There was no contract provided but simply a receipt (considering they are a small business, I assumed they probably just worked on an honour system). In July, as other venues held events with a limit of up to 30% of the venue’s capacity, Shalimar advised me that they will not honour the agreed upon date for my event nor would they allow the event to take place at an alternate date in July with a reduced number of guests. I accepted their rationale for not wanting to risk getting fined. I asked Raheem, who originally accepted my down payment, to at least reimburse half of it as neither of us anticipated the pandemic. There was no logical reason to keep my down payment in its entirety if no service was actually provided.

Raheem says that though there is no written contract, it is standard practice that down payments are non-refundable. I held no event, and they refused to work with us to hold a smaller event (which at the time was permitted under provincial guidelines) and so keeping my down payment with no service provided in exchange is outright theft. I asked him to speak to management as I was willing to even accept a 30% refund simply on principal.

I have since called Shalimar multiple times and each time the response is simply that they will review the matter with management and get back to me.

Please do not consider Shalimar if you are planning to do a banquet event as these shady, disgusting human beings should not be doing business if they cannot even practice some basic business ethics...

Rice of this restaurant is nice, but why I should buy only for rice while I pay for Biryani? On September 2, 2021 around 1 pm, I buy one chicken and one veal biryani for $19.04. While I open at home, I just get very very small 2 pieces of chicken equivalent to quarter of a chicken thigh. In case of veal, a small piece of meat and a small bone. Is it worthy for $19.04? While I ask them that I found you provide pop with chicken biryani, then the provide me one. But 2 days ago while I bought chicken biryani while I don't know about pop, they never give me that one.

Another annoying thing to me the wait period for around 20 minutes. Should customer wait for 20 minutes for a simple rice? I tell them that I called four times to do order by phone to save time. They check their phone and find my call. Their excuse is people ask them too much question over phone so they don't like to receive call.

NEVER WOULD GO...

Me and my friend were too hungry and this restaurant was close to us. So we decided to take our lunch at this one. Firstly restaurant was clean and staff was friendly and professional.

But the issue was with the food. We tried their two lunch specials that was Butter Chicken with Garlic Naan and Chicken Biriyani. Both of them were WORST!!!!!!

Butter Chicken, it was not made with butter ig. It was made with tomato sauce however the color looks good tho taste was awful. The garlic naan which doesn’t have any garlic flavour and was not that soft.

Chicken biriyani, the chicken was not too good, not bad, like its okay but the biriyani rice was smelling bad. We complained and the staff did apologised but didn’t end up with a solution. They offered “A free drinks” instead of replacing the food which was too funny.

I wouldn’t RECOMMEND anyone to...