TOCA — Restaurant in Toronto

Tldr; Do not recommend if you’re looking for an easy take out option.

Ordered the Valentine’s Day dinner and I honestly don’t remember it being advertised as needing to reheat and assemble the food yourself at home. For the price that it was ($200 for two), it certainly did not measure up to expectations. The meal included four courses: sunchoke soup, crab salad and smoked salmon course, mains of either braised short rib and/or a vegetarian cannelloni and a raspberry sorbet with a white chocolate yogurt “soup”. Also came with some bread and butters.

Soup: probably the favourite of the meal. Each garnish and element played a part in the flavour and reheating instructions were easy and straightforward and didn’t affect the flavour much.

Crab salad: this was probably the worst part of the meal. The portion was for one, certainly not enough for two. There was seaweed salad that tasted exactly like the store bought kind at the sushi counter and the smoked salmon came with 3 very small slices per person. Totalled less than an ounce. Crab salad was fine but again, nothing special.

Braised short rib and grilled prawn: the braised short rib was made ahead of time and portioned for each meal. What this meant was that there was no braising liquid to be reheated WITH, resulting in a very dry piece of meat by the time it was all the way heated through. Came with a creamed spinach that wasn’t seasoned very well and a jus/gravy that seemed overly acidic as a pairing given that there was also a Granny Smith apple sauce. Wouldn’t order again.

Spinach cannelloni: creamy bechemel sauce and easy reheating instructions. Interesting garnish as there were raisins which offered a contrasting flavour to the rich creamy filling and sauce. Better than the meat option but still not necessarily something I would order again. Okay, not great.

Dessert: dessert was good, a creamy “soup” of white chocolate and yogurt to pair with a tart and refreshing sorbet.

All in all, I expected more for a dinner at the Ritz. The instructions while detailed, were also pretty labour intensive and resulted in me having to wash several pots to reheat different sauces - not exactly what I’m hoping for when I order a take out meal. The service was nice and they brought my meal out to my car in a bag with a handwritten thank you card. Unfortunately they spelled my name wrong (twice) even though the printed labels showed my correct spelling - again a small thing but I would expect a higher level of attention to detail for the Ritz.

Unfortunately I can’t say I’d order from TOCA again nor would I dine in given this experience for the...

I booked the private dining area for brunch for a bridal shower. There was no extra cost for the room, we just had to spend a specific amount of money. As long as 10 guests showed up, it would cover the cost. I had to leave a credit card number for the reservation, but nothing was charged to it, and we were able to have separate bills at the end of the day.

Overall, I was a little disappointed. I had been to a private event at the Ritz (in one of the ballrooms) before and was absolutely amazed at the quality of the food and the service. Based on that, and also based on the cost of the whole thing, I kind of expected 5 star service.

Don't get me wrong, the food was amazing. They had beef wellington at the carving station (one of my favourite dishes, that you don't see very often). They had a "pasta" station. I thought they'd cook made to order pasta, but in fact we learned that they cook one kind for the day. On the day we went it was actually risotto, not pasta. The truffle risotto was incredible though. They had a decent selection of food, though it wasn't the largest brunch buffet I've seen. Quality over quantity, however. Everything I put into my mouth was delicious.

What really disappointed me was the service, however. Since we had the private dining area, with 14 people, I would have thought we would have a private server, or at the very least, a server that paid attention to us! Especially for the price we're paying. We often had to flag down someone (usually not our server) to get re-fills on drinks, or have the plates cleared. Speaking of drinks...do they water them down? I had 5 drinks (asked to go heavier on the champs rather than the juice), and I didn't even have a buzz, and I'm a light weight! The rest of my party said the same thing.

One thing to be aware of as well, is that they stop serving food and drinks at 4pm. We had a 2:30pm sitting. By the time everyone arrived and we said our hellos, we only had an hour to eat. I thought that would be enough time, but between wandering around to see everything, eating and socializing, it seemed like we were rushing. That being said, I was completely stuffed afterwards. If you had a small group, it's probably fine. But if you have a large party, I'd suggest going to an earlier sitting just so you have...

I have been there three times so far since October.

First Sunday brunch experience in October was great. I went there for 2:30pm reservation. I personally love seafood especially Lobster and Oyster. Good thing for the seafood bar is you can have lobster, oyster, shirimp, and other fresh seafood as much as you can. They also have many different kinds of brunch menus such as french toast and egg benedict and all of them were delicious. There is a separate room that filled with dessert menu only and their variety and sweetness were proper. I normally don’t have that much dessert but I had to try almost everything here.

Since I had a good experience in October, I went there again in November for 12:00pm seating. Everything was the same, fresh and delicious but oyster serving speed was not fast enough, 2 times out of 5, there were no oyster. First seating time finishes at 2pm but around 1:20pm, they stopped to refill any oyster for seafood bar and I asked them if they are not gonna be refilled. They said that they will bring some more but that will be the last. Seafood section food provider limits the quantity of oyster and the guy looked unhappy when I asked for refills and I did not think it was professional. Paying $100 per person for a meal is not a small money and there is no point to come to BUFFET if the food supply is less than people’s demand.

My latest visit was on December 22nd and I made a reservation for 2nd seating (2:30pm one) due to bad experience from last visit. They had a special menu for the day and with little extra money, I could enjoyed more menus which I have not seen from here before. My favourite one on the day was grilled sea bass and it was delicious. Also, they served a special menu for everyone. I enjoyed the seafood bar as usual and all other food and dessert were awesome.

I would give them 5 stars for first and third visit but because of my second visit, I would give them 4 stars instead. I love the place, food and level of service include well trained servers. I will try to visit them once a month to see if there are any changes in future. Highly...