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| - I have a backlog of reviews to write, but I had to prioritize this restaurant first because I would avoid coming here at all cost. The food is not good (strike 1), the service is incredibly slow, (strike 2) and the price just makes you question the entire experience (yeah, you're out). This is just my 2nd 1-star review out of my 2 years on Yelp, so this 1-star decision was really difficult for me.
I've been here twice. My first experience was not so good. I ordered an appetizer at a friend's birthday dinner and the thing was dressed, covered, singing, and dancing in sea salt. There was no way I could take a bite without getting a mouth full of salt. (Please see picture). The clam-like things were also sprinkled with sea salt. It was impossible to scrape all the salt crystals off. There must have been something else that bothered me about Luma, because I still have a negative impression of the restaurant from my first time here, but I can't remember anything aside from the Salt Dish. (Seriously, what kind of dish concept was that???)
I forgot this restaurant even existed until my other friend and I were walking into Luma. It then dawned upon me that we would be getting the worst of the worst. I should have realized this was *THE* *TERRIBLE* *RESTAURANT* as I was the the one who made the reservation. In my defense, I probably blocked it out of my memory because it was so bad.
I made a reservation for 6 on OpenTable for Winterlicious on a Wednesday evening and I indicated in the Notes section that it was for a friend's birthday. I usually put additional notes for special events because I never want to pick a bad restaurant for a friend's party! The additional notes is just for me to tell the people working to PLEASE be timely with the food and make it extra tasty.
We arrived at 6, and we were seated on the complete other side of the window that was facing King. My Birthday Friend's GF asked the waitress if we could move towards the window since there were a lot of free tables. The waitress said no, that we were not allowed to sit by the windows. I didn't know how more VIP I was supposed to be for sitting there. I made reservations crazy early in advance, and plus, it was someone's birthday. In hindsight, I'm assuming they don't put their Winterlicious guests there.
The service seemed to be really slow, ESPECIALLY for Winterlicious when the menu is already set. We arrived at 6 and we didn't even end up leaving the restaurant until 8:30ish because no one would come pick up our food or give us our bills. I don't remember the last time I was at a restaurant for over 2 hours, especially for Winterlicious. Honestly, I thought we'd be done in an hour.
For the appetizers, I ordered the sweet potato soup and it was just underwhelming. There was nothing special about it, but a drizzle of olive oil. Birthday Friend's bone marrow was pretty much all bone.
And then my roasted trout came. The brussel sprouts on my plate was incredible, that was really good, but the star of dish was plain. For a Winterlicious meal that was $43, I could't believe the skin on my trout was NOT CRISPY. I'm sure roasted fish can still be crispy. The eggplant puree? whatever it was (it's the brown stuff in the picture) just tasted nasty to me. I didn't realize it was eggplant until my friend asked me, "Did you think the eggplant was really salty?"
I'm not sure why the dessert took 20 minutes to come out. While we waited, I was really regretting come to the restaurant. The dessert was good, but way too sweet for me to finish.
TLDR; If you're looking for upscale Canadian cuisine, just avoid coming here at all. To an extent, I can excuse bad food and bad service for an inexpensive meal, but I cannot excuse bad food and bad service for a crazy expensive meal.
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