Safari Bar & Grill

Samantha was our waitress and she was fantastic! The food was cooked perfectly, flavourful and tasty. Comfortable relaxed atmosphere, We will definitely be back!

Stopped by for lunch. The salad dressing was excellent, the mixed baby greens unfortunately had more than their fair share of wilting. In the past I’ve always loved their Irish nachos. Today, not so much… The cheese was mostly unmelted, and the chips weren’t hot. I think someone in the kitchen took their eye off the ball. This is in contrast to my numerous previous visits.

Great food, decent beer selection and a great patio. We just moved into the area and this place will be a regular stop. Service was great, friendly and quick.

Awful Saturday nightlife.

I’ve come here and had great food then come here another time and had the lamb burger that tasted like seafood and blood (worse possible mix ever) if you do plan on coming here I would not suggest ordering the lamb burger however other dishes such as there pasta has never failed. Good environment and on Fridays it’s a nice night out with a live DJ.

Safari looks like it could be a great bar to hang out and get something to eat. But sadly the staff don’t seem to care to make an effort.
Service is so slow a one-​legged turtle would be quicker. We were sat for over ten minutes before anyone even came to our table. Then when she did it was another ten minutes just to get a menu.
We eventually placed an order, and waited for our food to arrive. And waited. And waited some more. Once it came it wasn’t worth the wait. Bland burgers and very dry chicken.
With a better chef and serving staff, Safari would be a great establishment. Sadly, until then it will just be an overpriced place to spend your day waiting.

Haven’t been here in years and this was my first time trying out their food and it was just meh. Thankfully our server (I believe his name was Ricardo) knew someone in our party so the service was friendly. He does seem like a genuinely nice person so that’s great for the Safari Bar & Grill. Other wait staff/​servers were a little rude and the food took about an hour.
[Starters]
Calamari Fritti With Smoked Jalapeño Mayo — The portion itself was actually pretty good and it also tasted pretty good. Was worth $ 11 and definitely can be shared between 2 to 3 people. ⁵⁄₅
Irish Nachos — This was also quite good and was a big serving. Normally, Irish Nachos are serves with waffle fries but theirs was actually, what seemed like, fresh potato chips. The toppings were good, but there could’ve been more. ⁴⁄₅
[Main]
Linguine Del Mare — This was served with Black Tiger Shrimp, Calamari And Mussels Tossed In A Spiced Provençal Sauce. Sounds fancy, right? Well the presentation itself was very lovely and you get a very generous amount of seafood however the dish was lacking flavor. Even with fresh ground pepper and grated parmesan cheese — a lot of both — the dish was still very bland. I ended up taking mine home and re-​heating it in a pan with one of those ready made Philadelphia garlic cream sauce. Trust me, it tasted waaaay better! I would give this dish ³⁄₅ stars simply due to the amount of seafood you get.

I went on a Saturday night with my husband. We’re both in our early 40s and currently scoping to find a fun place to venture on our much needed date nights.
The waiter was super nice, I ordered the Red Pizza with a special ‘safaritina’ cocktail and he ordered the burger and a bottle of beer.
I’m not as picky on quality of food, as much husband, but we were both pleasantly surprised by the portions, price and service.
I later asked about the pool tables, and we ventured a few games in the basement below (bartender was also very friendly).
A few pool tables were reserved for a larger group, later on, but we were there early enough (around 10pm) to find a table for at least 2 hours.
Around midnight, the basement was pretty packed with people playing pool, and/​or a few dancing on the floor.
I found the crowd mixed, mostly older (like us, haha), but a few young ones too. I sensed we all wanted the same thing: to have a good time, in a decent place.
All in all, we both decided to return. :-D

I guess Monday night is not a good night for this restaurant. We walked by the kitchen being sat down and the kitchen staff were using the f word liberally. While we were looking at the menu we could hear the kitchen staff talking, not a conversation we wanted to hear. Then some one came in off the street and walked in to the kitchen to have a conversation with the staff. The service was ok and the food was mediocre, we left over half our meal on the table and all our server could ask was if we wanted it packaged. We will not be back!

Food and service were fantastic. Slow start, waited a while for a table to be prepared but once done the service and the food were great. Fantastic food ad service.

Everything said previously is 100% bang on.
Service is really slow, took us 20mins just to get some water. They brought round some menus and then we had to go upstairs to order our food because we’d booked a party of 30 – 40 a few months ago and they only thought to put one bartender on. It was pandemonium.
I had the burger which was burnt.
Really over priced. The only redeeming feature was the free pool.

Service was exceptional. Order off the new menu. The waiter indicated that my chicken cooks for just over 20 minutes. I was ok with this. We didn’t realize but the dinner took longer than 25 minutes. The manager brought over dinner and apologized and said he took the apps off the bill. Wow… not necessary. The service all night was great. The pepperoni on husbands pizza wasn’t as good as usual but overall a great experience. The 10 clove garlic chicken was good. 5 star for service 4 star for food

Safari used to be one of my favourite places when they first opened up. I have eaten here many times food in my opinion is hit and miss both in value and taste. They have great burgers and wings however I have been dissapointed when ordering anything else.
The prices of food at Safari are pretty expensive I believe they really are trying to seem like an upscale restaurant.
The reasons I have begun to dislike Safari over the years and no longer go are as such:
They have a restaurant style upstairs and downstairs they have billiards a bar and even a small dance floor on weekends which they now charge cover for every weekend and I haven’t been in a while but Safari can be very hit or miss on weekends. Before when there was no cover it was this way but it really turned out annoying when you would come on a Saturday and the place was dead but you were paying cover to get in, I could understand this just not in Ajax.
They used to always have the downstairs open and pool used to be free (with drink or food purchase) Tuesday — Thursday 6:00 PM — 8:00 PM and free all day on Sunday after 5:00 PM — The problem with this was it seemed that only 25% of the staff actually knew about it. I can’t tell you how many times the person behind the bar would argue with me that they have never heard of free pool only to go upstairs and have to come down and apologize. If it happened once or twice it would have been more understandable but it honestly happened 5 – 6 times.
The final straw for me and Safari was the complete lack of consistency of the downstairs being open it became completely hit or miss whether it would open and was a waste of the gas to find out of we could play pool. And the crazy thing is all it would take is 1 person to serve people down there.
Anyway this review got long… Safari used to be great although pricey, now it’s just pricey.

Nice décor. Was recommended to this restaurant by my date. Food and service was great.
We first started with the appetizer (mussels). These were excellent. In fact the best mussels I ever had. I then had spicy angel hair pasta, and my date had pork chop. The pork chop was great, but the angel hair was a bit too spicy for me. So I ended up ordering fish for myself (catch of the day). The fish wasn’t that great unfortunately. Fish wasn’t fresh, and the rice was bland. The vegetables were probably the only decent part of the dish.
Bad luck for me that day I guess. My date has been here for years, and told me they use to have more Cajun food on the menu.

Really nice restaurant!

Nice place for bar type food! Good atmosphere and the best fries in the city.

I usually have a good time here but the staff there was terrible… We got there and the pool table we wanted was reserved. so the manager graciously bought my group a shot and gave us a table to sit and chat… we ordered a drink and 2 minutes later the waitress came over with the bill… I was thinking we didnt ask for the bill…5 minutes later she comes back and asks us if we were going to pay it… so I told her we never asked for the bill but we will pay it if she wants us out that badly… so we paid the bill she came and got the money and 25 minutes later she came back with the change. Not a good experience at all

Visited a couple weeks ago on a Friday evening. Restaurant was about 25% capacity. Greeted at the front by a smiling hostess who quickly showed us our table. Had the children with us that night so they brought them the usual crayons and paper to keep them occupied. We were starving so we jumped straight into the entrees. The kids had the normal kids menu fare… chicken fingers and fries and pizza and fries. I had the gnocci with jumbo tiger shrimp… very delicious and my wife had the fish tacos. can’t remember the specific type of fish but she enjoyed it. We shared a chocolate crunch cake which was absolutely amazing. Our waiter let us know all deserts are home made by a pastry chef. Our waiter lived up to expectations and was courtious and attentive. Atmosphere was cosy, you get a feeling of the downtown feel in Ajax. Washrooms are clean. Only drawback is the blaring music… they could stand to turn it down during dinner service. I will be back as I like supporting the local independant restaurants and as well, on the way out, noticed a flyer for DJ’s on Thursday night. I’ll be sure to review after that experience… forgot to mention… if you like the fries Harvery’s used to serve… Safari has them.