Habit

From Habit

I have to tell you right off the bat...our visit to Habit was a huge disappointment. I had high hopes - it had good press, proven people, nice room, etc. My wife and I both came away feeling like we wasted our time there.

The room itself is nicely designed. The designers (I hear that they used the same design firm as the Glowbal group of restaurants) were going for a Canadiana theme - sort of like a cabin in the woods rendered graphically.

The service was excellent, but it was the food that let this place down. The unsophisticated spicing and flavouring gave all the dishes we tried an unbalanced one note simplicity. The presentation was just fine, but I can't help comparing it to my lunch at Stella's that same day. The food at Stella's was tasty despite the haphazard plating - and it weighed in at nearly half the price as similar dishes at Habit.

We ordered the lamb skewers ($15), smoked tuna salad ($11 - and you get 4 thin little slices of the tuna on limp lettuce), deep fried hoisin-glazed tofu ($9). For dessert, we had the crumble ($?). While none of these dishes I would consider acid tests for this particular kind of restaurant, I believe that it did give me a fair survey of what to expect if I ordered the other dishes. IMO, they are pricing themselves well beyond the quality the kitchen was able to deliver. Perhaps they were having a bad evening back there.

Based on my one experience at Habit...I probably will not go back. Poor value for the money. I say "pass" on Habit