Le Cirque, a temple of french classic cuisine in NYC, is opening a wine bar on the premises. Another sign of the troubles good and great restaurants are having keeping a loyal clientele coming back to eat. The trend is already well pronounced here in Toronto where the bar is front and centre in most restaurants......

From a reader who asked to be anonymous...

"I thoroughly enjoyed reading your review of L'unita. I actually had the displeasure of dining at this establishment . I can not comprehend how so many patrons and or critics have been lead to believe that is fine dining, but then again this is Toronto and most have not left the city and or rely on the herd for direction.

My overall experience was very similar to yours, rude servers, horrible food, a pathetic wine list and a crammed room full of this city's roaming I wannabee seen in the newest establishment for a night, so I better not wear the same outfit as I did to last week's hotspot .

I ordered the vegetable soup assuming that vegetable soup should contain vegetables only to find meat in it, of course the waiter commented that it was a rustic soup so I should have known, the last time I looked up the word rustic - I thought it referred to decor.

Moving along ...the pasta was pathetic, all else was horrible to the point where I passed on dessert complimentary or not , thanks but no thanks,. The experience was shared by the friends that I was with and we vowed never to return and have not. The only decent food item was the bread, and considering you do not bake on site how hard is that to screw up.

Overall , the service was pathetic, the crowd was noisy, the staff inexperienced, and the decor out of place, as if they threw things together . ... the evening was a disaster. Thank you for finally bringing this to light, you made me laugh immensely with your candid but to the point review.

John Shearer writes

"Great review on L’Unita, when I first read the header I thought “oh no, another stellar review of a third rate restaurant”.

Your experience was pretty close to ours ( my wife and I ) several weeks ago:

We arrived, stood around at the front of the restaurant waiting to be seated, greeted the same way you where about to be shown our table when a homeless person entered, we where then abandoned as a the server and homeless person had a lengthy conversation over the use of a telephone. Finally our server sat us down, came back after 2 mins. and then greated us like he had never seen us before. I looked over the wine list and saw little I recognized, I asked the server what was good, he relied “everything is good” and disappeared in great haste.

When the waiter returned we where asked if we would like Focaccia and we said yes, a few minutes latter plain cold white bread was delivered, no olive oil offered or in site.

The rest of the food was pretty bland and uninspired, like a Greek restaurant trying to be Italian, total amateurs.

Everything was so bad we passed on desert and coffee and asked for our check, waited about 15 mins. and decided just to get up and start walking out to see if that would bring some response, it did. We were asked if we enjoyed everything, we said no, and did they want to give us our bill or should we just leave.

I would not go back for free.