A Disappointing Restaurant Review: Terroni's Yonge (At Price Street)

Terroni's is a restaurant that I have been wanting to try for a while. A major player in Toronto's restuarant scene told me this was one of his favourite restaurants he likes to dine at which made my expectations pretty high when I came through the door. We dined at the Yonge & Price Street location. The front of the restaurant that faces Yonge street is Bar Centrale however to the left of the restaurant is a side entrance which leads to the restaurant upstairs. The hostess was veyr nice and the atmosphere was really hip.

From the outside you can't really tell how big the building is but as you go up the stairs to the actual restaurant you see that Terroni's has a really nice amount of space with an open concept kitchen. We dined with another family. We decided to order a couple of pizzas and some salads to share as appetizers then we ordered our individual pasta dishes. It is important to note that throughout this entire process our glasses were not filled with water, we were not greeted or anything. There were plenty of servers that looked at our table and just walked past it. We waited for someone to greet us for more than 25 minutes then one of our friends had to get up and ask someone to come and take our order. This I found was quite disappointing. Not a great start to potential return customers.

Funghi Assoluti

The manager noticed we were quite upset and came over and welcomed us to the restaurant. Alittle late if I may say so myself. He informed us that he would be taking care of our table. We ordered a bottle of rose wine which was quite delicious.

We started the dinner off with:
1. Funghi Assoluti - Baked oyster mushrooms, parmigiano, bread crumbs, extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, arugola

This is a really popular item at Terroni's. I thought a mushroom salad would be pretty simple and that's about it. However this salad was quite delicious. There were different textures and flavours and the mushrooms were absolutely cooked to perfection. The balsamic vinaigrette added a nice acidic note to the dish.





 2. Nizzarda -  Arugola, italian tuna, potatoes, eggs, red onion, tomatoes, olives, green beans, anchovies 

Nizzarda

This is the Italian take on a Nicoise salad.  There wasn't really any dressing on the salad but there was really no need. As you may have noticed I love different textures in a dish. This one really spoke well with the tuna,  par boiled potatoes, hard boiled egg, and such.







3. We ordered the Capricciosa which had tomato, mozzarella, mushrooms, artichokes, olives with pits, italian ham. When I say tomato I mean like a really good tomato sauce. Neapolitan pizzas don't use like regular tomato sauces from a pizza chain. They take a long time to cook on a low simmer with a lot of love and care. Unfortunately I forgot to take photos of the pizzas they were so delicious. We also ordered a Margherita pizza which of course was delicious. The crust was flimsy and chewy which I like in my pizza.

4. For my pasta I ordered Cavatelli cu Pisci Spada which had handmade cavatelli, house smoked sword fish, fried eggplant, tomato sauce, basil, mint, chili. This dish was quite delicious. Although the pasta did look a little bit like maggots the pasta was absolutely delicious.

Cavatelli cu Pisci Spada

The pasta was cooked to perfection with a nice bite. There was a hint of smokiness from the sword fish which was nice. It was a very simple yet delicious dish with different levels of flavour. The only mint I saw in the dish was the garnish. However it did have a kick from the bit of chili in the dish.

 Other pasta dishes eaten at our table were:
Pappardelle alla Iosa - Homemade spicy sausage, button & oyster mushrooms, peas, parmigiano, extra-virgin olive oil

Spaghetti in Canna a Mare - Fresh clams and mussels, calamari, scallops and tiger shrimp, light tomato sauce.




The food at Terroni's was great and I will definitely come back because of it. I was quite disappointed that the manager did not do anything to go above and beyond to correct THEIR service mistake. One thing I have learned being a student of Hospitality is that you cannot correct a first impression. If he were to go above and beyond he would have offered a complimentary dessert or appetizer or even coffee especially if he wants us to try to forget that we were ignored for more than we should have. I recommend they learn some service points from a fine dining establishment like Oliver & Bonacini. You should always try to WOW the customer, I'm not just talking about our bad experience here but in general every restaurant should try to WOW the customer or else the customer wouldn't be coming back. Service recovery is extremely important to exceed customers expectations. Hopefully the service at this restaurant isn't always like this... only time will tell. 




KMW