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2007-06-01
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I would like to express my major disappointment with the dining experience my friends and wife had at Isola Restaurant at IFC on Friday, May 25, 2007. As someone who utterly enjoys good food and service, I had hoped to introduce my wife to this lovely restaurant and to have a great evening night out with my friends, who were another couple. It was a rare event to have no children with us for both couples, so we were eagerly anticipating a good dining experience. Right from the start, the leve
We ordered some appetizers or anti-pasta to start but we also wanted to share. The appetizer food came but the table could not accommodate all of the dishes at the centre of the table. We ended up putting some dishes on the edge of the table, or rushing to finish some of the food to free up the table space. After the appetizers were all finished and dishes removed, the entrees arrived. But this time around, the waiter decided it was best to unfold the hidden segments of the table to enlarge it. We were left puzzled why the staff did not do this earlier when we had the same problem with the appetizer dishes. Disappointment #2, lack of proactive service led to us not fully enjoying our appetizers.
Disappointment #3…the seafood was not fresh and made my friend's wife sick afterwards. We ordered for the entrees the grilled prawns, the black cod fish, the seafood risotto and a pizza with truffles. The fish was not as fresh as I had hoped but I had come to realize that black cod is usually supplied frozen but Isola really did not make it any better than if I had bought it frozen and cooked it myself. For the seafood risotto, it was very hard to find any traces of seafood except maybe in the sauce? The grilled prawns was the biggest disappointment…for a restaurant like this, I cannot explain how they tried to get away with prawns which were not fresh. We are seafood addicts and we know good fresh seafood…one of the prawn heads, according to my friend's wife, did not smell too pleasant. We asked the waiter to come over and explained the situation. The waiter went away and then came back with a story that almost blew me away about how the taste variation was due to the gender of the prawn. That was like an insult to our intelligence! Come on…Isola should have asked us how the food was, even before we complained. We never got any other explanation nor any apology. After we left the restaurant, my friend's wife did not feel too well. This obviously affected the rest of our evening.
For a restaurant of this level, it was unacceptable. For 4 people, we spent over $2,000 and walked away feeling something missing. We headed to REDS for drinks and came away much much happier even though it was self served there. We will never return to Isola and will inform our friends to stay away or think again about this Italian "Island" restaurant.
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