Location: Toronto, Canada
Address: 19A Finch Avenue West
Type of Meal: Dinner
After visiting Urraca Resto Lounge’s professional looking website, it was a bit of a shock to enter the restaurant itself. Painted and furnished in all black, the place reminded me more of a small university club than a lounge. Even their menus were in dismal condition – photocopied, caked with spilt drinks and numerous menu items crossed out.
Overall mark - 5 out of 10
____________________________
Gastro World's Grading System
Address: 19A Finch Avenue West
Type of Meal: Dinner
After visiting Urraca Resto Lounge’s professional looking website, it was a bit of a shock to enter the restaurant itself. Painted and furnished in all black, the place reminded me more of a small university club than a lounge. Even their menus were in dismal condition – photocopied, caked with spilt drinks and numerous menu items crossed out.
With this first
impression, I had low expectations for the food to come. Nonetheless, my friends and I decided to
brave it and order a few items to try. Urraca
Resto Lounge’s menu consists of tapa dishes, combining Korean favourites (such
as bulgogi and kimchi) with Western bar foods (mainly fries, nachos and
tacos).
Overall, it wasn’t
that bad; dishes weren’t outstanding but they were edible and in line with most
bar foods. Unfortunately, most of the
dishes used the same sauces and ingredients which caused them to taste alike,
but there were two dishes that stood out:
- Seafood rice cake ($12): Korean rice cake sticks mixed with a sweet and spicy gochujang sauce, cheese and seafood (mussels, shrimp and fish cake). The seafood itself appears to be frozen so overall unimpressive and really could be substituted with any protein. But, the rice cake sticks were chewy and had a great flavour, just a hint of spice but not over powering so really anyone could enjoy.
The beef tacos ($7)
and bulgolgi poutine ($7), on the other hand, were esthetically pleasing to
look at but tasted like any other run of the mill version of the dish. The problem may stem from the poor quality
beef used to make both. Normally, when I have bulgogi, the beef is sliced paper
thin, marinated and cooked quickly so that when it arrives the beef is juicy,
flavourful and tender. Urraca’s beef is
hard, luke warm and tastes like large quantities of it is made ahead of time
and just added to the dishes when necessary.
Additionally, both use the identical salsa and spicy mayo sauce (also
used in the sliders) so after having one dish they all start tasting the
same.
Urraca, like most
Korean restaurants, offer drinks that are soju based. I often find them too diluted and sweet, so
we opted to share a bottle of soju ($14) for the table and mixed a splash of
Ginger Ale ($1.50 per can) in each to make it taste better.
The service we
received from the waitress was helpful – she suggested menu items and aided in
making dishes appropriate to serve four.
However, when my friend was feeling nauseous and dizzy, thus having to
lie down for a moment, the manager was not sympathetic and made us feel like we
had to leave. In the end, this harsh
attitude damaged any chance that either of us would ever return to the
restaurant again.
Overall mark - 5 out of 10
____________________________
Gastro World's Grading System
- Anything under 5 - I really disliked and will never go back
- 6 - decent restaurant but I likely won't return
- 7 - decent restaurant and I will likely return
- 8 - great restaurant that I'd be happy to recommend
- 9 - fantastic restaurant that I would love to visit regularly and highly recommend
- 10 - absolute perfection!
