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| - Goddamn it I love this place. Every time I come home from school in the US my parents take me here. I'm 20 freaking years old and I still love it.
No, it's not going to be gourmet Italian food. If you want that, hop on a plane to Italy or shell out $200 or so at some fancy place downtown.
SUMMARY
What you do get here is lots of good, solid, yummy food and good service in a nicely decorated place. There's really nothing you could complain about for the price.
LOCATION/VENUE SIZE
Yes, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. But our house is a 5 minute drive away. And it's probably here for the same reason that our house is - property prices are cheaper out here, which is why this place is huge and never seems to run out of tables. Or parking. +2 brownie points.
FOOD
Selection of food is quite large. Everything is kept very warm and never seems to run out, even though batch sizes are small and fresh.
Some will call the food bland and low-quality, some will love the stuff. It all depends on your taste buds, what you grew up with, how picky you are. My inner foodie loves sitting down at some expensive restaurant and shelling out $80 for a tiny portion of some exotic sea-cucumber stuffed truffle-oiled tortellini in an over-sized plate. But our family came here and built a life out of nothing just like most of the immigrants in this area, and sometimes all my taste buds want is a nice hearty homestyle meal. That's what you come to this place for. I don't know about you but I find the middle class-ness of it all very charming and comforting. It's a grounded place. There's no pretense here.
SERVICE
Have never experienced bad service here. Waiters are mostly students or local area working immigrants. They are polite, helpful, and good at their jobs. We always feel like they deserve to be tipped well.
DECOR
The outside has this large leaning-tower thing - some might find it tacky, as a kid I thought it was super cool, haha. There's statues and some cutouts of Roman figures. Inside is actually much nicer than you might expect for an AYCE buffet out in Markham: the place is huge but divided up into little passages and enclaves so it doesn't feel massive. Walls have a neat plaster effect and there are all kinds of interesting items scattered around such as statues, trees, plaster busts, paintings, etc. There's even a wall of wine bottles. Again, some might find it tacky, but I thought it was all very well-coordinated - and as a kid I thought it was the coolest place. Screw the haters.
OTHER
Bathrooms are big and clean. They also play a tape in the bathroom that teaches you Italian verbs, which I thought was neat.
The few times that we've had to wait here, we arrived right in the middle of the dinner rush and even then only waited about 10 minutes.
The clientele will be mostly middle-class families with their kids, occasionally a bunch of teenagers doing a birthday thing, etc. Staff will gather around and sing a birthday song. Sometimes a guy walks around with an accordion (he's not bad either). We've never seen any of the shows that they put on, but during normal hours it's just a nice a meal with lots of buzz in the background.
Just give it a try - if you hate it, you'll only lose anywhere between $14 - $25 depending on the time of day that you came, and you'll definitely walk out full. But I don't think you're going to hate it at all :)
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