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| - I was eager to visit The Corner House after noticing its place at the top of Yelp's 'Best of Restaurants' list for quite some time, and the perfect opportunity arose when I noticed that it was participating in Winterlicious. I made a reservation for 2 for 5:15pm on a Sunday, and we arrived right on time and were seated promptly in one of the upstairs rooms.
We received warm bread and hummus/olive oil to nosh on - a nice change of pace from the usual olive oil/vinegar. I ordered the Roasted Beet Salad to start, the Ricotta and Spinach Gnocchi as my main, and the "Flowerless" Belgian Chocolate Torte for dessert (I'm not sure if that was a spelling mistake on their menu or if it was an attempt at humour...somehow I feel it was the former rather than the latter). I also ordered the suggested wine pairing for my main from the menu (a Pinot Noir I believe). I appreciated the fact that they thought to suggest a wine pairing for each main course, as the wine list is fairly extensive. My lovely dining companion ordered the Salmon appetizer, the Cod main and the Panna Cotta dessert, as well as the suggested wine pairing.
We both had no complaints about our meals - everything arrived very quickly, and was fresh and flavourful. Presentation was beautiful as well. I thought the shining star of my meal was the gnocchi, which was soft and pillowy and satisfied all my gnocchi needs. The service, however, left a lot to be desired. Our server seemed completely disinterested and we felt really rushed. As he was approaching the table beside ours, he slid our bill onto the table without a word before we were even finished our dessert. When I flagged him over to ask if we could possibly have separate bills, his response? "No." It was only after a confused, "Excuse me?" that he said he could just charge half of the bill onto each of our credit cards. He then proceeded to bring over the card machine, charge my card, and walk away while it was processing. Someone else eventually came over to complete the transaction, and when our server finally re-appeared several minutes later, he said to my friend, "You couldn't figure that out yourself?", suggesting that she should have charged her own card in the name of efficiency. She insisted that he was joking, but I didn't get a warm, jovial or friendly vibe from him at any point throughout the night.
Also, the atmosphere of this restaurant is pretty romantic, dim lights and all, but I found the tables to be squeezed really close together and the loud party of six seated right beside us was slightly overwhelming. Our table was tucked into a corner and I literally had to MacGyver myself into my seat by pulling the armchair out completely from under the table, sitting down, and sidling back into the corner. As we were leaving the restaurant (after practically being shoved out the doors by our server), we had to shuffle past a horde of people lined all the way up the stairs, and I didn't even have room to put my coat on before stepping out into the biting cold.
Overall, the food was spectacular (totally five-star worthy), but somehow I went away from the experience with a bad taste in my mouth due to the awful service. I can appreciate that restaurants and their employees are under a great deal of pressure during -licious events, but in my opinion the service we received wasn't bad in an "I'm-so-busy-I've-been-turning-over-tables-all-night-long-and-getting-less-tips" kind of way, but more of a flat-out rude kind of way. In contrast to the excellent -licious meal I had had the night before at another restaurant - service and all - I was really disappointed here. I would probably give The Corner House another chance for a date night, as the food and décor are lovely, but given that there are no dates in my near future I probably won't be rushing back here again.
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