Hole in the Wall - Dundurn

The experience at this restaurant is incredible and definitely worth the trip. I recommend going with a group and letting the chef choose your dishes - you'll be amazed by the flavors. It may be on the expensive side, but it's definitely worth it!

I really really really wanted this to be a positive review. I really wanted to love this place. Finally – after years of it being on our “Foodie Bucket List” we were going to experience the Hole in the Wall. Regaled as THE dining experience to be had in Saskatoon.Well friends I am here to tell you that this restaurant does not live up to the hype.Let me start – as I do for many of my more detailed reviews – with a bit about me. I’m in my 40’s love to travel and eat well wherever we go. Tonight’s reason for visiting THITW – too long to keep typing – was to celebrate my 14th Anniversary! My husband and I love to celebrate milestones with big dinners – for example his 40th was spent in Montreal at Europa – at the time the #1 restaurant in Montreal according to Trip Advisor. When we travel we seek out the great local places as well as the Celebrity Chefs. We have checked off restaurants by Morimoto, Keller, Flay, Bastianich… I could go on but I just wanted to give perspective to my review. We were not looking for the quick in – quick out dinner. We wanted to enjoy our meal – we wanted the dining experience, however little did I know what exactly we had signed up for.Our reservation was for 7:30 (initially it was for 6:30 but due to a family commitment moved it to 7:30 to ensure we wouldn’t be late – had requested 7:00 but that wasn’t available). We left Saskatoon and head to the restaurant a bit earlier than needed. Again - it was our first time visiting and I didn’t know for sur how long it was going to take to get to Shields and find the restaurant. I did not want to be late and so we ended up being quite early –arrived just after 7:00. However we were able to be seated – but were informed that we could not have our menus until our reservation of 7:30. OK this we found odd – what is wrong with looking at the menu early?? So we were able to order a cocktail and DH proceeded to sneak a look at the menu online on his phone. This was a surprise to him – choosing this restaurant – so I had reviewed the menu online earlier but this was his first chance to get a sense of what the menu had to offer! It took a while for drinks to be served (should have been our first red flag) considered how many tables were empty. At 7:30 our waitress brought out our menus! We had a couple questions and confirmed that we wanted to order the El Presidente option – you choose 3 appetizers, 3 entrees, and it includes soup, salad and coffee/tea for $80 per person. A great option and reasonable price for a “Tasting Menu” type of dinner. As we had already been at the restaurant for more than 30 minutes by this point and had finished our drinks we were ready to order – but no - we could not put in our order until 8:00. I have never had a “set time” to put in an order. OK fine – we are trying to go with the flow of the place. It must be a small kitchen and the order of courses has a planned approach. Fine we can work with this but it is still off-putting – and this is totally our own assumption no one explained anything to us – even with our comments of how slow things move.We placed our orders and ordered a bottle of wine and began the next phase of waiting. I won’t bore you with all the mundane details but appetizers came out in what seemed a reasonable time – compared to all the waiting we had been doing. We shared a shrimp dish, seared scallops and mussels. All were cooked very well and presentation was okay –the paper doily under the dishes is a bit old school but we didn’t complain. Then the wait began again, soup was brought out – very yummy – and then waiting…at 9:46 ( I know because I just checked my Facebook post from that night) we were still waiting on the salad course. 2 hours and 15 minutes in and all way had been through was appetizers (which all basically came out at the same time) and soup… we waited 45 minutes after our soup for the salad course. I understand a wait when you are preparing things but the soup would not have been made to order and a wedge salad should not take 45 minutes to prepare. We honestly began discussing the option of paying for our drinks and wine and walking out…. It was well after 10:00 – around 10:30 before our main courses were served –sea bass, lamb and steak. Again the food is great but WOW nothing made sense about the wait beyond it feeling forced. We even had asked our server if the speed of service could be sped up a bit – as we did have other plans for the rest of our anniversary evening (which ended up having to be cancelled due to the lonnnnggggg dinner).The menu we chose included dessert – I saw lots of lovely crème brulees going out throughout the evening and as it is my FAV dessert I thought OK this will be the saving grace, the reason we stuck it out to the end…. But nope – the kitchen RAN OUT of this dessert (a restaurant that requires reservations should not run out of the one dessert they are serving) and instead we were given semi frozen cream puffs (like the ones from Costco) covered in a chocolate sauce. SOOOOOOO disappointed. And to top things off we were never offered the coffee/tea that was included with our meal.We left the restaurant after 11:00 – exhausted and disappointed in the entire experience. As noted I did put up a post on my Facebook account and the restaurant noticed and asked us to call them the next day – which we did. The apologized about the lack of communication from our server and that it was a bit slower than they normally are and hoped we would give it another chance. We confirmed that the food was good but with so many amazing choices in the City I didn’t experience anything worth potentially investing the 5+ hours (including drive there and back from Saskatoon) to give them another try.A couple final thoughts:- For a restaurant that results in a bill total of around the $260 that ours came to I expect the service to match the price tag – our wine was not poured, we had dirty dishes sitting at our table long after we were done with them – our server would just walk away with empty hands back to the kitchen- We did NOT receive an itemized bill at the end of the night she took our credit card and ran through the amount of $260ish - There was no apologies when we asked to speed up service and no communication about what was going on - We were told when we were given our menus that dinner would be about 2.5 hours but we were not told that when you order the tasting menu it actually extends to potentially 3+ hours – if we had been told that (as we were on the phone the next day) we could have either changed our order or adjusted our time expectations- This place has been open for 33 years so they must have been doing things right at some point in time…. Not sure if things have changed or if they actually get repeat guests, from the chatter we overheard in the restaurant it seemed to be filled with first timers who like us were not impressed with the super long evening.This was a Saskatoon/Saskatchewan “bucket list” restaurant for me to finally try – and I am really really sad that it didn’t live up to the hype or expectations for a special anniversary evening. Needless to say I won’t be back.

Went for our one year anniversary. As we drove out we read some reviews that weren't very positive. We got a little nervous but thought we had to try it ourselves and thank goodness we did. It was amazing! Not only does it feel like your somewhere tropical while inside the building but the food is just beyond words. We chose the el presidente and picked 3 appetizers and 3 entrees and every single one was better than the next. We are now looking for any excuse to go back. We will definitely make it an annual thing along with any other visits we can talk friends and family into.

Make a reservation and enjoy. This is in an old service station (by the look of it) but the table will be yours for the night so sit back and enjoy (and be prepared for a 3+ hour dining experience). I strongly suggest the "chef's choice".

It was my first time dining here and it was quite the experience. Not only was the food amazing but our waiter Adrian was fantastic. He explained everything about the Menu and was very friendly. Very professional. I will return again because of the great service I had and the delicious food.