Roberta and I had decided to get the sars package — you know, the one offering you a hotel room and baseball game and restaurant dinner and Lion King for one low, low price…The hotel room and good seats to a ball game were the highlights, and we were left trying to muster up excitement about the “entertainment district” meal and Lion King tickets.

From our list of twelve or so King Street area tourist-friendly restaurants, none of which sounded like much to write home about, we decided on The Red Tomato. I was immediately disappointed when we walked in that we weren’t eating at Fred’s Not Here, which is up a wide-open staircase from The Red Tomato. Fred’s was calmer and sleeker than its downstairs neighbour, I could sense immediately. Alas, it hadn’t been on our list.

We were seated in the Red Tomato and handed our “It’s Time for a Little Toronto” menus, at which point I felt vaguely embarrassed about the whole deal. My embarrassment quickly faded, though, under the heavier weight of my annoyance about the outrageously bad pop music blaring at very high volume right above our table. At least the songs lent us some of the content of our conversation, as we mocked them and the notion that this was an appropriate soundtrack for dinner.

We balked at ordering wine after our gruff and obviously sick-and-tired server directed us rudely toward the wine list — it listed a dozen mediocre wines by the glass, at rather shockingly high prices. We chose cocktails — spicy, well-mixed Caesars whose perfection was ruined by way, way too much celery salt on the rim — instead.

The sars package menu had a respectable choice of about six appetizers and six mains from the regular menu. For an appetizer, I had a caprese salad — apparently tomatoes, bocconcini, and roasted peppers in a basil dressing. When this came, it had about half a dozen almost microscopically tiny pieces of pepper, some underwhelming tomatoes, and several hard slices of smoked gouda! No bocconcini to be found. Gouda was completely ridiculous in a salad of this sort, and I left most of it untouched. I decided not to say anything to the staff because I didn’t figure we could expect much more from this kind of place in this kind of location.

Roberta fared little better with her appetizer, having ordered the baked lobster and crab soup. It had nary a bit of lobster or crab, but was just a vaguely seafood-flavoured broth covered by a layer of…bread? Cheese? Crepe? Who knows? Clearly, it was an attention-drawing gimmick, though Roberta said it tasted pleasant enough.

I had ordered a special “three pizza” for my main — this was apparently one third grilled vegetable, one third margarita, and one third sausage and goat cheese. I asked for the sausage left off. When it came, the pizza was admirably thin-crusted, but the whole thing was pretty lame. The grilled vegetables were grey, diced up beyond recognition and tasted of vinegar and pepper, and whatever cheese came with them — parmesan, I think — was almost undetectable. The same lack was to be found on the goat cheese side, which I didn’t touch because the onions and peppers on it were essentially uncooked. The margarita was bland. The thin crust seemed, once I’d tasted it, to be so thin merely because it hadn’t risen or cooked properly.

Roberta had ordered a red chicken curry, which came with rice and bok choy. Not being a chicken-eater, I didn’t try it. She seemed quite unimpressed, and said nothing more about it beyond that it was “okay”. I could tell by the look on her face that she was being over-generous in an attempt to salvage this weird occasion — the same way I was being when I said my pizza was “good”.

From our two dessert options, we each chose the trio of sorbets. These were mango, lemon and raspberry, and the best fun for me in them was trying to decide which Toronto gelato company they’d come from — they were good, but very, very standard and familiar.

Oh well. So we don’t go to The Red Tomato ever again, and we approach the theatre district with plenty of caution. A night at the Royal York more than made up for it.