Sounds Good — Restaurant in Toronto

While I enjoyed the food and the atmosphere was good, my overall experience was disappointing due to the service.

For context, my guest was running late because of heavy snowfall on February 8th, which naturally slowed traffic in Toronto. She arrived about 30 minutes late, but once we were seated, we were repeatedly interrupted throughout our meal. The server prematurely tried to clear my guest’s dishes while I was still eating, which already felt rushed.

However, the worst part came when we were asked three times within a span of 10 minutes to vacate our table because another reservation needed to be accommodated. This was incredibly disruptive, and after the third interruption, I told the server that I had enough of him interrupting us so rudely. Instead of acknowledging the issue, he responded with, “Sir, no need to be rude.”

To make matters worse, I noticed that the table next to us, which arrived around the same time, was never asked to leave. So why was I being pressured while others weren’t?

I've dined at many places in Toronto, and I’ve never had an experience quite like this. Unfortunately, the service left a lasting negative impression. It’s a shame because the food and ambiance were good, but service matters and often makes a big difference. It's about experience and that includes greeting at the door to having a delicious food experience and most importantly the service.

I hope my review will encourage you to bridge the gaps....

I like this spot and I think the vibe is great. Most of the food was wonderful but I have to say, the Octopus was incredibly tough and chewy. Like, sort of the way you're not supposed to cook octopus. It used to be that no one did octopus except authentic Mediterranean or very very fine dining restaurants but then Bar Isabel went and made it a Toronto googoo gaga dish and now it's everywhere but maybe it shouldn't be? Maybe, we should treat it like the delicacy it is and stop putting it on every menu unless we're willing to take the time to cook it so it's not tough. There was a reason not everyone did it, it takes time to marinate and slow cook or sous-vide very very carefully and then grill to order so that it's charred yet tender. This Octopus was incredibly tough, crunchy even. This is not the first un-tender octopus I've had lately so I feel like it needs to be mentioned here because it's kind of tarnishing the dish's reputation at this point. I ordered it because my date had never tried Octopus and assumed this would be a worthy introduction, it was not. Everything else was really nice, the beef cheek was perfectly braised, I liked the way they dressed the oysters, beef tartare (another Toronto gaga dish) was very nice. Decent wine selection as well. Would come back but $36 for tough octopus gives me...

I was here last month for a birthday dinner. The food was actually terrible.. I hate to say it but every single person at our table hated the food. I think the best thing we had was the fried olives.. because it tasted like bread crumbs. The rest of the dishes were SO salty or vinegary. We had to get the set menu because of the size of our group which was fine but the server did not introduce themselves or explain each dish as they set it down so we were left to guess what each plate was. It was very disappointing because we were looking forward to a nice meal to celebrate our friend on her birthday. Also the music was VERY loud. I had to scream in order to speak to the person sitting next to me. At one point the restaurant turned on a smoke machine (for what purpose???). We asked them to turn down the music even just a tad but they did not. The decimal reader showed the music was at 1000 decimals. The combo of bad food, very loud music and smoke machine was exhausting. Anyways this place was disappointing and all 8 of us left pretty annoyed and...