Saving Grace

While the food was good, the service could’ve been a lot better. Also, I had to change what I wanted to order twice because each time they didn’t have one of the components of the dish in the kitchen that day.

Food was ok, service wasn’t fantastic… waitress not friendly. Waitress never came and checked on us. Very limited space, would not let our party of three move to a slightly larger table. Not sure why everyone loves this place so much…

Lives up to the hype! Great food at a great price. Service is okay. Definitely not worth the 30min+ wait times on busy weekends though.

I really enjoy the food at this place. I hate lines so when I visit this place I go on the weekdays. I don’t like how this place is randomly closed out of the blue but other than the inconvenience that poses, I still keep returning. The food is delicious. Best brunch/​breakfast in the city. Fresh and flavourful. I always try something different on the menu and I like the variety of food they offer with daily specials. I always order the banana French toast for dessert :)

Great food, bad service.
Saving Grace has to be my favorite brunch spot in Toronto, the food is on point every time. I usually order off the specials menu which changes daily. Frittata is always delicious, and the pancakes are so sweet and fluffy.
The only bad thing I have to say about Saving Grace is that the service is weird. The wait staff aren’t very friendly, and can sometimes be rude. One of my first couple times coming here a waitress told me that she didn’t have time to read me the menu when I had asked her about a particular item on the Daily Specials menu. I understand that brunch service is busy, but I was shocked at how shamelessly rude she was.
Tip, there is almost always a wait, so put your name down and head over to Ella’s Uncle across the street and grab a coffee while you wait.

Definitely not worth the wait. Food is ok, service is friendly but not worth the wait for a table followed by exactly an hour to be served any food.

Oh wow. My favourite brunch spot in the city. Expect lines, but it’s so worth it, just pop inside and write your name down on the clip board. We always get a half order of french toast on the side. One down side is that service is spotty.
pro tip: going later will ensure you don’t have lines but your favourite menu item might be out for the day!

You want to like this place, but the service is so bad. The wait is super long, but once you start waiting it seems like a waste to give up.
There are better places in the city.

Saving grace was a delicious morning treat. Their menu contains such a wide variety of options, one can’t help but try their whole menu. Yes when you get there, you will find a huge lineup. With repeat customers willing to wait over 30mins.
They definitely have a dedicated fan base established. But the place is small and could get really claustrophobic for some people.
However believe me guys the wait is worth it and if you don’t mind the crowd, the wait and the location then there is no reason why you would not enjoy the food here.
Yeah yeah I understand it can get really annoying after all the years when management hasn’t really done much to enhance their service. But I spoke to their management and it seemed like they are really content with what they have. So yeah sorry guys it doesn’t seem like they will be expanding anytime soon.
This is what I usually get and what you’ll see in the picture below:
1) open omelette: smoked salmon avocado pickled ginger green onion sesame pearo with arugala salad, New Zealand lamb sausage and toast
2) baked eggs in the hole, French toast, ricotta and arugula salad
3) French toast, caramelized bananas, maple syrup
4) banana mango smoothie
Food 4.5÷5
Service 3.5÷5

The best thing I like about eating at neighbourhood-​style independent nooks that serve mainly breakfast and brunch is that the presentation and flavor of the dishes take on such an experimental and artistic form.
And I’ve no hesitation of placing Saving Grace under that category. Also included on the upside of these types of eateries is that the experience and ambiance is created by the environment of the sort of patrons who go there.
I trusted an acquaintance’s suggestion to try out this place and was not disappointed by our dining experience. After waiting for awhile we were seating on the upper level at a communal-​style table near the kitchen. The other four customers, three of whom were vaguely Greek or Spanish looking women decked out in black attires like they just left a sermon at Church in Italy immediately made me feel like I was having lunch somewhere in the Greek Cyclades a view overlooking the Mediterranean, even though I’ve never been there before. That’s certainly a strong example of the sort of trip that environment around you in a restaurant can create.
The main two paged menu has a limited choice of dishes which makes selecting rather easy but I decided to get something from the chalkboard, a Carrot Cake spiced Waffle and a side order of Roasted Potatoes and a Mochachino beverage while my friend picked the Rajasthani from the menu.
It does take a brief wait for the dishes to arrive but it’s worth it as both our dishes were very well assembled. My waffles were placed at a half circular angle on the plate and each one was topped with what tasted like clotted cream (it just didn’t have the same sweetness of commercial whipped cream and was slightly thicker than that) and slices of strawberries. The flavor of the waffle was not really sweet which made it better to eat it with the syrup. But I could certainly taste the same flavors that one would find in a carrot cake. I’m glad I went for this unique selection. My friend’s dish was almost identical to the customers’ pictures for this restaurant. I even caught a glimpse of what the next group of people at our table order and the craftsmanship of the dishes was not flawed.
I hope to come back again to this summery ambient place when the weather gets warm again.

Her chippy attitude won’t save Grace!
We arrived right at 9am in the hope of starting a new tradition for our twice weekly breakfast outing. We waited outside the empty restaurant while ‘Grace’ and her buddies were laughing it up having their picture taken on the front step. No eye contact, no «thanks for waiting, we’ll be right with you», no «Hey, can we get you a coffee while we finish up this photo shoot». Nothing. Ten minutes later, I politely asked if they were going to be opening soon. «We’ll open when we’re finished taking pictures», came Grace’s surly reply.
How appropriate that the photos show an empty restaurant in the background. Don’t let the lineups go to your head, Grace, repeat customers are looking for a little, well, grace with their meal.

The place is super cute and maybe I just had an off experience but it’s not somewhere I’ll likely go back to. I think maybe it just wasn’t for me because it is so popular, the wait is quite long and people are willing to wait for it.
Summer brunch was not comfortable in the little place, it was just way too hot and humid; we couldn’t enjoy our food because we were so uncomfortable.
The food was just too heavy, everything had too much of something. I had the frittata and there was just too much cheese, it was more of a scramble. I also found everything was just heavy in general.
Price was good, atmosphere was simple and cute; just not the most comfortable.
I will say that for how long the wait was, we were never rushed out or felt pressured to leave once we were finished and that is really appreciated!

Great food. Awful, terrible service.
Our meal was delicious. Unfortunately we couldn’t enjoy it because the waitress was so rude. Ask for a water refill and expect dirty looks.
When our food arrived, my bacon was on my boyfriend’s plate of pancakes, dripping in syrup. It was hard enough to flag down the waitress, but when I asked if it was my bacon on his plate, she said «yeah» and walked away.
Find a better restaurant that values your business.

Went for brunch this morning with two friends. It’s a small place so the 3 of us had to share a table for 2, but we didn’t mind. The food was unreal and everything sounded and looked so good that we had a lot of trouble deciding what to order. We all ordered from the specials board. I had the earl grey french toast and my friends had the churro waffles and we were all very pleased with our choices. I will definitely return!

Saving Grace has always been busy every time I go by especially on the weekends, so the place must be that good if it’s always busy. Mind you, the place is small and seating is probably limited to about 20 people.
I finally managed to go with my BFF for brunch at 11:30am on Monday morning which I thought would be okay on a weekday, but it was already packed. Guess we should have came before 11am. Luckily for us we didn’t wait long as there was a table for two available that a group of three in front of us passed along to us. Thank you kind strangers.
Menus were already on the table, plus the brunch menu was written on the chalkboard, so we were able to peruse and be ready to order when our server arrived. It was at least five minutes before a server came by and plopped down a bottle of water for the table, then went away, then returned and plopped down two glasses without an exchange of any words. A simple hi/​hello would suffice at this point since we weren’t even acknowledged or greeted when we arrived since we sat ourselves.
It was close to another ten minutes before the server came back to take our orders. She didn’t smile and didn’t introduce herself, but was ready to take our orders with pen and pad in hand. It was definitely not a pleasant interaction and I thought fast food service was bad.
I was famished and knew what I wanted, I ordered the baked eggs ‘florentine’ on oven baked french toast with spinach, provolone and parmesan ($ 11.75), plus blueberry lemonade ($ 3.75). My BFF had a hard time since the brunch menu on the chalkboard didn’t appeal to her, so she ordered a simple breakfast of two eggs, plus sausages which included toast and salad ($ 8.50). She also ordered the Espressado shake ($ 5) which I thought was a weird mix of espresso coffee and avocado. I love avocado, but am not a fan of coffee, so I cannot imagine the pairing of the two.
Despite the lack of service (I believe there were two servers in total), our drinks arrived at a reasonable time. My blueberry lemonade was refreshing and tasty that it quenched my thirst immediately. My BFF’s espressado was okay according to her and nothing to rave about. I now wished I had tried some to see what the hype was as she read the reviews saying it was amazing.
It seemed the food took an extra long time, so when it finally arrived I was just happy with my order as it was simply presented and it just looks like cheesy goodness on top of french toast. The first bite was heavenly in my mouth as all the flavours blended well together and tasted fresh especially the salad which was served in a light vinaigrette dressing. I guess the food is truly the saving grace for this place since the service was horrible.
Somehow my BFF ended up with her order and someone else’s order. The server plopped the two plates in front of my BFF and left before she could say anything. I wished I took a photo of the extra plate as it looked good despite not knowing what the extra dish was. My BFF and I were still puzzled with the third plate, but thankfully the server returned a few minutes later realizing her mistake and took the extra plate away. No apologies whatsoever, but at least there was something that resembled a slight smile on her face.
During our meal, no one came over to ask us how our food was or if we needed anything else. The next interaction we had with the server (s) was when the check arrived on our table, still without any words spoken. Thankfully, we were done our meal and were ready to leave. The empty plates were cleared, we finished our drinks, paid and were on our way and still no word from the servers. I felt like I was at Signs Restaurant, but without the usage of sign language. Good thing we both had cash and although service was awful we still gave a decent tip.
I’m hesitant if I will return, but definitely will not wait in line as there are many other brunch places with better service in the area.

I agree with others when they say this place has the worst service and some of the rudest wait staff they have encountered. I had the unpleasant experience of dealing with THE rudest waitress I have ever met in my entire life here. I ended up walking out. It’s not THAT delicious for me to deal with rudeness and complete lack of basic manners while paying for it.
Never go there.

This goes on my top 10 best places to have brunch in Toronto. I walked in with no expectations, but just needing a drink and they have this amazing, unique blend of Avocado and Espresso. Its almost like a smoothie, but amazingly well done… with just the right balance mix between avocado and the espresso coffee.
The place maybe small with long line up (if you turn up at the wrong timing), but the servers are great, although sometimes its only one server trying to juggle the whole space. Still its worth the Great Wall of China long lineup wait.
The menu changes from time to time, which makes it great too as there is always new dishes to tease and satisfy your palate and taste buds.

Dined at Saving Grace with a friend, on a Friday at 11am. I had an americano with the rajastani eggs — good coffee, the eggs were spicy and filling — healthy, I think we can assume?
My friend got a latte and the french toast — she loved both.
Saving Grace is cozy, with friendly and efficient staff. The food is great — I can’t wait to return and try more. Bear in mind, the space is on the smaller side so it gets busy, fast.

Cute place! It was only a 15 minute wait, but with the other reviews I read here, I could hardly wait to get that brunch in my mouth.
We got sat and I ordered the Mexican-​styled one with a little wrap + delicious scrambled eggs and masala chickpeas I believe. The food is impeccable. It’s different than your usual Benedict brunch. It’s Toronto style brunch with all the different spices and different cooking style. It’s a bit spicy which is perfect for me since I love spicy.
The place is quaint and a bit small (aka line ups) so expect to wait 15 or more minutes after you come by and write your name.
Also they’re not open Sundays. Which is redonk as brunch is done best on Sundays. It’s a thing!
The service could be better, but it wasn’t as bad as I anticipated from past reviews. They were quite friendly, but not as attentive such as not filling your glass up with water after you’re done.
If I was around the area I would definitely come back again.

The food is definitely 5 stars for sure. We came on a week day during the holidays and were seated within about 15 minutes of getting there. Pretty good compared to the wait some Unilocalers have faced.
The food is amazing. I had date and oatmeal pancakes with caramelized bananas and it was so good. The problem with this place is the service just sucks. It took 20 minutes for us to be first approached after being seated. It took us almost 2 hours to complete our afternoon date. Quite frankly, we often felt forgotten.
As much as I loved the food and was really impressed by it I doubt I will be returning any time soon. I think that good service is really important when you are at a restaurant. I feel like in Toronto there are many great places to eat but the bad service ruins it all.