Some restaurants should not participate in Summerlicious and Alice is one of them. Their kitchen couldn’t handle the volume creating a chaotic night for everyone involved… including the guests. If you’ve seen The Bear, the kitchen was probably working through the ticketing system episode as order after order was given to them.  

To their credit, the front of the house did their best to maintain service, at the beginning. Our drink orders were arriving at a good clip, which can be dangerous when food isn’t coming out. But even they started struggling as the evening progressed. I remember at least five instances when the sound of breaking glass pierced the conversation and caused everyone to quiet down in reaction.

It’s a shame as Alice’s food was decent and for only $45 their Summerlicious menu provided good portion sizes as well.

Their Caesar salad was a little healthy tasting, the leaves barely dressed in a light citrusy sauce. While it’s not inedible, it tasted like something a student would make, complete with under seasoned croutons and tasteless shredded cheese.

My friend’s beet salad was better incorporating a tangy dressing, pistachios, and arugula. It was a hearty and fresh salad that at least had flavour. Sadly, the staff just aren’t aware of how dishes are prepared: when we asked how the beets were cooked, they thought it was roasted, only to later state it’s really boiled. Boiled beets taste fine by the way.

Of all the dishes, the steak frites was the best. The meat was cooked to the requested medium rare and tender. It just screamed for more seasoning, which the chimichurri tried to help with but was too oily and diluted. Conversely, the fries were perfectly salted and arrives as a huge Swiss Chalet portion.

Even though their menu offers three desserts the options weren’t varied: cheesecake, chocolate molten cake, and chocolate cheesecake. Good luck if you’re not into cheese or chocolate. But as we ordered only the two chocolate options remained, which is how I ended up with the chocolate cheesecake. A way-to-sweet frozen tasting variety that had me wishing a scoop of vanilla ice cream was an option.

Ultimately, their food wasn’t great but at least passable. Still, it took Alice almost three hours to serve the run-of-the-mill dishes. Painfully slow dinner aside, things were just chaotic:

Our mains start arriving and it wasn’t until I pointed out we hadn’t received our starters that they realize they were serving the food to the wrong table and had to go back in for the appetizers.

The appetizers then start arriving over the course of 10 to 15 minutes - first the salmon tartare, then Caesar, then beet. Only for the runner to realize they gave away one of the salmon tartare to another table and we had to wait for them to make the last one.

By the time it came to the mains, we realize we had to throw politeness out the window and just eat as we were served. They took equally long arriving two at a time. Even then, one was missing the chimichurri, and another came with the wrong side.

After how long it took the food to arrive, they really didn’t give us much time to eat the last two courses. The mains were being cleared despite there still be tons of fries on the plate… my apologies for taking a three-minute break to look up something for a friend. And I don’t think any of us had finished our dessert before they asked if they could start clearing. But then, we didn’t care and just let them - after almost three hours, everyone was done with the meal. Once last broken glass and the was finally over.