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| - Oh, Fressen. I wanted so badly to like you. As a vegetarian, I *need* a place like you to exist. There just aren't that many good quality, tablecloth-ed vegetarian restaurants in Toronto that seat you more than one foot from your neighbour. A friend described Fressen as "like Cafe Flora in Seattle," so I had to try it out, but, oh, she got it so wrong.
First, the good: the restaurant is really beautiful. It's dimly lit, has funky trees growing out of the floors and painted trees on the walls. It feels fancy but also earthy. The servers are also friendly, if a little frazzled.
The bad: as some yelpers have noted, the wait is horrendous. After the appetizers arrived, my mom and I waited for FORTY MINUTES before a waitress came over to tell me that the kitchen was out of tempeh, so I'd have to choose a new dish. Really? It took the kitchen forty minutes to figure out they were out of a key ingredient essential to two other dishes on the menu? I have to take out my Seth Meyers on Weekend Update hat to shout in disbelief: REALLY?!
After reordering the tofu kebabs, we waited another 20 minutes for the food to arrive. It'd be one thing if the food was phenomenal and worth the wait, but my kebabs were a total disaster. Think: massive chunks of tofu, bell peppers and onions slathered in too-sweet barbecue sauce, cooked unevenly, then left on a counter to lose 80% of its heat. I was so hungry at this point, I didn't care. My mom's corn fusili, however, was even worse. It was cold. It was literally cold. So, it was sent back and my poor mom waited another ten minutes for her entree (total waiting time from appetizer to entree: 1:15).
It's clear that the kitchen is dysfunctional. At one point, I looked around the restaurant and noticed that no one in my eyesight had any food on their tables. Everyone was waiting. I also overheard from a waitress at the next table that four dishes were off the menu (plantain dumplings, mushrooms in filo pastry, and two tempeh dishes) - all by 7:30pm on a Saturday. What?!
The saving grace is that the servers were pretty nice. They were apologetic and took off one entree from the bill for our insanely long wait. That's the only reason why I'm giving Fressen 2 stars instead of 1. The decor and service are nice, but not nice enough to make up for the long wait and passable food. Total disappointment. It gives me no pleasure at all that I have one less vegetarian restaurant to go to in Toronto.
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