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Little Bavaria Restaurant
Categories: Restaurants German Food Beer, Wine & Spirits German, Beer, Wine & Spirits [Edit]
3222 Eglinton Ave EScarborough, ON M1J 2H6
Neighbourhood: Scarborough
(416) 261-7016
- Hours:
Tue-Fri 12 pm - 9:30 pm
Sat 5 pm - 9:30 pm
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Good for Groups:
- No
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Noise Level:
- Average
6 reviews for Little Bavaria Restaurant
6 reviews in English
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Review from Jennifer K.
Markham, ON
9/9/2010 14 photos
There are not that many traditional German restaurants in Toronto.. and it is really rare in Scarborough to find a "Western" or a German restaurant!
Little Bavaria is located right at the corner of Markham Road and Eglinton... in a seedy strip plaza. A location which I doubt I will come by myself in the evening!
The interior is nicely decorated with German memoriabla and cheesy German items... like a soccer ball hanging from the ceiling...and German music playing in the background and you might think that some dancing waitstaffs will come out from the back and perform German Folk dance any minute.
The nice waitress here does wear a German folk looking top but not a Dirndl and she is not German :). And of course no dancing.. no low cut dress but the food here is authentic German...
The food choices here are really simple with lunch specials starting from around $9 that includes soup or salad and some cardboard tasting good for you Rye bread basket. I do love the soup... Goulash Soup is great.. dumplings Soup is meh...... the veal is tender and the sauce rich in favour.
Little Bavaria for sure is a little German gem in this Scarborough area!! It is an great alternative if you are sick of Asian/Middle Eastern/Indian food in the area.
They accepts Visa and Mastercard. -
Review from Dimitri T.
Toronto, ON
2/24/2012
Little Bavaria has the WORST GERMAN FOOD myself or my fiancee have ever eaten. We walked out feeling like we had taken a wrong turn into a Berlin ghetto & suffered a mugging at the hands of ruthless gypsies. Let me explain why we had one of the worst food experiences of our lives ...
1. They had a special menu tonight for a "German carnival". When I booked reservations I wasn't told we had only 4 menu choices ... two schnitzels, one smoked pork hock & one "sliced turkey breast with peppercorn sauce". We weren't in the mood for schnitzel (especially for $17), so she ordered the sliced turkey breast & I ordered the pork hock ($24, but I was used to the MASSIVE pork hocks at The Musket, so I was willing to pay the price).
2. The rye bread they served was so stale, I speculate it was recently salvaged from Hitler's bunker. It actually CRUMBLED as we buttered it. But the dinner was about to get much worse.
3. The "special" menu choices came with cheap wilted iceberg lettuce salads drenched in disgusting store-bought bottled dressings.
4. When my fiancee's "sliced turkey breast" arrived we were shocked to see it was TURKEY SCHNITZEL with a side order of what appeared to be Elmer's glue with dead roaches in it (on closer inspection roaches were peppercorns). We informed our ditsy waitress of the error regarding the turkey. She claimed it was SUPPOSED to be schnitzel. I asked her why the menu did not say "schnitzel" or "breaded cutlet" or anything to indicate the "sliced turkey breast" was going to be adulterated with breading. She didn't know. I asked why the other two schnitzel items on the menu specifically utilized the term "Schnitzel" but the turkey breast item did not. She did not know. Needless to say, my fiancee was a real trooper and ate as much as she could. It was barely edible.
5. My "pork hock" could better be described as "bone covered in ball of rubbery pork skin with bits of meat and fat embedded within". DISGUSTING. The rind was the consistency of an elephant's foreskin. At The Musket the rind is the best part--very crispy & can be eaten straight. The hock served at Little Bavaria was ONE THIRD the size of that served at The Musket. Luckily for me, my girlfriend's schnitzel was so bad that she stopped after eating half of it, giving me a scavenger-like opportunity to consume her throwaways.
6. Our side spaetzles were barely pedestrian. Her side sauerkraut & my side red cabbage were most definitely from a bottle shoplifted from the dollar store.
7. After the food was served we were IGNORED during the entire meal by the wait staff--I guess no one dared ask how the food was. After we consumed a sufficient quantity of calories to allow us to survive the drive back home without entering into dangerous hypoglycemia, I asked our waitress for the bill, which never arrived. Several minutes later I escalated my request to management. I informed our waitress & then what appeared to be the owner's daughter, that the food was TERRIBLE. The owner (who claims to be East Indian from Germany) came out & ARGUED with me as to how to properly cook German food (even though I used to do food reviews on tor.eats & have eaten at several German restaurants). When I told him about the error in the menu's wording regarding the turkey breast, he just brushed me off like it was no big deal. Then he told me that the reason why The Musket's pork hock tastes better than theirs & has deliciously crispy skin is because they DEEP FRY it while Little Bavaria GRILLS it. I asked him why he even bothers serving it if he cannot prepare it properly. He ignored the question. Then I asked him why the serving was so small for $24. He would not address my question. I told him that the hock he serves costs him $2-3 & that the markup is CRIMINAL. He stood there looking like a con artist that was just found out by a shrewd mark. I was so full of rage that I instinctively reached for my cutlery to impale him, only to find that the waitress had taken it away just moments before. My fiancee reached over & comforted me as the object of my scorn scurried off out of view.
Tonight was the first time in years that I gave a waitress ZERO tip. I paid the bill knowing I would get my money's worth writing this review everywhere on the internet over the next few weeks ... thank you Al Gore! That's worth $50.
Anyway, we're home now. Our Shih Tzu (named Mountain Bear) is chewing on the pork hock bone, which I secured before we fled the culinary crime scene. As I write this review he's ferociously destroying the bone. I was concerned he'd choke on it, so I said to him "Mountain Bear, that's the most expensive bone you'll ever eat. Cost me 50 damn bucks. SAVOUR it boy!" He isn't listening. Oh well, at least someone with the same culinary taste as the owner of Little Bavaria is enjoying their food! I feel sad for the elderly people that frequent this Google ratings trap. Jesus forgive them, for they have lost their taste buds & know not what they eat! -
Review from Christian N.
Toronto, ON
10/26/2011
This restaurant tries to hard to be German and might be just fine for a foreigner but for a German it fails twice.
First the food. The Schnitzel doesn't give any authentic taste. Maybe its the meat itself or the way its processed or not. It could also be the coating which reminds me of the one you can buy in a Canadian supermarket. The Schweinsbraten is very basic but ok. The meat is tender but too flawless. The sauce again like the Schnitzel coating, tastes like a mix and its not what a Schweinsbratensauce should be like. The sauce needs to be thin like a soup, golden colored (I can hand out instructions). If you want the best Schweinsbraten, you need a piece of meat which also has some fat/skin layer like the pigs back or shoulder to get that tasty crust. The Sauerkraut and Blaukraut was good. The Spätzle were really plain. I never saw pale Spätzle. Normally they're kind of golden.
The second part is the decoration which is only secondary and didn't affect my rating. Its trying to hard to be Bavarian. Nothing in Bavaria is blue and white like this or is the Queen on every single wall, plate and table cloth in a British restaurant? Less could be much more in this little restaurant which otherwise can be pretty authentic.
This all sounds really harsh but I think there is a lot of improvement possible. The reason why I ended up only giving 2 stars has 2 reasons. First the pricing is over the top and can even compete with the typical tourist traps in the Munich city center but if the food quality improves the thoughts about cost will be forgotten. Second, the day after I went to the Dutch restaurant biermarket which has a Oktoberfest special going on and I have to say it tasted better and more authentic.
Maybe one day I'll take the effort again to bike all the way there from downtown to see if things changed. I'm always open to share further knowledge about certain Bavarian food if wanted. -
Review from WaYnE c.
Maple, ON
9/8/2010
This is my review which pays RESPECT to all those hard-working future Chefs, but temporarily Culinary Students. For Restaurant details, please refer to Jennifer K's review.
We were offered the Lunch Menu and we ordered a stand-alone HUNGARIAN Goulash Soup which is in the first quarter of your curriculum, Soups & Stocks. It was hearty with flavourful Beef Stock and an added kick of Paprika. The Beef Chunks were cooked tender and the Potato Cubes(Peel & Pre-Cook) as well.
Rahm Schnitzel in Creamy Mushroom Sauce($10.95) included a Dumpling Soup as starter which was your classic Chicken Stock, which you'll probably remember your Chef telling you not to be afraid to SEASON your food. The Dumpling=Spaetzle made from spooning runny dough past a sieve into boiling water, which comes in the second half of your course in the Pasta section.
We opted for the Sauerkraut but that along with Red Cabbage is going to be during your Vegetarian lesson. It was served warm and soft as I learned from prior German food research. The Creamy Sauce is your Bechamel Mother Sauce with Button Mushrooms. Just don't make it too THICK with your Roux. Common mistake! Most modern cooks don't use much Roux anyways, because it's too rich. Small amount of Beurre Manie will do fine as final touch.
The lightly breaded Veal Schnitzel need some ELBOW grease to pound thin. Cooking isn't light exercise, it's sweaty physical hard work. It tasted A-OK.
For all those future Chefs out there, this place is truly where you'll see the basic techniques and cookery at display but at the same time that's why it's called BASIC, therefore an A-OK meal for it's value.
Here's hoping your success. Zigga Zagga Zigga Zagga Oi Oi Oi!Listed in: DUMP(ling) that S(c)H(n)ITz
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Review from Mark P.
Toronto, ON
4/1/2011
I am German and have had the food there. The LBR definitely holds up to the name. I must admit that I love their Beer more than the food. Fresh cool Hacker-Pschorr from the tap is probably the nicest drink in the world when accompanied by Schnitzel, Sauerkraut and Spaetzle. However, I could never figure out why they parked this gem in the midst of a rotten strip mall in deep-end Scarborough. This area really smells. This restaurant would be a top pick if it was located in central Toronto. Enjoy the Little Bavaria Restaurant without regrets, it's the best right after the Musket out at Kipling. But only if you survive the trip to get there without getting bullet holes in your windshield ;-/
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Review from Issac M.
Regina, SK
12/28/2008 1 photo
The best German Restaurant in Toronto.
