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| - My friend and I had a voucher to try this place out. It has a prime location just across from the Wellesley TTC station, in the old Biryani House / Spice Village restaurant. Patio season is long over; so we went upstairs to the large bar/restaurant area. They had decorated the downstairs very festively for Halloween.
We arrived at 11:30am for an early lunch. When we were seated, the waitress told us we could only order from the breakfast menu until noon, when the lunch menu would begin. We were both stunned. Bear in mind that at this time of day, the restaurant was completely empty. And on a business day, 11:30am is a perfectly acceptable lunchtime particularly for take-out and delivery. I would have expected them to invite us to order drinks, maybe sit us down with menus, and hurry along the chef to expedite the process - but the waitress just stood firm. We were in no mood for breakfast, or this lack of flexibility.
Without a voucher, I would have just walked out and never come back. But we had a short errand to run in the area anyway; so we told them we would be back at noon. On the way out the manager stopped us and asked if anything was the matter. We said we wanted lunch, not breakfast. He said ok and let us leave, making no attempt as above. When we returned at noon, there were maybe 2 tables occupied besides ours - still deathly quiet.
They have good drink specials; so I ordered a $4 Caesar. It was nice and spicy and decently strong, but I did not like the look of the rimmed glass or the lemon and lime wedges. They looked like they had sitting around for a while.
Lunch specials come with choice of soup of the day or salad, plus a soft drink. We both ordered the pumpkin soup. It was a fairly sweet puree, but there was a nice use of coconut milk. My friend found it too thick, but I thought it was just right. We both agreed it could have used more spice, like curry or hot chili.
I ordered the salmon entree ($13), following the waitress' recommendation that the salmon is very fresh, never frozen. It was the one bright spot of the entire meal: a decent-sized filet pan-fried to a perfect medium-rare and well-seasoned. It was served on a mound of avocado puree, along with grilled king oyster mushroom slices and 3 grilled asparagus spears. This was a good dish.
My friend ordered the spaghetti aglio e olio (w/ garlic & oil - $11), and it was very disappointing. There was hardly any oil at all, so little that when she tried to twirl the pasta, her fork lifted the entire block of noodles off the plate. There was a scant amount of spinach, but a mound of black olives and sun-dried tomatoes - it resembled puttanesca more than anything. The grano padano shavings on top looked very, very dry - as if shaved well in advance and dried out in the fridge. Our guess is that this dish was prepared in advance and microwaved. This was a complete flop.
For dessert (which took a disproportionately long time to arrive) I had the nutella parfait, and my friend had the lemon tiramisu ($6 each). Both were essentially Dream Whip-type mousses with a few toppings. Let's put it this way. Have you ever tried tiramisu from one of those Chinatown bakeries that sells 6 sweet buns for $6? This is the level of what you are getting here. The nutella parfait was garnished with crushed peanuts and Skor Bar chunks. The tiramisu is a misnomer - this was a lemon-less mousse (again, Dream Whip or some equivalent - none of the texture that real cream or mascarpone gives) topped with crushed lady fingers and candied lemon peel. These were utter failures in both concept and execution. Awful.
One problem worth noting is that throughout the meal we were bothered by fruit flies. You know what that means - typically, an accumulation of trash or old stock somewhere. The place looked ok to the naked eye. Neither of us used their washroom facilities.
Service was very uneven throughout, even barring the initial lack of flexibility. Our waitress was very attentive at the onset, asking us if everything was ok at every stage. Later on, she was much less visible, and she never seemed to pick up on when we were done with dishes or menus. There also looked to be a miscalculation on the bill (I am pretty sure we overpaid by at least $5), but we could not be bothered to sort it out. We just wanted out of there.
I rarely give such a harsh review, but I expect more effort from a new business to gain customers. I hope this place does better with its tapas menu, because the neighbourhood could use a nice, reasonably priced place. The venue is huge, and I have a hard time believing it will survive until next patio season. There is potential here, but with all these problems we will not be returning to see if it is ever realized.
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