I was really excited to try another of Matt Carter's restaurants because I am a big fan of The Mission and Zinc Bistro. Hopefully the night I visited was an \"off\" visit or this venture will fall VERY short of the other well established restaurants in this group!\n\nThe ambiance is very warm and welcoming, they do have that going for them. The waitress that we had was very disappointing though. Our party had a 9:15PM reservation on a Tuesday night and it was clear she wanted to leave from the moment we arrived. Throughout our meal, we felt so rushed and she was not shy about speeding the service up. They served our entrees to us 5 minutes after we started our appetizer course so we had a million plates on the table, and she asked more than once if we wanted our items wrapped to-go while we were clearly still eating. It was very irritating. She did not ask once throughout the meal how the food tasted. I can easily look past spotty service if the food makes up for it but this was not the case. \n\nNow for the food: on a side note, we were dining with a vegetarian friend (not a strict one, she eats fish and seafood as well). While I am anything but vegetarian, a well-equipped menu should ALWAYS have a few vegetarian options on hand. Her only option on the menu was a kale salad, which she said was very tasty but based on the limited nature of the menu, I would not recommend this restaurant for vegetarians. Seafood options had bacon and ham incorporated in to the dishes. We ordered two appetizers, the ham hock poutine and warm shrimp. The poutine was the only item we ordered of the night that I honestly enjoyed but the shrimp were bland (even though harissa was supposed to be in the dish!) and the very small type, though that was not specified on the menu. For entrees, we ordered the seared diver scallops, lamb ragout, and we were sent out a compted Pork Country Rib because we were dining with a former employee of a sister restaurant. The best dish was the pork one that we didn't even order, I have no complaints about that one, it was actually quite good. I found the lamb ragout to be lacking in flavor and the scallops were not seared, they were closer to steamed. Our side of crab fried rice was so salty that we couldn't eat more than one bite. After the average food, I was reluctant to order desert. \n\nIt is possible we visited on an off night and it is also possible we ordered all the wrong things but based on our experience, I will be sticking with The Mission.
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