Canadiana Restaurant & Banquet Hall

5320 Dundas St. W, Toronto, ON                                                            RATING: Poor

"Canadiana at its worst"

This restaurant should be renamed ‘1970s Revival’ because eating here is like stepping back in time, right down to the tiny Esso Station wine glasses and parquet floors. The waitresses were old school: buxom elderly ladies who slapped plates down like they were skimming stones in the local pond. I had prepaid for a three course dinner with a local organization that had booked a holiday dinner at the Canadiana. Wine wasn’t included so I ordered a glass of chardonnay at the bar. It was $6 a glass and would have been right at home in a wineskin at a 1975 Pink Floyd concert; it was swill at its worst.  

The appetizer was a salad; iceberg lettuce, under ripe tomatoes. I chose the French dressing.  Remember back in the day when the only dressings offered were French, Thousand Island and Italian. Yup, that’s the Canadiana.  

We were offered either Salmon or Prime Rib for the main course. I chose the salmon with creamy dill sauce over the prime rib because the waitress announced that the beef had been cooked to medium. I think the ‘chef’ was asleep at the switch because cooking a prime rib to medium is tantamount to ruining a good cut of beef, although I’m not sure this restaurant would fork out a lot of money for good beef.  The salmon was predictably overcooked but it was so overdone that I ended up having to saw through that poor fish with a steak knife. Even smothering it in a creamy dill sauce didn’t add any moisture to that little guy.  

Dessert was a selection of pastries that had seen better days, but wait! I tried one of the cannoli pastries and it was good. A nice way to end a horrible meal.  I opted to have a second glass of the swill to wash down the bad food. I understand that serving a large group of people is difficult when everything needs to be ready at the same time. But don’t offer a salmon dish if you can’t manage to cook it any way other than completely overdone. And don’t offer a prime rib cooked to medium. I saw other people’s plates and there wasn’t a tinge of red on any of the beef. That’s just awful. Sorry Canadiana, but you need to try a little harder. I won’t ever go back there.