| rev:text
| - Last Saturday, my girlfriends and I decided to have lunch at Spring Rolls after we had finished with our morning spa session at the Elmwood Spa since the spa is located close by.
I had been to the Spring Rolls chain restaurants numerous times (Yonge Street, Front Street, and Sheppard/Yonge) and the food and the experience has always been great. I actually have been to this Eaton Centre location previously two summers ago and recall that the food and service at that time had been good. So to my great detriment, I actually entered the restaurant with my girlfriends with high expectations (why wouldn't I? Its a chain isn't it? Aren't chains supposed to be consistent?). I realise that I had set myself up for a huge disappointment. Here is why....
The moment we got there we were seated right away. As we sat down, we only had Dim Sum menus so we had to ask for the regular menu. Then the waiter came by to ask us if we wanted any drinks. My girlfriends replied no and before I could also reply, the waiter had left to tend to another table next to us. So after he was done talking at the other table and turned around, I got his attention and asked him if i could get hot water with lemon because i had a sore throat.
So our waters came and the waiter had brought me hot water in the smallest coffee mug that I have ever seen in my life. Who does he think i am? A child age 5? There was also no lemon. Moving on....so our food came - we ordered beef pad Thai and the beef tasted off...like it had gone bad but they cooked it anyway. Strike no. 1 Our Chinese vegetable dish came too and that dish tasted fine. So we waited and waited but our green curry chicken rice dish did not show up. We had waited over an hour and the dish had not yet appeared. Could the kitchen have forgotten about our order? To hold us over we ordered two dim sum dishes. One of the dished - the shrimp dumplings was ok but the lotus leaf sticky rice was not only just luke warm, but the lotus leaf was dry as hay. We were suspicious as to how the lotus leaf could be dry if they had to steam the dish. Apparently the dish did not look fresh so we told them to take it back. So strike no. 2.
Then my girlfriend ordered a hot water from a different waiter and the waiter brought her this large Japanese teacup wrapped in a napkin with two lemons from the side. I was baffled and wondered why our own designated waiter had brought me the small mug which was half the size of the tea cup and no lemons. As i looked around at other tables i also noticed other patrons with the same large Japanese tea cup with hot water and lemons on the side. I was really under impressed with our waiter.
Then finally our green curry rice dish came out but the dish was luke warm and looked as though it had been sitting out for a long time. So we told one of the other waiters about this and the manager came to our table. We told him that our Beef was off in the pad Thai dish and that the lotus leaf dim sum dish was dry as hay, and that the curry rice dish looked like it had been sitting around for a long time. So the manager suggested that they remake the beef pad Thai and we just said no thanks. Then he said he would not charge us for that dish.
He took the chicken curry dish back to the kitchen and said he would ask them to make us a new one. So they come back with the same chicken dish a few minutes later (still lukewarm) but it looked like someone had just thrown the dish back into a wok and reheated it. So we ate it and nothing about the dish tasted fresh. The tofu tasted old, the vegetables were overcooked, and there was no flavor other than spiciness. I had this dish previously many times but it never tasted this bad before. Strike no. 3.
While we waited for our bill to come, we saw people sitting two tables down from us with food that arrived at their table with steam that was coming out of it. Not sure why their food looked hot as though it had just been prepared and everything we were served was not only not steaming, but looked like it had been sitting on the counter for over an hour (which incidentally is how long we had waited for our dish rice dish).
So, we paid for our food and left but by the end we couldn't order anything else there because we had all lost our appetite. The idea of eating anything else that was not fresh and potentially past expiry was more than what our minds could handle, nevermind our stomachs.
I was actually shocked that the food and the overall experience was so bad. Although the decor is nice, the service (maybe just our waiter) and the food was horrible. I do not recommend this location.
When you walk out of a restaurant wondering if you might be sick later in the day, its just not a good feeling. Luckily, none of us got sick. Eitherway, I still think I'd rather eat anywhere else but there because after 3 strikes, you are OUT.
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