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| - I'm a long time customer of the Mercatto restaurants (usually on Toronto St. but now several visits to the one in the Eaton Centre), and I've never had anything less than exceptional experiences. I rave about Mercatto to friends and look forward to each trip. Other than the fantastic food, I also go back for the knowledgeable and outstanding service - it's to me one of the hallmarks of going to Mercatto; fantastic food and wonderful service - and this has always been my experience, until this past weekend.
My friend and I had made a reservation, arrived on time and were shown to our table as per usual. Hostess was charming, our server was prompt to our table and all seemed well. I am not certain if our server was new, had too many tables or what, while pleasant she seemed uncertain, offered no additional knowledge and throughout our meal we had to wave her down for everything (water, drinks, our bill).
The most glaring example was when our mains (we both ordered the mushroom risotto) arrived while we'd barely started our appetisers (which also arrived very quickly as we'd ordered the Antipasto grande to start and had barely started eating when soup and salad arrived) so imagine our surprise when a food runner appeared to attempt to crowd even more dishes onto our table. We asked her to take them back (she said that they'd be kept warm for us!) as we were nowhere near ready for them. We called our server over to explain our dismay and her explanation was that she thought it was busier than it was and she'd put the tickets in all at once. But not to worry that they'd make us new mains, not the 'kept warm' ones the food runner had mentioned. At that time I should have asked to speak to the manager but assumed that the server would do something to make the situation right, perhaps offer dessert or a drink, but that did not happen.
When our mains did arrive they were a disappointment - and I've never said that about a meal at Mercatto - they were bland, had an excess of butter (perhaps this is how they were rewarmed instead of new ones being made?), and was not the creamy flavourful risotto we expected, no one offered us pepper and our waitress took a very long time to check on us.
For a visit that we were looking forward to, that started out so well to turn out to be such a disappointment; well, it will make me reconsider a visit to this particular Mercatto in the future.
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