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| - This place is definitely overrated and overhyped, especially by the millennial, East-Asian demographic that populate the surrounding city of Markham.
Food: 2.5 (out of 5)
Service: 0
Setting: 2
Overall: 1.5
SERVICE:
Let's start with the main reason why this place left such a disappointing and bad taste in our mouths: BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE.
It honestly does not matter to me if the food tastes heavenly and is at a Michelin-star level (which it did not, in this case), if a restaurant cannot even get the basics of customer service right. I mean, when you dine out at a restaurant, you are not simply there to enjoy the food; it is an entire package that you are paying for. They don't call it the hospitality industry for nothing.
Upon arrival, I was greeted by three different hosts at the same time, and felt a bit ambushed as all three were talking to me at the same time. I arrived at 7:05pm for our reservation at 7:00pm. I found my friend who was already sitting and waiting by the front, and joined her, but neither of us were told how much longer the wait would be, as if they were happily complacent to get us off their chests, without having to deliver a table in the moment that we greeted each other. The various hosts proceeded to assist others who had shown up after us, and brought them to their tables, without any communication or response as to why we were not seated yet in a dining room full of empty tables. By now, it was 7:15. We were finally seated around 7:30 by the male host in glasses, which would have made sense if they had apologized for the long wait time or some kind of valid explanation, but again, nothing was communicated.
We ordered two appetizers, and two mains to share amongst us: Bone Marrow, Fried Brussel Sprouts, Lamb Sirloin, and Torched Salmon.
Throughout the meal, even when there was food left on the plate, we were constantly greeted by different waitresses who wanted to clear our plates, and kept asking if we were done, or still working on them. This is one of my biggest pet peeves, when dining out. If the food still has food on it, stop coming around every 2 minutes, asking if we're done. We are clearly not done. By the fourth time, we had to stop and take a look behind us to see if there was a lineup out the door (there was no one waiting), as we felt we were being rushed and kicked out.
Finally, the worst part of the meal was at the end when we were all paying for our bills separately. Our waitress, Joyce, left us, quite unprofessionally, mid-service to deal with another table, so I helped my friend click on the same amount on the machine, so we could speed up the process, as our waitress was still not back, to assist. We all had our receipts confirming payment sitting on the table, when she finally came back to take the machines away, along with the four merchant copies of receipts.
Two minutes later, she came back all stern and accusatory-looking, and said, "I believe one of you didn't pay. I'm missing one of your payments." We were shocked that she said that, when all of us clearly paid, and showed her our receipts one by one. And she literally went through our credit card numbers and invoice numbers one by one, out loud, in an accusatory tone. This was hilarious to me, because one of our friends was asked if she wanted a copy of the receipt and she said, "No," but now we were questioned on why we didn't have them all. I felt like we were being interrogated in a police station, rather than sitting in a supposedly nice restaurant in the middle of Main Street, Unionville. Joyce went away to further investigate, and came back realizing her mistake. However, rather than starting with "Sorry," we were reprimanded for trying to help her out by continuing the payment process. Isn't the number one rule of customer service is that 'the customer is always right,' especially in the sense that you should definitely NOT be blaming the customer for your own mistake?
FOOD:
In terms of the food, we all agreed it was decent, edible, but not amazing or as extraordinary as social media had depicted, which was the most disappointing part, especially when our waitress, Joyce, upsold and claimed the particular menu items we ordered were "...the most popular and so good, as you can probably see all over Instagram."
The Lamb Sirloin (CAD$24) was a perfect example of this 'Expectation vs. Reality' disappointment. The restaurant's own IG handle posted a delicious-looking full-sized plate of lamb sirloin pieces with cauliflower, sundried tomato, almonds, hummus, fresh basil, arugula and pomegranate. Clearly, our much smaller dish looked quite different, with: very FEW pieces of burnt-tasting cold BBQ lamb, cherry tomato halves instead of sundried tomato, no almonds, no basil, and no pomegranate. We pretty much got half of what the menu listed, and the plate looked like half the version of what they show on Instagram.
Overall, service was terrible and food was overhyped and disappointing.
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