Scaddabush Italian Kitchen & Bar Whitby — Restaurant in Whitby

If I could, I would rate a 3.5, but that option doesn't exist ...

First time at Scaddabush Whitby tonight (Nov 11), heard mixed reviews so didn't have high expectations. My partner and I (47 and 38 y/o) arrived around 7:20pm and were told it was an hour wait. After 5-10 mins, we got ourselves a seat at the bar, had a drink and were happy to hear that we could order an appetizer while we wait. Got the mozza cheese with fig and prosciutto. It was pretty good! I ordered a peach Bellini which was delicious but not thoroughly blended (apparently blenders not working so great?) so I needed a spoon to 'eat' it. No big deal. Our bartender Alyssia was fantastic! Her customer service was excellent - she checked in on us regularly and made us feel welcome. She even wanted to step in to make sure we were getting our table soon! (Thank you again, Alyssia!)

There was a bit of a mix-up with the wait-list. There was another couple there that got upset because another couple came in and got seated before them (and technically us). So just be diligent in following up to make sure you remain in the queue.

Once we moved to a table, we ordered pasta dishes which came in a good amount of time. I got the mushroom truffle fettuccine which was so good (and made fresh)! My partner got the chicken and gnocchi which was ok. The chicken wasn't fully warm, but I thought the flavouring was good. Both dishes seemed a bit pricey for what you got. Our server was Jacob/Jake (I think, sorry), and he was super nice and also delivered excellent customer service.

We ordered the zeppole for dessert. Warning - choose something else for dessert. They were not great, even with the chocolate dip. Our server recommended the tiramisu or made-in-house gelato for next time. It was not expected, but we appreciated that the manager waived the zeppole charge.

The decor was stunning, but it was pretty loud and we had to yell so the bartender could hear us. There was a DJ as well playing top 40 type music - I much preferred the Italian music that was playing in the ladies room.

A couple of suggestions for the restaurant: 1) I have an allergy to calamari. When the manager brought the zeppole to the table, he mentioned that they were fried in the oil that was used to fry other items like the calamari and asked if that would be ok for me. My allergy only flares up if I eat the actual calamari, so this wasn't an issue, however, I would have expected that we would have been notified/asked BEFORE frying the zeppole and bringing it to the table. Seems kind of silly to make us wait for something that I possibly may not have been able to eat....and 2) we sat by the kitchen and noticed that one of the staff making the mozzarella with his bare hands was wearing a couple of rings on each hand. I would think that that practice isn't very sanitary given how much bacteria can sit under rings. My suggestion - rings should be removed when handling something like that.

Overall, it was an ok evening. It's definitely worth a try, but not worth waiting an hour. Go earlier or later (5pm or 830pm) to avoid the wait (allowing reservations seems so much more civil, not sure why they don't do this). For the price, my partner and I would prefer a finer dining experience so prob wouldn't go back again on our own. For a party or something, definitely a good...

I first had scaddabush in 2020 dowtown Toronto and fell in love. We have been to the new location in Whitby twice now and both times were unfortunately unpleasant. When they first opened we attended for my birthday dinner. We were seated and as we waited I kept feeling something drop on me and thought it was the person beside me with their drink but later to find out the ceiling was dripping on us and our food and into our drinks (so gross). We let the waitress know and then we were moved ( food wasn’t replaced nor were the drinks). We thought ok maybe it will just be discounted on our bill….it was not we still paid for everything that was served which took 1.5 hours ( new place new menu new staff so we weren’t to concerned about the time but pretty upset with the out come)

I just recently went back for a nice Christmas lunch with my sister. The food was absolutely terrible. I ordered the avocado bruschetta (I’ve had before). It came tasteless and I thought to myself there has to be something missing. I looked back on my picture I took from the precious visit and noticed the basil sauce was missing so I notified the waitress in which she apologized and took it to add the sauce. When she returned with it it was just oil drizzled on top we tried it and again it wasn’t right so I just suggested maybe some salt. She brought The salt but asked if I wanted to try it with the salt and if it wasn’t right she would just have it replaced or did I just want it replaced. (I honestly felt terrible). I responded to just have it replaced if it wasn’t a hassle because I’ve now tried three pieces and was still waiting for my main course. We also had the Bomba mozzarella and it smelt almost sour we tried it and the cheese was cold but they bread was good. I ordered the spaghetti carbonara. … I was looking forward to this but when it arrived I went to mix my egg into the pasta and it was over hard and pasta was chewy. The waitress must have disliked me at this point but when she came to check I showed her and she once again apologized and took it back. When she came back we checked the egg and it was half cooked through but at this point I just told her not to worry about it and mixed what I could and had a few bites and by that time I had lost my appetite. My sister ordered the lobster pasta it seemed to be fine other than the pasta being chewy aswell. These experiences has me not wanting to return to this location. I was so excited to have a scaddabush closer to home but now have no desire to return. The ginger ale on tap with lemon was my highlight for my sister and myself “Christmas lunch date.”

Also on this return we noticed they have put plastic around all the air ducts on the ceiling which I’m assuming is to stop the dripping from above going on people and their food. (Picture on the left is from our most recent visit compared to the...

I’ve been to the Whitby location 4-5 times now. I’ve generally enjoyed it, but this last experience made me decide to leave a review. Firstly, I don’t know how they can call themselves Italian. I think Italian-inspired would be more accurate. You would never get pasta with chicken in it in Italy, nor would you get a pizza served with a giant, ridiculous pair of scissors to cut it. Seriously, just cut it at the table or provide a proper rotary cutter, the scissors suck. The pasta is nice because it’s home made, but can you be a bit more adventurous than spaghetti and rigatoni? Okay okay, mafaldi, but honestly they are not a good pasta shape. How about some linguini? I had the shrimp spaghetti and it was seriously delicious, but extremely saucy. Not necessarily a bad thing, just not authentic. The pizza is delicious, once you manage to cut it, the dough is excellent. The mozzarella thing is honestly a bit much. Like why would I want a giant ball of mozzarella?! It’s not a cheese meant to be eaten like that. I personally think it’s a whole lot of fuss over nothing. Look, I get that we’re catering to a Canadian audience here, so it’s not gonna be authentic Italian, but it’s a bit much the way they act like it’s authentic. It’s pretty far from anything you’d get in Italy. The last comment is on the service. Our actual server was lovely, and honestly we’ve always had great servers. But boy is it slow! It must have taken like ten minutes for our server to actually say hi and take our drink order, and then just as long to actually get our drinks, which were only sodas. We ended up ordering everything at once because it took so long, but then things came out at a reasonable speed. I really don’t think it was our server’s fault at all, there seemed to be some issue with how quickly things were coming in general. I also noticed we had to ask for salt/pepper, and the Parmesan was weirdly in a big soup spoon already in the pasta dish. Firstly, what if you don’t want Parmesan? And secondly, it’s a massive faux pas to put cheese on seafood. Surely if they’re authentic Italian they’d offer fresh grated Parmesan or at the very least have it on the table. We also had the bruschetta, which was delicious. All in all, I like Scaddabush and I’ll probably be back, but they could make quite a few improvements and be excellent instead of...