Shangri-La Lobby Lounge and Bar — Restaurant in Toronto

People with Severe Allergies- Be Careful of this Place!

So I just want to pre-empt this review with the fact that I hate writing any sort of negative review but I feel after my experiences at this place I should warn people with severe allergies to be aware and take care.

Pre-covid I went to the Lobby Lounge for Christmas Afternoon Tea, and informed them of my tree nut allergy beforehand. They made a note of it in the reservation and I was happy that they brought me a separate tower of food saying that the tower was nut free. My guard was totally down and I took a bite out of a tart only to find out there was a whole WALNUT inside. Thankfully I was able to spit it out but had an anaphylactic episode. The security was swift to offer an epipen but I instead opted to go to the washroom and well i'll spare you the details. They were apologetic and checked up on me a few days later and comped the meal which is nice but the incident was pretty traumatizing. As an adult with severe allergies I was thankful to recognize and spit it out, but what if it was a child? I really worry about others who have the same allergies.

Fast forward to last weekend, I hesitantly went back to the Shangri-la to stay for my friend's 40th birthday. Obviously I had avoided that place like the plague after that incident. Because my brother who booked it is a jade member, we were able to get 2 complimentary breakfasts in the lobby lounge. I figured since breakfast was the regular egg/bacon type meal I wouldn't be in any danger. Unfortunately the waitress (who was very nice) switched the 2 milks and gave me the almond milk and another anaphylactic episode ensued. My friends flagged down the waitress and she apologized and brought some water.

Subsequently the manager came (as my throat was closing and tongue was swelling) she said sorry but also decides to ask me if I informed the waitress of my allergies. Honestly I was pretty out of it to be upset but thinking about it now I felt it was pretty tactless to ask that when someone's having an allergic episode. Another manager (who was much more genuine) came by and said sorry again, and told us they'd comp the meal (even though 2 were already comped so honestly I didnt feel like it meant very much). I was sick the whole day and we ended up having to spend the rest of the day in the hotel room and my friends had to order room service which I feel pretty badly about.

Look I know severe allergies is something restaurants have to deal with now a lot more, and i'm sure it's difficult on top of everything else they're dealing with. I think if you're going to be a 5 star hotel especially, you should be much more vigilant and careful...

We went to the lobby lounge as a group of 6 for drinks. Overall, it atmosphere and drinks were nice but service was severely lacking as always.

Atmosphere 5/5 - Open layout with comfortable seating and beautiful decor and aesthetics. There is so much to just look at there. We also had live music which was absolutely phenomenal. In the winter, it can be kind of annoying because there is a cold draft every time someone enters or exits but if you bring layers it isn’t too bad.

Drinks 4/5 - We tried various feature and usual cocktails, wines and bubbly, and beer. The cocktails were beautifully presented and delicious. Descriptions were accurate. I docked a star because I don’t think the cocktails were good enough to be as expensive as they were ($27-35 for one feature cocktail). Wine and beer were reasonably priced given the location.

Service 1/5 - It took forever to get anyone to take our orders, and people in our group repeatedly waited for 45-60 minutes for a single cocktail. Wine and beer came more quickly in 20 mins. It didn’t seem that busy, as there were open seats. They either need more bar or serving staff. They also don’t seem to have someone specific assigned to you in the lobby bar area. At the end, they were annoyed because we asked to have separate bills and they apparently don’t do that. It’s a pretty easy thing to do for any establishment, so that was surprising. They ended up allowing us to do it because “they happened to not be busy.”

This is the third time I’ve gone there - once for afternoon tea, once for brunch, and now for just drinks. All times were disasters from a service perspective with drinks/food taking an hour or more to arrive, getting the wrong order (for brunch, we were served the wrong dish 3 times in one sitting even though they kept coming back to double check and confirm our dish - and that was after the first attempt took 80 minutes to arrive). For the latter, we also stayed in the hotel for our wedding night and they gave our “safely stowed” luggage to another person, who called my husband 30 mins before the ceremony to say he had it at the airport. I had mentioned this in a separate review and they said to reach out to someone, which we did more than once and got no response. Either way the service is clearly lacking on all fronts there and I wouldn’t recommend this location for drinks, a celebration night out, brunch, or...

Not a lot of good things to say about my first high tea experience. I went into this expecting your usual high tea menu - bite size sandwiches, small pastries, and such. Instead, we got a Cirque du Soleil themed menu. I think it would have been better if they offered both the Cirque du Soleil menu and regular menu and allowed each table to select one.

Anyway, we got our savory items, then a palette cleanser, our tea, and then our sweet items. Let's start off with the savory items... it was pretty lacking. There was this lobster roll without the roll item that was like eating lobster flavoured air. Then there was this astronaut sushi and beef tartare which were both just okay. The baguette with prosciutto was actually very delicious.

Then came the palette cleanser, which was some sort of egg custard in the egg shell, with some gold flakes. I just think the gold flakes were unnecessary, especially considering the flake was on the bottom of the egg shell, so we didn't even end up eating it.

The tea was the highlight of the whole experience, I think. Really delicious and high quality tea. We got the Shangri-La specialty tea, jasmine tea, and darjeeling tea.

Then came the dessert round. Every piece of the dessert round was chocolatey. I feel like you need to have a bit of variety for dessert so it doesn't get too rich, like a fruit dessert or something. But no, it was all chocolate themed. They looked cool, but everything was really sweet. I would like to point out the chocolate cigars- they have some weird alcohol in them and it was actually really gross. No one at my table was able to eat much of theirs. I really don't recommend eating this. We also got some scones and jam/cream, which was a godsend when compared to how sweet the desserts were.

Other than the food, the service was really slow. There was only one guy waiting on all the tables, and it was fairly busy when we were seated. You would think for a fancy hotel they would be better staffed. It also felt like he forgot about us at one point.

Not a great first high tea experience. I really expected more, especially at the price I paid. I think I would be willing to try high tea again, but I don't see myself coming back to this hotel for...