Review of HotHouse Cafe – Toronto

One of our family’s favourite breakfast brunch buffet’s in Toronto is the  HotHouse Cafe.  Add a great meal there to the Santa Claus Parade and you get a fun-filled day for all!  Read on for a review of the restaurant, some tips to make your brunch more enjoyable and pictures & video of the current Guinness record holder for the World’s Largest Buffet!

Ambience:  As you walk in, there’s a roomy greeting area with friendly servers.  Lots of tables in the restaurant.  During Sunday Brunch, they have a jazz quartet playing softly which makes breakfast a very unique experience.

Kids Stuff: Given that it’s a buffet, there’s no waiting time.  However, if you’re like me and you make sure you get your money’s worth (a.k.a. stuff yourself until it hurts … which takes a while…), then bring your own crayons and paper to keep the kiddies occupied.  A small milk at $2.50 is a bit stiff but considering that kids under 5 are free, I’m not complaining!

Kids Food:  With the amount of selection available, you’re sure to find something that your kids will eat here.  Both breakfast and lunch foods are served, breads, fresh omelettes and a dessert table to die for!

Coolest Thing About Restaurant:  The music and the food selection!  What a great combination!

Worst Thing About Restaurant:  You’re paying for quality so it’s not the cheapest brunch buffet in town but, IMHO, the best bang for your buck!

Tips to Consider – We’ve only gone on Sunday’s for brunch.  During that time, there’s usually a line-up so call ahead and make reservations!  When it comes to the Santa Claus Parade, we had 10:00am reservations.  By the time we were done at 12:00pm, the crowds had already started reserving their seats!  Make sure you sit on the West side of Church St. as the bands turn South on Church Street so you don’t want to miss them!  See pictures of the parade on the Flickr sidebar!

World’s Largest Buffet: The current record holder won the title on August 27, 2009.  It was the Festival Gastronomico held in Guatamala and they grabbed the title by serving … wait for it… 1,158 successfully served individual dishes!!!

Here’s a video of the presentation to the crowds… especially to the waitresses at 10 seconds… yum… I know, I’m such a dog…

Overall Experience:  This restaurant serves a great Brunch Buffet and at $19 for adults and $9.50 for kids from 5 to 10, you absolutely get your money’s worth.

Rating: 4.0 stars out of 5

Details: HotHouse Cafe, 35 Church Street, Toronto ON, 416-366-7800, www.hothousecafe.com.

May, 2010 Update

We celebrated Mother’s Day at HotHouse’s famous Sunday brunch.  Luckily, we made reservations about 1 month in advance!  Food was incredible as usual, same jazz ensemble playing (where they got the biggest round of applause for their Spiderman jazz song…).

I spoke with one of the managers, Arif Ahmed, who gave me his top 3 things that people should know about Hot House Cafe:

1) Anytime you’re planning on coming for the Sunday brunch, make reservations.  For the Mother’s Day brunch, they turned away well over 2,000 people who were too late in booking or tried to get a seat on the actual day by walking in.

2) Many people don’t know that they also do a Wednesday night buffet.

3) They recently started a Saturday morning, a-la-carte breakfast from 10 to 2.

Great job Hot House, rating maintained!

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3. Review of Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament – Toronto