The Black Dog Pub — Restaurant in Toronto

First and foremost I would like to compliment our waitress, Lisa. She hit all the check boxes for excellent service such as being attentive, knowledgeable, and friendly. It felt as if whenever we needed her she was right there with a smile but never felt as if she was hovering. Lisa made my friend and I feel as if we were guests rather than just a table that needed to be served.

My friend and I came here on Saturday, March 1, 2025, for an early dinner. I've heard great things about The Black Dog from neighbours for a good while so I decided it was about time to check it out. In short, I will definitely keep The Black Dog in my rotation of pubs to revisit.

Atmosphere: Perfect. The only slight gripe I would say we had was how close the tables are to each other. It's not a complaint because it didn't affect us in any way other than feeling like we were just a tad too close to others. But that is fine, I am quite a big guy and had no issue go to and from our table. One of my biggest concerns when trying a new restaurant is the lighting. The dining room where our table was had perfect lighting. Also I'd like to add that there was no loud obnoxious music blasting, we were actually able to converse without screaming or repeating things 5 times. Very warm vibe.

Food: As a group we had a few cocktails, the calamari, crab cakes, Irish Whisky Burger, and the Steak Sandwich. To start, the cocktails were delicious and tasted like the correct ratios were used. Now for the appetizers, they were a stand out. I'm not sure what sauce they use for the crab cakes and calamari but sweet jesus is it banging. Calamari had perfect crisp, tasted fresh, and was a more than generous portion size. The crab cakes were moist on the inside, also fresh, and flavourful. Just keep in mind crab cakes come with TWO as an order, it would be nice if that was listed on the menu but you can just ask the waitress. It's worth noting my friend's cake had some sort of crunchy-ness on the inside that was unexpected. That does not take away from our enjoyment of them however. The Irish Whiskey Burger (what I had) was spot on. Tasted exactly like how I wanted it to when I read it off the menu, flavour explosion with every bite and not dried out. My friend's steak sandwich however could have used a little love. It's hard for me to comment on her rating of it because her opinion reflects her tastes such as not liking swiss cheese even though it comes with swiss cheese and how well the steak was cooked. What I can confirm though is that the sandwich maybe could've used more sauce/juice to save it from being dry. Overall though the food was amazing.

Service: Already commented on at beginning, Lisa and the rest of staff I interacted with were excellent.

Overall, I am giving The Black Dog a high 4.7 (rounded to 5 for google). Only issues that took away from the score was my friend's sandwich. I'd recommend coming here for small events, get-togethers, or a night out. This is not a place you want to come to for a casual dinner as it can get a little expensive if ordering...

Great place and great food, poor customer service. Unless you're a regular there, prepare to get treated like you're second class. I came with a group of 10 people so we had to split ourselves between two tables and we had no problem with that.

What I found hypocritical was that they didn't like us jumping between the two tables, or having us stand around one so we didn't have to shout across between them. Yet there was a three tables behind my group that I could tell were regulars, due to how the staff treated them. There was a four seated at one, with three others standing around them. Not ONCE during the whole time they were there did you have a staff member come around to tell the extra people to sit down. The other thing was they came AFTER us and got their food BEFORE us.

The thing that irked me the most was that if you're a sever, you SHOULD have a basic to intermediate knowledge of beer and alcohol brands. My brother in law asked if they had a certain beer brand and the sever didn't recognize that brand and rudely told him whatever we have on the menu is what we have.

I'm surprised that with the whole pandemic happening they're not concerned about germs. Our server came by with condiments and set one serving size of ketchup which we thought was for my nephew who got chicken fingers and fries. Another member of our table asked for ketchup to have with his schnitzel and fries. The server mentioned that she put some already on the table and that we should share. Mentally I'm saying "Are you nuts, that mask is certainly cutting off the oxygen to your brain." To have to pull here away from talking to the regulars behind us, seem like a daunting task so that she could fill another condiment bowl with ketchup.

If you okay with poor service while getting your meal and you're not a regular, than by all means go here. If you value good customer service than avoid this place...

Came here on a Wednesday night; it was packed full of people!

We ordered the baked brie as an appetizer. The price has gone up over the years; years ago it was $12, then $14, and has now gone up to $18. I can understand the costs of inflation but expected a bigger brie at this price (as it comes with a small wheel of it). Delicious nonetheless.

For our mains, we ordered the Yorkie and the cottage pie. The Yorkie roast beef was truly delicious and it was a filling meal. The cottage pie was good, your run of the mill shepherds pie. Gravy for the fries/pie was an extra charge. The brie took a long time to get to us, but the mains came pretty quickly. With how busy it was, we could not complain about the service.

What did leave us somewhat miffed is that we were told, as we received the bill, that the card machine was unfortunately not working and we would have to take cash out of the on site ATM. I'm willing to give the benefit of a doubt here and say maybe the machine only stopped working when it came time for us to pay, but otherwise I would have appreciated a warning prior to ordering all of our food. We thankfully had cash so we didn't need to get up and use the ATM, but it was inconvenient when we had been hoping to pay using cards.

Overall an upscale pub atmosphere with good food,...