Shoeless Joe's

Disaster

My regular spot for watching the UFC was fully booked, so this place was a last resort. I thought because it was fairly new, and that it was close to home for me that it would suffice. This is actually the last place you want to watch the UFC, or any other sporting event for that matter. The main screen is pretty decent for a cozy place like this, but it is however useless because only the 2 booths directly in front of it can appreciate it. The horse shoe bar has to filter their view through the heads of those in the booths, and the sections to the sides are blocked by walls. Another deciding factor in choosing this venue, was the fact that it was on a list of bars showing it in Toronto in high definition. This was not the case as all the tv's were showing hockey on cbc in SD. It was stretched so that you could not see parts of the game, and looked awful on new HDTV's. When my party first arrived, we took the only table remaining in a dim light corner at the back. We ordered a pizza and some drinks. All of us got our beers, except for one person who didnt get their coke, and one who asked for a bottle of beer but got a draft. 15 minutes go by, and the pizza is done but still no coke or beer. She asked again for it, and the waitress acted as though it was never ordered in the first place. We asked for a better positioned booth as soon as one became available, so we could enjoy the UFC comfortably when it came on after the hockey game. The hostess escorted us to the other side, and we waited a few minutes for the table to be cleaned off from some raunchy kids that left crayons and crumbs all over the place. We sat down and enjoyed what was surprisingly a pretty decent pizza pie. Thin crust with floppy ronis, and delectable sauce. The beer and coke situation is corrected, but we have no cutlery or napkins. For what is supposed to be a sports bar, it is more like a boring family restaurant. There is no music playing in this dead atmosphere, and they dont even play the commentators for the hockey game over the speakers. On top of all that, they dont even have the hockey game on all of the tv's! On our new side, the tv's in our viewing range are showing americas funniest videos, and one is broken. We ask the hostess to change the channel which takes an eternity. Once the hockey game is on, we realize that their is subtitles right in the middle of the screen blocking the game! Instead of asking the hostess again to correct something (it seemed like we were bothering her at this point with any requests) I took matters into my own hands and removed them myself so I could enjoy the last period without giant blocks of subtitles taking up the whole screen with a stretched SD picture and no sound. With everyone annoyed at this point, we figured we would have a better night just ordering it at home and getting a case of beer with 2 panormous pizzas from pizza hut. And that we did. We left this corny "sports bar" before the fight even started and we will never be returning. The only thing that makes this place a sports bar, is the chris bosh jersey they have behind glass on display like it is worth something.