Maiz

Cute decor, friendly staff. The food looked great and tasted great too! Hope there's different

I was impressed by the cozy atmosphere and friendly staff. However, the overpowering kitchen smell throughout the restaurant detracted from the overall dining experience and left us feeling unappetized. To add to that, we were disappointed to find out they had already run out of braised beef on a busy Saturday night. The chicken tacos are served with hot bread, but unfortunately, the chicken stuffing was cold. I also felt quite bloated after the meal and am unsure if it was the bread or the black beans that caused it. On a positive note, the lemonades were excellent and had the perfect balance of sweetness and sourness.

Valentina is such a great hostess, made it so special for us! Cute place with a great vibe. Food is Yummylicious !

Food is excellent. Staff are better. (Especially Marianne!) The location is pretty good but don’t be too close to the front door during the winter. We both had arepas. My wife thoroughly enjoyed the fish arepa. Mine was very flavourful pork arepa. The guacamole appetizer is good but the corn chips are salted heaven. Great music playing throughout in the background completes the experience. A very warm experience on a very cold Toronto night.

Our server Marianna was terrific! The food was great!

Food was great and Mariana provided us with amazing service.

The tacos were insanely good. Would highly recommend the Birria and Carnitas trio tacos

The food was good and the service was great. They could be a little bit more generous with portions but I understand it must be tough to be in the restaurant business these days.

The house made tortilla chips served with guacamole ($14.95) were amazing – thick enough for dunking but still breaks easily creating a satisfying crispiness. It’s also surprisingly un-oily for a chip that gives off such a lovely crunch. There’s enough smooth guacamole to get through most of the chips with a small side of smoky salsa roja to finish off the rest, which consequently goes nicely mixed into the moros cristianos. Before getting into the mains, I suggest you choose wisely and order something that offers a side of the moros cristianos or soft-fried rice and beans. If it doesn’t come with it, order the side ($3.95) as it was our favourite part of the meal. The spice-laced rice is mixed with black refried beans and heated through creating a flavourful creamy mixture that’s like a thick dairy-free risotto. I liked having it solo or heaped on a crunchy tortilla, give me more! The rice comes with the quesadillas. While the menu describes the vegetable quesadillas ($19.95) as being stuffed with soft-fried chickpeas… they weren’t soft at all. Maiz should just keep it simple and used a grilled vegetable filling instead. Heck, add in more moros cristianos … anything is better than hard chickpeas. At least it contained a decent amount of cotija cheese creating a lovely gooeyness around the chickpeas and the tortilla was well-toasted creating a crunchy crust. I’d skip the churros ($11.95 for three), which were overly dense. A restaurant should only attempt making this dessert if they churn out enough daily to warrant creating fresh batter and having hot sizzling oil ready. Otherwise, it’s just an overly sweet chewy concoction that leaves me wanting a Tim Horton’s crueller more than a churro.

Food was delicious and authentic! Birria tacos were bomb! The queso pull on the nachos was insta worthy and the service from Valentina was lovely and very friendly. My friend got the arepa and the pork was incredibly well cooked! Ambience and decor was really nice and cozy too. Definitely worth the price. :)