The Parlour — Restaurant in Toronto

My friend took me here for my birthday yesterday. Overall an utterly horrible and rude experience. We had resos for 7 and the first thing that came out of the hostess's mouth was 'ok, we have another reservation coming in at 9 so you have the table for two hours'. Not 'welcome', nothing. We were seated and our server was nice. Our meal was paced normally. I will say the meatballs and shortribs we ordered as shareables were delicious but the funghi pizza was terrible. AT 8:50 our server came by to ask if we wanted the remaining pizza packed up, and 8:52 a random employee came by to inform us we HAD to vacate the table. We told her we were celebrating my birthday and that dessert hadn't even been offered. She didn't care and told us instead we were made aware of this when we were seated and if we wanted to purchase dessert we had to move to the chef's counter instead and walked off. This should NEVER be standard or acceptable practice. It is the restaurant and server's responsibility to pace the meal if they wanted us out in 2 hours. When the server returned we told her what happened and she apologized and said she'd have the manager come over to speak with us. He did and was even ruder, doubling down on the fact that we HAD to leave the table. We again explained that it was my birthday and I'd at least like to have dessert on my birthday. As a manager he could have offered to at least buy us dessert at the chef's counter to try to salvage or remedy the situation, but he didn't even offer that, and again said you were made aware of this when you were seated, mind you there was already an empty 2 seater in our section as well as 12 other seats in our immediate vicinity. Our server came back again after and when we told her what happened, that we had been told to leave she apologized and said 'there are a lot of great other places to get dessert on King Street!' as though that would fix everything. Had they just continued and asked if we wanted dessert we would have been out there by 9:1-9:15 at the latest as that would have been 25 minutes for dessert, which again was not our fault that they didn't pace the speed of service. We settled our bill and then waited in the entrance for our rideshare. At 9:16 our ride arrived and as we were leaving we checked the dining room room and the two 2 seater tables in our area, including ours were STILL empty and no one in the entrance was waiting for a 2 seater table. The manager was standing at the hostess table and I walked over and said 'it's a good thing you cleared our table seeing as how the 2 tables are still empty'. He ignored me so I repeated myself, and he said 'I don't understand you'. It was so rude and dismissive so please do yourself a favour, skip this for a special occasion. Or book a back to back...

I have to say the food is usually phenomenal and the bathrooms are nice but I would think twice before coming here as the security could do better. I was honestly surprised, as I usually enjoy the food here. But tonight was incredibly shocking and I hope it was a one off event. I was came out with my colleagues for a bit of a getaway. Our hostess was incredible but there was a balding security guard who told me I had to leave about an hour in. I had not been drinking quite as hard as others since I wanted to mainly spend some quality time with my colleagues. In fact, I ordered one drink to nurse in my entire time here, it was barely finished by the time I left. The security guard told me that I had too much and had to leave. I didn’t complain or fight as I wanted no confrontation, but it was shocking to me that I was singled out from my party. It was an unfortunate experience, and though it’s hardly representative of my previous experiences at Parlour, it was certainly embarrassing and memorable enough to warrant this rating. I’m not sure why this security guard felt this way but it certainly set a tone for the rest of the night. No one else was treated this way, and my colleagues tried to get me to stay, but this security guard kept lurking and I felt quite uncomfortable, so I left. Please train people to recognize inebriation better !! I’m just very sad this happened, as I adore the pizzas here and previously have never had an issue with the restaurant. This was the first time I went with my company, and I had suggested it as I loved this place. I’m honestly quite embarrassed and I truly hope there is better education and training for recognizing people that require being sent out. I hope the security persons on duty are given explicit training, as they were not very cognizant of articulating any reason for why I was singled out… I genuinely like this place and I hope this...

I am very disappointed. We made a reservation for 5 people to celebrate our girlfriends birthday. While the atmosphere is great and the food is good, I will not be going back to Parlour or recommending it to anyone.

We settled in for dinner and planned on staying there to drink for the night. After we had eaten and continued racking up our bill (we were consistently ordering a round of 5 drinks + shots all night long), we were told that we had stayed over an hour after our reservation and had to leave because there “might be a bottle service table”. We were not informed of this time limit beforehand.

Although we found this rude, we were already a bit annoyed about the service because one of our friends had to ask twice for her drink four times in a row, to a point she felt the server was purposely snubbing her. We asked for our bills then had to wait for almost 30 minutes with empty drinks at the table while our server figured out our bills. It shouldn’t have taken that long or been so complicated considering she was punching everything in under our names. But I digress….

When she finally brought our bills over she went out of her way to point out the auto gratuity and explain to us it was for back of house staff and that we should tip on top of it. My friend had dined there before and thought that wasn’t right. So she called over someone who I think was the manager to clarify and she was told that gratuity went to the servers + bartenders + back of house.

I had already paid my bill and found out I tipped ON TOP of 20% that I was charged without my knowledge and completely misled (LIED TO) by the sever. This is literal robbery. I served at a steakhouse for five years and would have NEVER done anything like this to guests.

We were given bad service, told we had to leave and then robbed. Do not go here.

PS, our server told my friend she looked angry....