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| - I've been wanting to check out the Ceili Cottage for a while and made plans with friends, who have been there before, to attend on a Friday evening. They put their names on the yurt waiting list (seeing as how we all wanted to experience the supposed magic of the yurt), but we somehow never made it far enough on the list. We were also never told where we were on the list, despite very specific requests.
I had the steak special, which was $28 and a perfectly cooked tenderloin. The sides were fine, if a little sparse... but the meal itself was fairly bland. For $28 I would expect the steak to have some seasoning to it. There wasn't even salt and pepper on the table in case you wanted to add more flavour.
Much like others have commented, the server was aggressive about turning the table. We had two friends come after we ate our steaks, and had yet to order dessert and the server was already asking us to move to the bar if we wanted to have another drink. We asked where we were on the yurt list, and whether giving up the table would move us to the top of the yurt list, but she just shook her head before flouncing off. She seemed annoyed that our friends were standing at our table (it was a high top), even though they were out of the way and were spending money. They likely would have spent more, or ordered some snacks, had they not felt so rushed. We put our dessert order in, as our friends really wanted the sticky toffee pudding, finished our drinks and settled up the bill.
There was a group performing some short highland dancing to raise awareness of Robbie Burns and it was fun to watch - I just wish our server had waited until between numbers (the songs were about 30 seconds to a minute long and there were four in total) or after the performance to take our order.
I love that there's a reasonably priced (~$6.20/pint) cask program here and would probably return just for a quick drink before eating elsewhere in Leslieville. There are far too many restaurants in Toronto to explore before returning to one so mediocre.
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