Trio Restaurant & Bar (Novotel) — Restaurant in Toronto

Rallying for Trio to be the next “Comeback-Kid” we hope for. After a long closure during the pandemic, the sleek North York favourite re-opens with exciting potential. New and season highlights are: a happy hour menu, live jazz Thursday evenings, a Festive buffet, and Christmas day buffet. Consistently over the years Trio has maintained an excellent customer service standard, hoping with this come back the kitchen can attain the level of food it once had. A recent visit to the Festive Buffet for lunch is a telling tale of the challenges of restaurants these days. Raising food costs have kitchens cornered and treading water to survive. The salad bar is a good selection of fruits, vegetables, salads, pasta salads, salad toppings and dressings. The hot selection is various vegetable choices that need more salt/flavour and with carbohydrate choices that need more attention. Rice pilaf would benefit with more flavour and moisture, same with the odd option of roasted potatoes; a more classic option of mashed potato would be more ideal. A typical hotel style sliced turkey roll would have been more of a highlight to the buffet if there was more effort to dress it up. Here the kitchen could have stepped up with making a vibrant vegetarian stuffing/dressing option, with a simple in-house made cranberry sauce, putting out these options is of little cost and effort to the kitchen vs the commercial cranberry sauce offered. The barely noticeable gravy is mostly absorbed by the pre-sliced turkey in the steam table pan. Nowhere to be found is any gravy on the buffet. Nice additions are a fish option, a warm pasta and hot soup. There are many options for dessert selection, but here lies again a time where the kitchen could shine. Would have loved to see some in-house made desserts by the kitchen vs purchased generic cakes and pastries. Same with the pasta and soup option: would love to see the kitchen be creative and put out some unique in house chef inspired soups and pastas. Noted the food costs for commercial kitchens today, and hoping Trio will rise to the occasion to encourage their kitchen to shine with their staff creativity and talents by presenting patrons with more unique in-house made dishes. Will return in hopes Trio...

First night of winterlicious. Never been here before. Small hotel reataurant. Charming in its own way. We ordered off the winterlicious menu. Appetizers were ok but lacking some flavour with the "spicy shrimp" which had no spice at all.

Our fun though was when our mains of mahi mahi never came. No one acknowledged it until I asked the waiter. First he said he would find out. I already saw it our meals being delivered to the couple accross from is who came 20 min after us. I mentioned this to our waiter. Once he left out came the manager who advised and I quote "I guess some people don't know their table numbers. So I'm here to offer an apology because good catch ". He than disappeared and we never saw him again. No offer to correct the issue. Not that we were looking for a freebie but sometimes the incentive of even comping our drinks would have been a nice gesture on his part.

Dessert was mediocre. Creme brulee was over set like having thick eggs and the cannoli was dry.

All in all a 4/10 for the food and 2 for the service and lack of care.

Won't be returning not worth the...

As a restaurant in a hotel, the service and the food was disappointing. Especially the communication with the staff is lacking in quality. There was event called summerlicious once when I was staying at the hotel. They apparently had a set menu based on the event which I thought was way overpriced. So I asked if they were serving anything else then they first don't understand such a simple question then they keep telling me they have an event called summerlicious like I didn't hear them the first time or I can't read those words on the menu they provided for me. In this way, I felt that they were lacking in customer service and knowing our needs. It really a type of restaurant I would typically find on the streets of the suburbs, not inside a hotel. The food is inexpensive and good enough to just have an occasional lunch with someone. But besides that, I would not go there for any...