Cafe En Passant

A favorite restaurant of mine in Richmond Hill. The food is always delicious and reasonably priced.
Ralph, the owner, is a true gentleman and makes his patrons really feel welcome.

Great service! Nice and cozy, I spent an evening here just relaxing and enjoying the atmosphere. I had tea and cheesecake. The cheesecake is homemade and tasted great!

Food — ⁶⁄₁₀
Service — ³⁄₁₀
The place — ²⁄₁₀
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Value — ³⁄₁₀

This is a very sweet and cozy place and very different from those big name french restaurants in town.
It was my first time visiting here with a coupon. And the food was surprisingly good.
We ordered:
Appet: Escargot and calamari
Main: New york Steak and a seafood plate with scallop, shrimp and mushroom with creamy sauce.
Dessert: cheesecake and crepes
The lady also recommended a french white wine to us, which i also love it. it was very smooth and not so sweet.
The food was actually above my expectation and flavour was really good and portions was not bad. I could not even finish my dessert.
Make sure you make a reservation before you go because this place is actually very busy during dinner time.

This is a nice little place, very cozy, with the French inspired cuisine.
The lady who served our table was very friendly and pleasant, and made the whole experience enjoyable.
We had a coupon for 4, so what we paid was adequate to the quality of food. The full prices are rather steep though.
We ordered escargot and french onion soup as appetizers, and were a little disappointed. Fried calamari was a better choice.
Seafood for a main course was good but a little heavy on the stomach, with cream based sauces, so wouldn’t order the same dish again. My son had a schnitzel, which was okay.
The best part was crapes with whipped cream and raspberry sauce. Delicious.
We didn’t have to do a reservation, and were sited immediately when we came around 5:30 — 6 pm on Sunday, however by 7:30 pm the room was full. I recommend you make a reservation if coming after 6.

This is a nice little french inspired restaurant located on Yonge St in Richmond Hill. Came here tonight with a Dealfind voucher to redeem. The place was quite busy on a Saturday night.
We ordered :
Crêpe St. Jaques $ 19.95
Fresh Trout (feature of the day menu) $ 24.95
Portions were small, but the food was delicious. The fish was flavourful, veggies were not hard, and the rice was perfect. The crêpe was good and filled with scallop, shrimp, mushroom (but sauce was a bit filling).
Normally restaurants of this type provide a complimentary bread basket while you wait for your order, this place did not.
The service here was very slow. It took 10 min to bring us the menu, 30 min to serve food. We should have asked for the bill at the beginning of our meal, so that it would arrive by the end of it. Gratuity is automatically added to your bill.
Overall a nice place to bring your date. Just be sure to have something to talk about with your date, otherwise they might get bored and leave before the food arrives.

Got a Dealfind coupon for this place. Made reservations for the weekend with no problem. Got there, was seated to a table right away.
Inside the décor is nice. Small, café with french music playing, romantic lighting. It was exceptionally busy that night, probably due to the number of couponers sitting in.
I ordered the stuffed chicken w/​mashed potatoes and vegetables (off menu). My girlfriend ordered Crepes w/​Shrimp.
No bread offered at all, which kinda felt off especially due to the prices and since French restaurants usually offer bread but oh well. Waited 45 minutes before receiving our entrees. Must be due to the unusual high number of people at the restaurant.
The crepes were good, no complaints there. The «stuffed» chicken was supposed to be well. stuffed. But was completely empty except a few cranberries and a tiny bit of cheese. The waiter said it’s usually stuffed but the chef must have messed up. Was offered a free dessert for the mistake.
We arrived at 8pm, ordered 2 entrees and 1 dessert, we ended up leaving at 10pm. Quite a long wait from beginning to end but overall worth it with the coupon. Without it, I would not have felt the same.

This place is surprisingly better then it’s outside appearance but mind you I ventured here after hearing about it from a deal I had purchased.
We ordered:
Mussels Marinara
Linguini en Passant
Veal Café en Passant
The service was excellent and were very polite, also informative if we had any questions or concerns regarding the menu. My friend ordered a drink and did not like it, instead she was able to exchange it for another drink. Very courteous and did not make a fuss about it. The food was pretty good, plenty of flavour and good presentation, price wasn’t impressive but it is nice to go to once in awhile.
I would recommend it to my friends and fellow reviewers/​followers =)

This is a great place to have a date, or bring the family. It isn’t super-​suitable for small children (cloth napkins & wine glass type of place), but the staff is very friendly an accommodating to all ages and palates.
The food is not 5-​star french, but neither are the prices, and there are a wide variety of really tasty dishes that should be able to please everyone at your table. The food is a million times better than the big chain/​tasteless places like Moxie’s, Montana’s, etc… and much healthier from a freshness/​ingredient viewpoint. Things aren’t pre-​frozen or out of packages and microwaved like most places these days.
The Linguini en Passant is our family favourite with a bruschetta on the side. They do tend to serve the pasta on the soft side, so if you like al dente, you should ask for it specifically. The desserts are good too.
Finally, this is a great place to get an espresso or cappuccino… something you don’t see freshly made at most places.

Oyyy hate to do this but it was not good one bit. Highly overpriced (considering where it was located). I love French food and was visiting in the area for the day, but this was a dreadful mistake.
Had a quiche and there were bitter (old?) vegetables.
Either way, it was terrible.
My friend ended up getting a crêpe/​omelette and it smelled disgusting. We ordered coffees and they were $ 2.75 and nothing special whatsoever (just regular run-​of-​the-​mill stuff).
Umm so what was good?
I would say it is quiet but hey, that could be bad, too, right?

I’m surprised with the negative reviews this place received. Perhaps it’s been a while and changes have been made. It’s very important to note that this place isn’t some high-​tootin’ French haute cuisine place. It’s a simple, quiet, and nice French restaurant.
We came here using a TeamTicket so the cost was slashed dramatically, but even without it, the price is not more expensive than a dinner at Moxie’s/Montana’s/Alice Fazooli’s/what have you. And considering the food here is much more refined than in those places, I think you get a very good back for your buck here.
We ordered their crepes (approx. 18 dollars), one with white cream sauce and the other with a rose cream sauce. Both were fantastically huge, and oozing with sauce and contents. There was so much mushrooms I could’ve cried. I love mushrooms and this crêpe delivered. The food was tasty, warm, gooey, it was just perfect.
We also had baked mushroom caps for appetizer, which were lovely as well. Might be a little too cheesy for some, but that’s the main attraction point in my opinion.
The server, a young blonde lady, was very pleasant and nice. She frequently came over to check on us and our food. The overall experience was lovely and I would definitely come back here, even without the discount coupon.
Is it «authentic» French food? I don’t know, last time I checked I wasn’t French and I don’t have many European friends either. All I know is the food «felt» French enough, it was different enough from anything I’ve ever had, and it was tasty. And if that isn’t enough for you, what is?
Go there now and try it out. Impress your date while you’re at it, and you can thank me later ;)

well well well, I have a coupon for this place in the entertainment book but I was never interested in coming here… but somehow that’s where I ended up last night.
We were the only people in the restaurant, which worried me as I have no idea if the food is good or bad and maybe that was a sign as it was dinnertime. They brought a basket of bread to the table right away along with water and bread plates. There was nothing on the menu that stuck out and said «TRY ME» so I ordered a french onion soup to start and my boyfriend ordered the soup of the day which was butternut squash.
I found my soup to taste like a container of salt but I was hungry so I ate it and the butternut squash I was told was very good but I didn’t taste it, I’ll take his word for it though. We both ordered the veal parmigiana and it wasn’t long coming out.
Before the waiter walked away from bringing our dinner, my boyfriend saw that his veal was completely raw looking! I immediately cut into my piece and it was pink inside too!
The waiter didn’t know what to say and he took our plates back, he came back two minutes later and told us the chef is going to do some” chef tricks” whatever that means…
I personally didn’t want back this raw piece of meat back and luckily we didn’t get it back either. The waiter came back and said the chef cooked another piece of meat and it was also pink inside. I do not know what is wrong with this meat and believe me I do not want to find out so we just paid for our soups and left.
I will probably never know what the veal tastes like as I have no urge in coming back anytime soon.

For the prices on the menu, I expected so much more. This place is passed off as French cuisine. The website states: «Café en Passant features French classical cuisine…», but the menu is more multi-​cultural than New York City. Some choices, par example, Escargots, Bruschetta, Paella, Wiener Schnitzel, etc. I wish I was joking. They pipe in French music, and cover the walls with cheesy French posters, and the few French dishes they serve, they somehow manage to mess up.
Upon arriving, they bring bread to the table, but no bread plates. We had to ask for them. Then they collected our wine glasses before we had a chance to order our wine. The waiter (I won’t specify who, because I don’t want to get anyone in trouble), inserted multi-​syllabic words here and there, out of context, and over-​enunciated every one, in order to appear more refined perhaps. They ended up sounding like Kevin Malone from The Office.
Strike 1.
The presentation of the food is beautiful, but that’s really the only perk. The taste is another story. On the website for the café, the menu appears extensive, however the menu we received at the restaurant was missing almost half of the selection we’d seen online. We ended up having to order a few things off-​menu that we’d been looking-​forward too. At least the kitchen accommodated us… sort of.
I had seen this on the online menu:
«Bocconcini Salad:
Ripe Tomatoes on greens with soft bocconcini, basil and Italian Dressing.»
It wasn’t on the actual menu, so I asked if the kitchen could still do it. They said yes, and this is what I got:
Unripe slices of Beefsteak tomatoes, with 4 or 5 slices of the small size bocconcini layered between them, served on top of what I recognized as their garden salad (carrots, cucumber, radicchio, and lettuce mix), no basil at all. And the best part? The entire layered tower of tomato and cheese was completely covered in what looked like hollandaise sauce, and tasted like pureed raw onion and mayo. There was so much of this terrible sauce, that you couldn’t taste the tomato anymore. It over-​powered the whole thing, and drowned the lettuce to the point where it was unbearable. It reminded me more of the cuisine I had experience when traveling through Germany. Everything covered in mayo. :(
Strike 2.
Then the entrée. The NY steak on the online menu was priced at $ 22.95. On the actual menu, closer to $ 30. Some of our dinner party was not amused.
I, and another girl at my table (who was actually from France, and not impressed with the masquerade) ordered the Cajun Seafood.
«Cajun Seafood…$ 21.95
Trio of fresh mussels, scallops and jumbo shrimp blended with Cajun tomato rice.»
Here’s what we got: Over-​cooked scallops, and regular sized shrimp (also over-​cooked), and empty mussel shells served on wild rice in tomato sauce with steamed veggies on the side, and no Cajun anything. I asked the server where the mussels were, and he/​she had to check with the kitchen to find out where they’d hidden them. I soon found them mixed in with the rice. I’m pretty confident they didn’t intend that, as my dish was served with a small seafood fork for removing the mussels from their shells. I actually couldn’t eat the mussels in the end. They tasted horrible. As in, they were likely past their prime. I’ve got a lot of experience preparing mussels, and these were not right. Shockingly, I found a few broken shell fragments among the rice, which killed my appetite completely. The most disappointing aspect of the dish was the fact that it wasn’t Cajun. There was absolutely no Cajun flavour or spice. How can you call something Cajun if there’s no spice at all?
Strike 3.
When I go out for a costly meal, I expect good food. But beyond that, I expect creative flavour combinations and original creations. Every dish on the menu was predictable. Lamb with mint sauce? Seafood with dill? What a concept! — as Larry David would say. Boring.
One of the girls at our table who had recommended the place was apologetic, but said that they did really good desserts. We opted not to risk it.