| rev:text
| - Alice Fazooli's is what Milestones, Jack Astors, Tipsy McStaggers, et al should be; a chain sit-down restaurant that actually services food you're not eating merely because you're here with 8 coworkers or it's some place that won't offend your parents but menu prices are high enough your parents feel like they're treating you to something special.
I had the Italian meatball sandwich with fries. Considering you get a nice bread basket to start, the $8 price tag was an amazing deal. The calamari, while not the best I've ever had, certainly rates for those looking to get their dose of fried goodness.
Decor is earthy. Booths are great for intimate conversations with your neighbor about leaking condo penthouse units but not so isolating that you don't feel removed from a lively downtown eatery.
Service was good if a bit uneven. Nothing major, really.
They do soak you a bit for the draft. $8 for half a pint?
This would probably be a 3 star review if it weren't a chain but it manages to rise above chain blandness, pulling off a PF Chang's in the world of Italian.
Okay that said, I need to get this story into the official history. It was roughly 1991. I was working as a DTP person at SunLife downtown. It was my first job out of university. My coworkers and I heard about this new restaurant called Alice Fazooli's. It was going to take the downtown dining community by storm. Toronto was also still in the grips of the 1991 recession. Downtown restaurants had seen their lunch crowds melt away and a new player on the scene was not welcome.
The Investments Systems Support crew took in lunch at Alice Fazooli's during its opening week. The food was great. They had aligator on the menu back then. The meal was rounded out with some pans of buttery garlic bread. Even after a nice meal we were ready to tuck into these pans of bread. As we broke the bread, hundreds of live red ants came pouring out of the bread and crawled all over our table and food.
WTF?
We couldn't believe what we were seeing. We called a waitress over. She seemed at a loss as to what to do. A suggestion to maybe, at least, remove the ant infested bread seemed ignored.
A manager took charge. Here's what he was going to do. We would have to pay for our meals. But, for our trouble, he gave us all coupons for a free dessert upon our next visit and purchase of a meal. And the coupon had to be used within a few weeks.
Errr...
Like good Canadians circa 1991 we paid our bill and graciously accepted the nearly worthless coupons.
Clearly another restaurant tried to sabotage AF's opening week. But I still think back to that day and wonder how we could have been so meek and complacent that we wouldn't have pointed out half our table was ready to vomit and they still wanted to charge us? For serving us living ants?
That said, I'm happy to see Alice Fazooli's, a decade on, is no longer plagued by ant bread.
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