Waterfalls Indian Tapas Bar & Grill offers a wide variety of dishes infused with authentic aromas, flavours and spices. They have cocktails, martini and mojito lists, as well as an extensive wine list. Some of their dishes are cooked in a Tandoori clay oven.
Delivery now available. Minimum $30 order from 5pm-10pm Mon-Tues and 5pm-10:30pm Wed-Sun. Deliver to any corporate events and office parties in the city with prior notice. Delivery area: Dupont St (north), Queens Quay (south), Parliament (east),... More Ossington (west).
------------------------------------------------ Voted as One of the Top 400 restaurants in Toronto
by Toronto Life 2013
------------------------------------------------ Toronto Life Review July Edition Waterfall Indian Tapas Bar and Grill
If you think the restaurant's name tries to cover all the bases, wait until you see the menu. It runs the gamut from escargot to pepper steak, with stops at mutton biriyani and rosemary chicken pizza along the way. The cavernous space is filled with tables and chairs of different heights, making it look something like a discount furniture warehouse. Such impressions don't inspire confident, making the tasty food a pleasant surprise: samosas are piping hot and carefully seasoned; pakoras are light and savoury; and the onion [bajias] are like exotic, free‐form onion rings. The chicken chettinad, in a creamy, complex masala with cashews, is tender and flavourful; the kerala fish curry with tamarind‐infused coconut milk is authentically spicy. Lacklustre desserts seem more in keeping with the décor. The wine list is affordable and well considered.
------------------------------------------------ MartiniBoys.com
You can always count on Kensington Market for a night of dining on-the-cheap. In places from Big Fat Burrito and Jumbo Empanadas to Rice Bar and Torito Tapas Bar, easy-to-please spots are the signature core. So strong that core is, that restaurateurs have rarely ventured into these parts with a project with offerings that reach beyond, say, the price of a burrito. La Palette is one success story that comes to mind. And now, Waterfalls Tapas Baris is giving it a shot with a menu of stylized Indian cuisine offerings. Shyly, however, as the menu sneaks in a few tempting, if slightly generic, Mediterranean offerings for the masses. While Waterfalls is not exactly formulaic, the very idea of it first showed up on the local radar late last year when word got around that a restaurant was taking over the old controversial XPACE gallery space. After bad publicity killed off the gallery, much curiosity surrounded the restaurant construction site. And now, after six months of construction and permit acquiring, here it is. The Kensington Market spot is not as flashy as some of the newer Indian restaurants about town, nor does its menu break new ground. But it executes the standard Indian dishes well, though pretty heavy on the traditional Indian curry spices. Small plates include a little plate of Cajun-seared scallops with a pomegranate glaze ($9.99) and served on a little arugula salad; with the jumbo shrimp ($9.99), Til Tikka prawns are sautéed with Indian spices; and escargot ($9.99) is doused with a serious garlic butter. But the real standout is the chicken tikka ($8.99). Plump, boneless chicken – first marinated in yogurt and then baked in a clay oven - is served with naan bread and tamarind chutney. The mains are evenly split between Indian and contemporary. Grilled New Zealand lamb chops ($19.99) luxuriate in a red wine rosemary reduction. Order them rare as the kitchen tends to over-do. Still, the center of the chop is ideally tender, moist and pink while the marinade outside is cooked into a juicy cloak. The scant flesh running the length of chop is transformed into charred lamb candy. The lamb, like the other Indian dishes, is accompanied by fragrant, fluffy and nicely cooked basmati rice. The lamb vindaloo ($16.95) is as appropriately spicy as vindaloo should be, and there’s a solid spice-derived complexity backing up the firepower. The grilled salmon ($17.99) leans in the Mediterranean direction, but falls flat with its bland tomato and black olives. But the caper salsa was a hit with the table. The butter chicken, flavourful from its marination in Indian spices, emerges from the intense heat of the tandoor moist and delicious. It's a reliable dish and was competently prepared. Served with a tomato cream sauce, the plate is garnished with mango chutney and naan bread. While a considerable amount of work went into the décor, the room is as sterile as a hotel dining room. Dark wood is the general theme. A random collection of prints decorate the walls. The chandeliers are a great touch. It is defiantly, refreshingly unhip. The staff slip up only toward the end by piling too much attention on to new arrivals and unintentionally losing interest in already seated tables. And the name? "Good question," answered our pleasant server, when we asked. Ever so diligently, he scurried around the host's station to flick a switch. Magically, a semi opaque wall divider came to life, sputtering out the namesake waterfall and adding a bit of much-needed colour to the room.
------------------------------------------------ Tasty South Asian tapas Review by Steven Davey Published: 04/29/2008
Chef Vijay Kabil's menu is split between ho-hum hotel-type food and terrific tapas.
You'll love Waterfalls' flow, but only if you stick with the small plates By Steven Davey
Flipping through the multi-page menu at Waterfalls, the self-described Indian tapas bar and grill that's just opened at the top of Kensington Market, I feel my heart fall. Chicken Supreme ($18.99), rigatoni Bolognese ($13.99), Greek salad ($9.99)? If I were a first-time restaurateur gambling my life savings in a business that sees most start-up operations fail, I might try to appeal to as many people as possible. But c'mon, this is too-cool Kensington, not the Airport Hilton. What pro-organic, local-source-conscious alterna-foodie gets a craving for escargots ($9.99)? The soul-crushing card also includes an anchovy-free Caesar salad ($8.99) – nobody likes anchovies, right? – as well as a mild-mannered take on pasta primavera ($12.99), the dish known in the biz as “leftover salad on linguine with tomato sauce.” There's even chicken fingers 'n' fries ($3.95) followed by vanilla ice cream ($1.75) for the single-digit set. Of the hipster hordes with their DIY hairdos and earth-friendly shopping bags who debark from the College streetcar and now stream past Waterfalls en masse, I doubt many are eight years old. I've apologized in advance to my regular gastro guinea pigs for dragging them to Waterfalls. The gang's a bit hesitant. After our recent debacle at Toby's, one of them tells me, “We thought maybe you were mad at us.” I've warned them that Waterfall's a humongous space devoid of character. Someone has obviously spent a lot of money transforming the former Xpace art gallery. But the results – warm brick walls, slate floors, lots of dark wood, an autographed Raptors sweater over the bar – give the 70-seat room the look of a Kelsey's in Oakville. If restaurant success is all about location, Waterfalls should have it made. It's on the same Market block as super-popular Torito, La Palette, Supermarket, Urban Herbivore and soon-come Wanda's Pie in the Sky. Instead, while the street bustles outside with suppertime shoppers, Waterfalls is as empty as it was on my two previous visits. Seated next to the large wall of glass that's supposed to open to the street but remains closed despite the balmy weather outdoors, we're hospitably greeted by owner Mahendran Rasie. We ask if this is his first restaurant. “Yes, it is,” says our affable host. “But before that I was in the hotel industry for 25 years.” Ignoring the generic Italiana that keeps everybody happy at a Ramada Inn or a suburban sports bar, we focus on Waterfalls' unique South Asian tapas card. Rasie soon returns with a complimentary plate of crisp papaddams coupled with a pair of terrific purées, one a spicier than usual coriander, the other a plum-sweet tama-rind. Those same sassy sauces – mislabelled chutneys on the menu – also help a smallish quintet of vegetarian pakoras ($7.99) morph into something unexpectedly special. Two sea creatures, three people. That's the dilemma we face we're served a pair of tandoor-fired tiger shrimp and another of Cajun-seared scallops (both $9.99 and plated over organic greens). The latter greatly improve with the addition of a tart pomegranate glaze. But there's no need to arm-wrestle over the remarkably fresh combo of chickpea chana Peshori with potato and paneer dressed with raw Spanish onion, and al dente saffron-scented dahl, easily some of the best veggie subzis in town. No surprise once you learn that chef Vijay Kabil last cooked at Siddhartha on Gerrard East. Madras-style mussels ($7.99) are another big winner. This dish was designed to share, a dozen and a half or so plump bivalves swimming in rich curried cream, sided with plenty of blistered naan perfect for sopping. But why stop there? Serve them with the skinny fries that come with the house burger ($8.99, virtually identical to the one served at Toby's, right down to the garnishes of iceberg lettuce, tomato, red onion and sliced dill pickle) and you'd have one of the best moules frites around. And if the kitchen insists on offering pizza (all $10.99), why not top one Indian-style with the tandoori chicken used in the fettucini ($13.99)? And while we're at it, could somebody kill the mind-numbingly awful Muzak that tootles away in the background throughout dinner. An ironic prankster like the Rosebud's Rodney Bowers might get away with playing cheesy watered-down instrumental cover versions of Roberta Flack hits to downtown hipsters, but anywhere else it's sheer torture. Talk about killing me softly!
------------------------------------------------ Waterfalls Indian Tapas Bar and Grill - The Globe and Mail Review by Laura Serra
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