Micah B.
Yelp
My friend and I ate at Grant Hall dining room recently, and have a mixed review. The décor is nice, but I was expecting it to be more authentic. It looks quite gaudy. The furniture in both the lounge and dining room is very heavy, very cumbersome to move (in terms of chair in/out from table). The front entrance is completely underwhelming, utilitarian and quite ugly. The doors are steel with a push bar to get out, like you'd see at a stadium or an arena. Hopefully this is still on the list of things to complete. It's not inviting at all. The original building had a very grand staircase that doesn't seem to be anywhere, and I'm curious where that went?
We started out in the lounge and wanted to order a bottle of wine. We were left with the menus for over 10 minutes. My friend finally went to the bar to order a bottle of wine. The bartender came over, and was sorry, but they didn't have it. She chose another one. Repeat scenario, but the third time he came back with the wine list and together they reviewed what they actually had.
Once we had the bottle at our table, it was lovely.
We moved into the dining room, and I found the overhead chandelier lighting, while beautiful, was quite over-powering, and there was no music, or anything background to add to the ambience. Some nice classical or jazz music would be nice.
We both ordered the 'spring salad' which the menu said came with calamari and marinated mussels. We asked to have the marinated mussels left off, which they did. It was a good salad, but it seemed like an odd combination of food, which also included grilled pineapple. Each component separately was very good, but as I said - an odd combo.
As the salads arrived, I asked our waiter if we could have some napkins as there were none on the table. He looked genuinely puzzled. We had seen the bar-staff person removing wine goblets when a table was seated, but these wine goblets unfortunately had the napkins in them, so both were whisked away. If she was new, she should have been trained better, or somebody should have been watching her. We watched her do this to several tables. Very diligent, but incorrect.
We also both ordered the Three Nut Curry - it was delicious, although my friend thought the jasmine rice was dry. The portion was substantial, and came with a grilled (read: dried out) piece of pita, but a lovely accompaniment of a tomato salad, which while very vinegar-y, was wonderfully ripe and flavourful. I saved some of it as I wanted to take the leftovers home to my husband. When we were finished with our meals, we asked that both sets of leftovers be combined to take home, and I discovered later that they had included the dried out pita, but had discarded my wonderful tomato salad!! I had specifically gestured to both plates of leftovers and said to wrap it "all" up.
I'm torn whether or not I would try this restaurant again with my husband.