Alice Fazooli's

Alice Fazooli's has a steak and lobster promotion for $27 all November:

http://softfocus.com/alicefazoolis/

 The restaurants on York Blvd are huge - which is great because then you get seated really quickly, the downside is that it can be chaos if the service isn't organized properly. You can probably guess how my experience at Alice Fazooli's went based on that comment. The service was really slow and disorganized: our waiter was never really there when we needed him. I was really confused about how they assigned tables to wait staff but it felt like the staff were running all over the restaurant. The two managers or assistant managers seemed like they were pretty bewildered because there was a lot of running back and forth from the kitchen to the front desk. 

We started off with a basket of warm bread and pesto olive oil. The olive oil had some chilis in it to add a little heat. The pesto was overwhelmed by all the olive oil, so it wasn't particularly enjoyable. Instead, we ordered butter and got this delicious whipped butter to go with our bread. 

Surf and Turf with angel hair pasta

Seasoned and grilled top sirloin served with a butter brushed Atlantic half lobster and angel hair pasta tossed with sun-dried tomatoes and fresh spinach

Where to start? Maybe I should start with the angel hair pasta (an unusual side, but given that Alice Fazooli's is an Italian restaurant, maybe that makes it okay for them?). The pasta was tossed in an olive oil sauce (which made it a little bland), but there were also the sun-dried tomatoes and spinach which added a little colour, but the defining point was the salty grated parmesan cheese. I thought it was great that the waiters/bus staff carried out a huge block of cheese and a grater when I asked for cheese on my pasta - it's nice that I'm not getting the powdery parmesan. 

Next, the lobster...it was okay - there wasn't a lot of butter on it, but the meat was sweet. The steak was a disaster: when it first came to our table it was lukewarm and almost cold in certain parts. So we asked for them to put it back on the grill for a bit, but then that dried out the sirloin. It was also kind of bland.

Overall: It was a mediocre meal: service was a disaster and the food wasn't very good. For some reason, it seems pretty popular - I'd rather go to Wildfire rather than eat the surf and turf here again. 

Website: http://www.alicefazoolis.com/