| rev:text
| - I came here to celebrate my girlfriend's birthday last Monday. We were recommended Simple Bistro from one of her friends who had eaten here a couple years back and she had rave reviews about this place and we'd been meaning to check this place out for awhile. When we got there it wasn't too busy, about a third of the restaurant was full I would say. We brought our own bottle of wine based on the restaurant's website encouraging its patrons to make use of their BYOW policy. When my girlfriend went to wash her hands before the meal I told our server that it was her birthday and asked if they did anything special. The waitress said that they usually provide a free dessert to which I said that would be nice.
Meal: We ordered a charcuterie board and escargots to share for apps, and I had the duck confit while my girlfriend ordered the short ribs. The charcuterie board was really underwhelming. The meat tasted like the salami you buy in grocery stores. There were two kinds of salami - just a regular one and the same salami cut with parmasan wrapped around it. Based on the charcuterie boards we've ordered from other restaurants in Toronto I think I was expecting a nice board of house-cured meats but didn't get it. Even with modest expectations this was a pretty bland dish. My girlfriend also commented that the bread they serve is likely store-bought (she bakes bread at home and can usually tell when something is homemade). The escargots was pretty decent, although REALLY creamy.
The duck confit I had, the duck was nicely cooked but the dish, overall, was really salty and lacking in flavour. It got to the point where I had to accompany bread with every bite I took of the dish to offset the saltiness. The short rib dish was much better tasting I would say.
Service: Atrocious especially considering how unbusy the place was. Our service started off attentive but after we ordered our meal, the waitress only came by once to fill our glass up with wine and bring out our plates. She never once asked how our meal was, if we needed anything etc. She was much more attentive to a couple other tables which seemed like it was comprised of regulars. Also, the free birthday dessert she had promised earlier never came. We finished our main and probably waited for a good ten minutes before we could get her attention again. At that point we were ready to go and once I was finally able to flag her down she came by with the dessert menu and asked if we wanted to order anything off of it. We said no thanks and just grabbed the bill. Once we got the bill I noticed that she charged us $30 for our corkage fee when I knew from their site that it should've been $20. I asked her about this and she said "my mistake I thought it was the weekend." Really, you didn't even know what day it was? Come on, it's small details like that that really separate service standards. On that note I also asked her about the birthday dessert and she said she had forgotten because she was so busy. Not sure what her definition of busy is but the place was less than half full at any given point we were there.
I paid the bill and left quite disappointed and dissatisfied with our dining experience.
Our experience certainly was not reflective of the one my girlfriend's friend told us she had a couple years ago. The dishes were mediocre and the service very amateurish. Perhaps they were just having an off-night but there were a lot of strikes all night and based on the experience I had, I certainly could not recommend this place to anyone.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)