Rob S.
Yelp
Comfort food done horribly wrong.
Was really looking forward to going to this place after a bunch of people in my French class mentioned it. Boy, was I disappointed.
The decor is nice and it has great atmosphere (mostly due to its location, any restaurant in one of the Exchange's old brick buildings is gonna have good atmosphere). I also found the service to be adequate to good.
The food, however, is awful.
Especially bad were the cauliflower bites. My girlfriend and I were picturing crispy breaded cauliflower florets with a tangy, spicy sauce, but it was almost the exact opposite of that. The breading was soggy, the sauce was spicy but largely flavourless beyond that, and they came with either ranch or blue cheese dipping sauce (presumably to help camouflage the awfulness). Easily the worst cauliflower bites I've ever had. In one of those "blessing in disguise" moments, it ended up that we didn't have to pay for the cauliflower bites because they mistakenly brought us out the wrong mains for a few minutes before they noticed, so they just comped the bites for us to make up for the mistake. (Thank god, 'cause I did not want to pay for that dreck.)
As for mains, I got the Blue Cheese and Hops while my girlfriend got the Canadiana. Whoever designed the recipes has no clue about mixing strong and subtle flavours so everything has a chance to come through. Mine was just overpowering blue cheese flavour. It does have caramelized onions in it, but you can't taste them at all. All you get is a tongue hammering of blue cheese.
I tried a bite of the Canadiana and it was the same deal only with maple flavour. To be fair, my girlfriend did say the bacon could also be tasted, but she was disappointed that it was basically just an overdose of maple flavour rather than a subtle hint of maple like she was hoping.
If you like hanging out in trendy restaurants in the Exchange and you don't care about food, then definitely give Kevin's a try. If you actually want to eat good food, then this is not the place for you. Subtlety is a foreign concept here. They handle flavour the way a bull handles china.