I have been wanting to try this restaurant ever since I moved to Toronto a year and a half ago. I was so excited when I knew that I would finally be visiting Gilead Cafe. I am so happy that I did, because I can stop wondering and move on to much better restaurants.
I wanted to like this place so much. I love the style, the ambiance and how tucked away it is. Unfortunately, I absolutely hated it. Hate is a strong word. I use it carefully. I hated this place. And I am only referring to the food.
We ordered the cheese platter. It came with three different cheeses. I asked which cheeses I could chose from and the server/cashier told me "cheddar, 2 cow's milk ones and a sheep's milk one and i think another one".
The cheeses were nothing special. I love cheese. I was disappointed. But i let it slide.
We got our mains. I got the scallops and chorizo with polenta. The scallops (hard to screw up) were awful. Tasted like they had gone bad. I couldn't eat them all. Chorizo was fine. The polenta was gross. I can't even describe the texture. BUT the absolute worst part of my dish was the tomato sauce that my food sat in. 50% of my plate was filled with a tomato sauce that tasted like Ragu. Just awful.
My girlfriend got a burger. It tasted like it came from Harveys. Just boring.
A lot of people love this place and they are very busy, so they must be doing something right. Whatever they are doing wrong happened to be what I ordered. 70 dollars for a horrible lunch. Skip it.