Sherway Gardens has added another restaurant, and this one also allows you to attend to your grocery errands. Like their other locations, Eataly houses a high-end grocery store, bakery, and restaurant in one. For those dining in, the complex offers casual grab-and-sit tables situated around the bakery as well as a traditional sit-down space occupying the left side of the building.

Eataly Ristorante’s menu focuses on Italian classics with an extensive array of appetizers, pasta, pizza, and main dishes. The cavolo nero salad ($17) uses a base of Tuscan kale that’s mixed with shaved Brussel sprouts for crunch. While I would have liked a bit more of the pecorino dressing on the leaves, at least it was well incorporated and went nicely with the golden raisins. The addition of crushed garlic breadcrumbs added texture that augments an otherwise common kale salad.

I was glad to see their tagliatelle alla Bolognese ($29) was heavy on the meat and light on tomato. It was just disappointingly tasteless. Having had the same dish at their Yorkville location, Sherway’s portion size was smaller and stingy on the sauce.

The Prosciutto e rucoloa pizza ($28) incorporated too much mozzarella. I know what you’re thinking: can there ever be too much cheese?! Yes, if starts to congeal into a globe than there’s too much cheese. The timing of when the arugula was added to the pizza also was poorly chosen, causing the leaves to be bound into the mozzarella. And even though there wasn’t too much tomato sauce, somehow the crust was still soft and soggy at the centre.

Something also seemed off about the Prosciutto… it didn’t taste fresh. Don’t get me wrong, it was likely fine as I had no stomach issues after the meal, but there was a slight odour or taste that just didn’t resemble the typical 18-month cured ham. 

With the glowing review our waitress gave the tiramisu di Eataly ($15), I was excited for the dessert as it incorporates a special mascarpone cream not found at the bakery version. And I’ll admit, as the cream is poured tableside, and the plastic barrier is removed so it oozes over the cake, there’s a showmanship to the presentation… whether it really added that much to the cake? I can’t tell.

Firstly, the tiramisu was extremely sweet - possibly because of the additional crème sauce - and lacked espresso flavours. The lady fingers hardly seemed “soaked” in espresso as noted on the menu. Still, it wasn’t a terrible dessert. I liked the cake to crème ratio. If only they decreased the sugar and increased the caffeine.

I’m not a fan of chocolate, especially not chocolate pudding, but must admit that if I did like that dessert Eataly’s budino al cioccolato ($12) would be wonderful. Thick, creamy, and rich the budino satisfies like a truffle by the spoonful. The layer of crumbled Devil’s food cake on the bottom was great for texture and they should consider incorporating more of it. And the sticky chocolate glaze on top not only helped with presentation but gave a fudgy swirl to the dessert. Alas, it was cloyingly sweet so that a teaspoon was all I could handle.

Eataly contains tons of tables so you wouldn’t think it’d be difficult to score a spot for a weekday lunch. Yet, with only two hostesses expect a wait just to be shown to an empty table. The time to placing an order and getting our food improves, but when it comes to paying trying to find someone is like hunting for Waldo.

In the end, the restaurant is just hopelessly understaffed, so lunch easily goes 2+ hours causing table turnover to grind to a halt. If you’re in a rush, I recommend asking for the bill as food’s presented, you might as well walk out of there on your own timing. After all, we got errands to get to.