Mirada restaurant has been an interesting stand-out in the area that it’s located. The borough of Saint Laurent in Montreal doesn’t have many steakhouses and it was about to get one when a sign was put up indicating that a Madison’s was going to open. For an unknown reason, the “opening soon” sign for Madison’s became a “Mirada” opening soon sign. Sure enough, it opened and I have been there three times.
Trip 1
I went there when it first opened and quickly discovered two things. First, the food was very hit and miss. The ribs were ok but the mashed potatoes were pretty bad. The person I was with had a similar experience in that her side order was good but salad-as-a-main course wasn’t that great. Second, the service was terrible. This was some of the worst service I have ever had at a restaurant. The waitress was so bamboozled by taking orders that she delivered the appetizer after I had eaten dessert. Ok, we said, it’s one of the first few days and the owners didn’t realize they hired someone who wasn’t cut out for the job.
Trip 2
I will try most restaurants twice just to see if it was a fluke of bad food or bad service on a previous night. This time I went with a friend who is in the restaurant industry. It was a Saturday night and the place was moderately busy. Between the two of us we ordered some appetizers (I don’t recall which) and main courses. The food was good and we had no complaints.
Trip 3
The third trip is the reason I was motivated to write this. The restaurant was moderately busy, as last time, but a little later in the evening on a Saturday. Again, I must look at this experience from 2 perspectives: Food and service. When we came in, the host who was to become our waitress clearly didn’t look thrilled to see people coming in. We sat down and looked over the menu. I noticed that the restaurant has a deal going where you can order 2 main courses for $22. One of these was a chicken tender (finger) entrée. I ordered the chicken tenders but took the appetizer option instead. I figured that since it’s part of their specials, it would come fairly quickly. Well, it never came. At all. Nor did the waitress even mention that she forgot to bring it out.
An inquiry about a menu item:
Me: What goes into the Oriental chicken salad?
Waitress: What it says on the menu
Me: I’m not clear on that. It says lettuce and chicken.
Waitress: Well that’s what’s in it… and some dry noodles.
I ordered it and have to say the chicken was so unbelievably salty that I could barely finish it. That said, the rest of the salad was quite good. The person I was with ordered chicken fajitas and was satisfied with her meal as well.
The next issue is that took about 40 minutes to get our meal. In fact, I didn’t even see our waitress during that time. Maybe she went on break. Who knows? All I know is that my guest was getting annoyed and I wasn’t thrilled about that.
Now, the thing about salty food is that it makes you thirsty. Not once did the waitress even come by to check on us and worse, she saw me drinking a glass that was empty but had a few ice cubes in it and walked away. Wow, that is bad service.
In Sum
The food is ok, but hit and miss. The service on 2 out of 3 visits was atrocious.
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