It’s been a while since I’ve posted any review. I haven’t been to any new restaurants since Shunoko that I wanted to write a review of, but with my recent visit to Holy Cow Steakhouse, I have new material.
Holy Cow Steakhouse is located on Queen Street West, about halfway between University and Spadina. I passed by this place a few months ago and the name was eye catching, so I decided to visit it later. Holy Cow is a steakhouse with Japanese fusion and elements, and also serves non-steak Japanese dishes such as donburi and udon. The restaurant is very popular, its deceptively large interior was packed and I had to sit out in the patio.
Food
I ordered two dishes, a steak and a ‘side’. I saw surrounding tables and the steaks weren’t that big, which is why I ordered extra.
Karaage Don ($15)
This dish contains karaage and white rice below it. There is some creamy sauce and cheese sprinkled on top, the flavour isn’t too noticeable when eating. Oddly for karaage, the chicken isn’t deep fried. Rather, it’s just regular grilled chicken with some seasoning. The chicken itself is good. Overall, it’s ok; nothing too spectacular, just decently cooked “karaage” with white rice. If you’re not too hungry, the portion would provide a decent meal.
10 oz. Strip Sirloin ($35)
You can increase the steak size by paying extra, around $2-3 per extra ounce up to around 16 oz. The dish comes out sizzling on metal with four sides you can customize, but you can also choose fewer sides like I did and increase individual quantity (broccoli ⟶ more onions). Some steak sauce is optionally provided.
The meat quality is ok, nothing outstanding but it isn’t bad either. I ordered this steak to be cooked to medium, but sadly it came out more like medium-well and therefore was stiffer than I wanted it. The very center of the steak was more pink, but even this was closer to medium-well than medium. I could hardly taste the steak juices. The outside was charred nicely, the taste of sizzling burnt beef fat was nice to have. The sides, especially potatoes, are good.
In general, the steak is ok. I’ve had better steak before for prices not significantly higher than this. Holy Cow’s target audience is a more casual crowd, but it does advertise itself as a steakhouse so I’m not sure how to feel about the quality.
Price ($50)
I definitely stuffed myself, so Holy Cow does provide better quantity value than expensive steak restaurants. However to me, it’s somewhat in a limbo area where the steak is just ok and you can pay slightly more to get much better meat. If I wanted good Japanese food, I wouldn’t come here either. So the restaurant lies in a weird area where it doesn’t have a noticeable strength, it’s just ok. Overall, Holy Cow is a restaurant to visit if you’re not feeling expensive meats or good Japanese food but want something in the middle, but this seems rather illogical.
Ordering system
This is something I typically wouldn’t ever mention in a restaurant review, but it was horrible that I have to include this. The method of ordering food at Holy Cow is absolutely atrocious and singlehandedly turns my overall review of Holy Cow from ‘ok’ to ‘bad’.
Terribly designed order website
To start the order process, you scan a QR code. Typically this is just to open a digital menu, which is fine by me. However, there are a few restaurants where the QR code takes you to a website to order, and Holy Cow is one of them. This is already rather cumbersome, I would much prefer ordering directly by talking to a server.
The website design sucks. Half of the menu items didn’t have their pictures rendered, and the Karaage Don was one of them. Thanks to this, I didn’t know cheese was included in the dish, which I would have avoided had I known. When you choose an item, you add it to your cart and then have to go to the cart to order. The process is rather unintuitive and requires lots of button tapping.
This website implementation is annoying to use and feels like a bloated solution to what should be servers just taking orders the ‘old fashioned’ way, as if taking orders in person is antiquated in any way. I’ve worked as a restaurant server myself, taking orders is a relatively easy task compared to what else you’re supposed to do.
Account creation at a restaurant?
This is where the worst problem emerges: you need to create an account to order. When you tap ‘order’ on the cart page, you’re prompted to enter your phone number to create an account or sign in. The website will then send you a verification code through SMS, which you enter to confirm registration. You can even optionally add in your birth month and email address for occasional promotions and extra nonsense.
This is a horrible system and no restaurant should use this. Why do I need to sign up to a service to order food? Why can’t I just talk to a server and say “hey, can I have x”, this system has been functioning since the invention of restaurants. The company that operates this dumb ordering service is MRS Digi, which specializes in this bloated web ordering service and is somehow proud of the mess they cause. I read their privacy policy because this elaborate mechanism seemed like a scheme.
And it somewhat is, because MRS Digi retains information you sent through them: your phone number, extra registration details, order information, and so on. They use Google Analytics to “see how customers use their service”, “for security reasons”, and whatnot. This is honestly just infuriating. Not only do I need to use my stupid phone number to order food, but the service is run by a third party that retains the data. Why use this extraneous, inefficient, money wasting service when the employees can do it for no extra charge?
And my complaint isn’t even coming from a privacy argument, I’m mostly frustrated by the sheer inefficiency of the whole process. When I wanted to pay at the end, I just held up my hand and a server came quickly to handle it. Yet to order food, I had to open a buggy website that didn’t display 50% of the menu’s photos (which probably takes megabytes of precious data to load), maneuver a clumsy UI, and even register my phone number to do anything. Just let me order by talking through a waiter, please, it’s so much simpler. I’ve sent a request to scrub my order and registration information, I’m curious to see how that goes.
A bad taste, but not from food
The food is ok. If you want good steak, go to a dedicated steakhouse. If you want good Japanese food, look elsewhere. Holy Cow is a more casual middle-ground place, so for those that don’t mind sacrificing taste for quantity, the restaurant is ok. But honestly, I highly discourage you from eating here just because of how frustrating it is to order anything in the first place. My whole experience was singlehandedly ruined by the ordering process, and I’m likely not going back unless this system is gone. The same feeling applies to all restaurants that use MRS Digi’s service or equivalents, no matter how many Michelin stars and queued people they have.