Aria Ristorante

This place lived up to its poor rating. Had a table of 8 at 6pm the Saturday night of the NBA All-​Star weekend. Since it is located steps from the arena, we thought this was a great way to start the night. Wrong. Drinks were ordered immediately and delivered 30 minutes later — guess the All-​Star game caught them by surprise. Sensing they were «off» we placed out dinner orders right way. An hour and 15 minutes later, «they are being plated right now» was the response. The manager acted like this was our fault and had a horrible attitude. My salad was forgotten, the veal was bland, the fish was «average» and the steaks under cooked. Not once during this two hour debacle did anyone ask to take a second drink order. Only apologies from a hapless and overwhelmed waiter. Net, we ate our below average food in 5 minutes and rushed to the game — with zero follow up from the manager. If he reads this I would say, «you’re welcome for the $ 600 bill we dropped and I would suggest you change professions.»
Of course I wouldn’t recommend going there, but my belief is that with service like this, they won’t be in business much longer — saving other diners from the experience we had.

Went here the other day before the NBA rookies game and True North after party with Usher and Gwen Stefani performing.
Anyhow, the service was really slow even though it wasn’t busy at all. The appetizers took about 20 minutes or so to come (I had some sort of balls — can’t remember what they were called but they were yummy but it was a tiny dish). Entrees took around 30 minutes to come but it was ok cause we had some time. The risotto didn’t look very aesthetically pleasing but tasted ok. Also, had the swordfish which was really bland.
We then ordered dessert which took 45 minutes to come so we were a bit late for the game. We had the brownie with a scoop of ice cream on top (can’t remember the name) and it tasted very average.
For this price point everything should be great. However, the food here was just average and the service was slow so I would not go back again.

We went to Aria before the NBA All Star Saturday night skills competition. We had the fried stuffed olives as an appetizer which were good. For our meals, we had the sausage risotto and the mushroom ravioli, both of which were amazing! That’s where we should have stopped, but we had dessert… We order a tiramisu that was suppose t have a subtle cherry taste, but it had cherries all over it and in it. That was all you could taste and we asked to change it, as it as awful. We had the Nutella brownie with peanut butter ice cream. The brownie was crunchy and stale. A waste of calories. The restaurant removed the dessert from out bill which was appreciated, but a sad way to end an otherwise great meal! The other weird thing was you have to leave the restaurant to go to the washroom…

This place is terrible. They should be embrassed to actually serve the food that comes out of their kitchen. Went there with clients and I’m 99% sure I got food poisoning. They did not have any of the special we were told about when we arrived.
And the bathroom is not in the restaurant which isn’t a big deal but not exactly what I would call classy to bring clients too.
PLEASE STAY AWAY!!!

This restaurant is designed to extract dollars from the unsuspecting basketball fan or wealthy financial professional. The staff are rude and unprofessional, menu prices are exorbitant for the portions received.
On my visit to the restaurant, we arrived with a group of 12. I was tasked with ordering the wine and asked if it was possible to sample the wine before committing to a $ 75 bottle. The waitress told me «once it’s opened, it’s yours». That’s OK, par for the course for some establishments. What I didn’t expect was a follow-​up statement, «I’ve never heard of any restaurants doing that». Thank you for your insight.
When it came time to order, one of our guests had questions about gluten and dairy restrictions and wanted to know if the chef offered substitutions. The waitress promptly shut him down by saying its not possible and began listing off potential changes to the dish — all of which without actually consulting anyone in the kitchen.
Service issues aside, our food took a whopping 1.5 hrs to arrive from seating to food on table. By which point, the restaurant was half empty. In all fairness, it took 50 minutes to take our orders, and only about 40 minutes to serve our large group.
The food, while delicious, is relatively small with regards to portions. Diners be warned, aria is tolerable for a company outing, but avoid it like the plague if spending your hard earned dollars.

Dinner for 3 on Sept 3 was a disaster. The floor and kitchen were reportedly slammed and despite only a modest number of guests, service struggled. One nearby rude guest started the downhill slide. The adjacent table getting burnt toast atop their food was the next warning. The the slide continued. Veal, raw along the bone. Salad sans any dressing let alone the advertised one. Bland pasta in a watery red sauce. Ouch. The server was polite and tried but at any price, let alone $ 200, this is not a place I will return to.

The restaurant was less than half full when I got there. As time went it actually got emptier. I don’t know if it’s always like that. The wine selection was good. I ordered a risotto for my main meal. It looked like oatmeal! It was tasty though. I had a tiramisu for dessert. It came in a black bowl not a plate. It was pretty strong and I could eat only half of it. Service could have been a little better. One waitress asked me «are you full?» when taking my plate away. I was like ?? Overall I expected a little more.

Good location, therefore no effort in food or service. The waitress looked like she didn’t want to be there and the fake smile was just sad.
Veal chop for $ 45 that is basically fried pork chops (except it’s veal… maybe)
Server didn’t bother giving us steak knives so we were working pretty hard to get a bite.
I had the pork belly where the skin was so chewy it got stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Really really sad. I had lunch just last week and the food was better. Too bad it’s so inconsistent.

Location, location, location! Great pre-​game fine-​dining restaurant with fantastic modern décor/​lighting and super friendly service. Fun being right beside the Raptors «Jurrassic Park» and being able to see the excitement on the gigantic screen out the windows. Excellent wine list. Delicious and high quality appetizers. Serving size of main dishes on the small side. Service slightly slow … no one wants to miss game action while waiting for dinner to be served.

I was surprised to see all the bad reviews on here given a couple of great visits to this place on my end. One was an after work dinner with some colleagues and the other was with my husband for winterlicious. Full disclosure, I would probably not pick an Italian place for a fancy dinner; just a personal preference. This place though has helped change my mind. The food is very good: modern without trying too hard and quite rich. Small portions that really hit the spot. And the fact that they had a strong offering for winterlicious was a nice surprise. Their wine list is very good as well. Nice ambience where the music is not blaring so you can actually have a conversation, imagine that…

If you’ve got nothing better to do with your day, this is the place for you. The hostess behaved as if we owed her something when we arrived. Once we were seated, three waiters stood around and gossiped amongst each other before one of them decided to approach 10 minutes later. The best part of the meal experience was the appetizer — a burrata cheese with tomatoes, 6 slices of crostini and a bunch of sliced baby tomatoes. There was way more cheese than there was crostini; which would have been great if they had offered to bring out more crostini and as much as I enjoy cheese, eating an excessive amount of burrata without anything to spread it out gets a bit ‘eh’ after awhile. Next came the entrée: I decided to order the Snowy Grouper. I love grouper. It’s a great fish. This grouper… was not. Not only did it arrive way under cooked, it tasted freezer burned. As our waiter was MIA, we asked another waiter walking by if he could take dish back as it was under cooked. It arrived ten minutes later, neatly presented, leaving us to assume that they’d made a new dish. But oh no, no, no… it was the same piece of fish, this time as tough as a well done steak. During our hour and a half here, one table sent back two dishes and another table got up and left after waiting around for 20 minutes to get some service. Avoid this place if you want to actually enjoy your meal, don’t get caught up in the fancy interior, it’s just a façade for the horrors it’s hiding.

Food came cold and took forever. We had a group of 16 (not 50!) and they blamed it on the fact that we went off the menu and didn’t have a pre-​set menu. It was empty too… Not a surprise, given how terrible the service was. I’ll never be back.

Probably a 2.5 on my scale.
They were good at getting us fed in time for the game. Food was fine but not up to the quality their price point would suggest.
Waiter however was excellent and the wine selection was good.

This restaurant was featured as one of the must-​try for their winterlicious menu.
The scallops I had as an appetizer were salty. The scorpion fish pasta (I know why on earth would anyone order something like that) had sand in it and the pasta was under cooked. The best part of the meal was dessert;it was a lemon custard with pop rocks, at least that was somewhat creative.
Overall my experience here was not good at all. I can think of a dozen places where I rather spend my $ 45

We had the Aria winterlicious menu. My expectations were low given the location — you will expect and get over flow from any ACC events and it brings down the quiet, classy atmosphere they’re chasing.
We had the sea scallops and steak tartara to start. The scallops were cooked well, but on the salty side. The tartara was very generous and delicious — definitely get this if you aren’t afraid of raw meat. I went with the veal cheeks for the main, while my gf had the scorpion fish pasta. Again, the veal was very generous but on the saucy side. Not bad for a Winterlicious serving. The Scorpion fish was below average. I like my pasta on the hard side, but if you don’t you won’t like the way they cook it. Never having had scorpion fish before, it’s more of a grainy white fish. For dessert, we had the panna cotta and piemonte. Both the highlights of our meal (aside from the tartara). The poprocks in the panna cotta add a nice surprise, and the piemonte was decadent.
Service was meh. I didn’t expect much, as it was winterlicious. The server did the job and gave us our booze and food, but nothing memorable. Overall, Aria is an OK spot to go to if you are going to see a game, but somewhat of a touristy fine dining trap.

Overall a poor experience. I’ve been wanting to go here for a few years now since seeing a review in Toronto Life and I figured Valentine’s Day was as a good of a day as any to try it. The restaurant is situated directly in front of the ACC big screen which definitely takes away from the ambiance they are attempting to create.
Upon first arriving I used the restroom which is situated outside of the restaurant under lock and key. Considering it’s limited access to restaurant attendants and not to those attending the ACC, I wouldn’t have expected it to be as completely filthy as a restroom at a concert. There was water all over the floor, which was also strewn with all of the paper towel, preventing me from being able to dry my hands.
The wine list was somewhat limited in varietals as well as quite overpriced. Our server also having somewhat of a condescending tone when asking me questions about my preferences for a bottle, but my confusion was due to his poor questioning rather than my lack of wine knowledge. His attitude seemed to persist throughout our evening, which was the only consistent thing about him.
The meal:
Appetizer
Steak Tartare — Fresh, pleasant but with an over-​abundace of lemon
Entrees
Rainbow Trout — A decent entrée overall but somewhat bland
Veal Cheeks — Overwhelmingly rich and over-​seasoned. I’ve had much better.
Desserts
Bonet Piemontese — Light and airy, chocolate flan-​like dessert. Not bad with a nice compliment of amaretto gelato and caramel
Olive Oil Cake — The cake was nice and not overly heavy either. It was complimented with mascarpone and lemon curd but I could have done without the candied fruit and micro-​basil
Overall, nothing impressive in comparison to the other excellent Italian restaurants in this city and I won’t be coming back nor recommending it. I feel this was a poor choice for Valentine’s Day due to the overall environment, the short Justin Timberlake remix playlist on repeat, poor service and the inadequate food. I would pass.

My friends and I went to Aria for this year’s Winterlicious. I picked Aria because of the recommendations from many Toronto blogs. I chose the steak tartare, braised veal cheeks and the chocolate bonet dessert. For $ 45, this is one place you need to head to for Winterlicious.
The veal cheeks were the most tender cheeks I have ever had. A knife was not required for this dish. The cheeks were sitting on top of a potato/​pumpkin purée which really enhanced the flavour of the meat. It was my first time having steak tartare and I enjoyed every bite of it. The texture at first can be unusual but as you dig in more, you start to enjoy it more and more.
Since the weather was pretty bad Saturday night, there were no issues with service. The server checked with us regularly and engaged in a friendly conversation about cheeks!

What I expected from an Italian restaurant: Remarkably rich food served in medium to large portions served by loveable waiters/​waitresses.
What I actually experienced: Bland food served in small portions (except for the main — although I wouldn’t mind having less of it) served by an emotionless waiter.
I went to Aria for Summerlicious and ordered the watermelon salad (literally 7 cubes of watermelon), the «Entrecôte» (served medium rare but the meat was very chewy and it was lukewarm — blech!), and their house spun gelato served in espresso (this was okay, but nothing special).
1 star for the food.
Overall rating of 2 stars because the décor was nice. And although the waiter lacked personality, he was helpful nonetheless.

Worst dining experience of my life. We had a business dinner with clients and thank God we already had their business. We started out with the wrong menus, not a huge deal but just the beginning.
We ordered our food and I am positive they lost the order as it took 2:45 minutes to get served. When we questioned what the problem was, we were told they were having issues that night. That really wasn’t our problem!
The final and worst past of the evening was when a pregnant woman in our group found a band aid in her dinner. And she had actually been chewing on it not knowing what it was!
Any restaurant with quality service would have known that between the duration to get the meal, and the band aid, there should not have been a bill. But, there was. They gave us a free half bottle of wine and took off the meal with the band aid.
And to complete the evening, our waiter never apologized once.
Do not eat at this restaurant.

The food was good.
That’s pretty much the only positive thing I can say about our experience at Aria.
When you go for dinner, you expect to feel special. Here, we felt like cattle. Herded into what was essentially an oversized junkyloft condominium. Plopped down in the middle of the open room. Stared at by social climbers and mid-​priced escorts.
Then there was the rush.
We had just finished ordering and our pre-​prepared appetizers were already on their way to the table. Several minutes later, the bread came… followed by the wine. No sooner than our last bite, and the plates were whisked away into the ether. They were immediately replaced with the next course. No time in between. The whole dinner couldn’t have lasted much more than half an hour. The timing and pacing of the meal was horrendous.

Sometimes, you go into a restaurant and you feel like romance was in the air. Here, it seemed like every other person in the room was on an online date.
I guess telling your online date that you’re having dinner at «Maple Leaf Square» has a nicer ring to it than «the abandoned railyards turned prefab jungle behind union station».
I am constantly amazed at people who believe that just because a place is shiny and very expensive, it is classy. This is a classless shell of a restaurant, a pathetic mess of slimy lawyers and the over-​madeup. What’s decent in food can be found in any of the other 10 000 restaurants in this city.
It’s a place where you’re made to feel like you’ve snuck into the party, but it’s still lamer than you expected.

Avoid.