Especially a negative restaurant review. How many really negative restaurant reviews have you read?

Here’s one. Let’s see how he does it.   We’re in Toronto, by the way.

“Walk of shame” usually refers to showing up at work in last night’s clothing. It means you got lucky. It also alludes to bed head, missing buttons and incriminating clothing stains.

Basically, looking and feeling like crap.

It also describes the strip of Bloor [Street] between Bathurst and Spadina.

The Annex is no stranger to bad restaurants. The neighbourhood nearly owns a patent on the concept.

Cheap sushi joints line the street, each as barely adequate as the last. The ‘hood’s most popular sushi restaurant was closed down in March for three days by health inspectors. This month, an investigative report by the Star found it was selling tilapia as snapper. [Nice, very precise details.  Sort of amusing.]

Pubs and coffee shops sit in the shadow of the Brunswick House, where a fist fight can be had for the price of a pint. All of it is fuelled by a steady supply of undergrads from University of Toronto’s student ghetto.

T cafe, a new tea and tapas spot, is unlikely to improve the neighbourhood’s reputation.  [SOS likes the way the writer sketches the restaurant’s low-life setting before reviewing the restaurant itself.  Gives the reader a sense of the larger reality in which the place sits.]

The site – the corner of Bloor and Borden – was the home of Dooney’s for more than 20 years. In the mid-’90s, the cafe scored a victory over coffee giant Starbucks. Locals and regulars rallied their support when the property’s owner leased it to the coffee giant. After a lot of bad press, Starbucks leased the property back to Dooney’s and quietly opened up shop down the block.  [Again, a little history is good — though SOS had some trouble understanding the sequence of events as written.]

Perhaps the food at T cafe would be better if it were a Starbucks. I would rather eat one of its prepackaged ham sandwiches than another meal here.

On each visit, it’s difficult to pass the intoxicating perfume of cumin wafting from Ghazale, a wonderful Middle Eastern place across the road.

There are a few pleasing bites at T Cafe. [It’s always a good idea to start an attack with whatever positive you can think of to say.  Makes you look less nasty, more fair.]  Onions, fried with a green-tea speckled batter, are not without their charm ($4.25). Rosti are freshly fried, topped with bits of goat cheese and green-tea smoked salmon ($6).

But that’s just an attempt to say something nice.  [Refreshing directness.] Most of the food has the sprightliness of leftover wedding hors d’oeuvres.

There are cold goops of roasted zucchini and peppers ($4.25) and overcooked lamb chops ($9.25) with mate tea honey mustard. Frico (thin, baked crisps of cheese) are served as “Asiago chips” ($6). Except they are nothing like a chip. They are thick and gummy like a tougher, cheese version of a fruit roll-up.  [Goops.  Gummy.  Excellent icky words.]

The “creamy salsa verde” with won ton chips ($5.25) is yogurt with chopped peppers. Sliders with pancetta ($7.50) are straight out of a caterer’s page #1 selection. That’s the page you flip back to after you see the page #3 prices and say, “People like mini-hamburgers. I guess sliders are good enough for our guests.”

This place even manages to FUBAR something as simple as a bowl of cold soba ($4.99).  [Hold on.  Gotta look up FUBAR.  Fuck Up…?  Ah.  Fuck Up Beyond All Repair. Who knew.]  I can’t imagine how it is even possible to get soba to the consistency of licorice. I’d rather not know.  [Instead of the windy I can’t imagine how it is even possible… maybe something more direct instead:  How do you get soba to the consistency of licorice?]

Nearly all the food has tea in it. Yet nothing tastes of tea. Except for the tea, which is quite nice ($4.50).

But if I were coming here just for tea, it would infuriate me that all the teapots drip.

It’s shocking because good restaurateurs put a lot of care into these things. [Shocking overstates things and risks making the writer sound like a snot.]  A friend who owns a coffee shop has gone through three milk jugs and three sugar bowls in search of the perfect paraphernalia.

When I visit, most guests are drinking tea – couples on laptops; a boy with a stack of textbooks; a woman reading a magazine article titled “Decluttering Your Sewing Room.” A teapot and its drips clutter every table.

The only menus are placed at ceiling level over the counter, in tiny type. A server brings our food, but not cutlery or napkins. “It’s over there,” she says, motioning with her head.  [Excellent bit here.  It’s the details that do the trick.]

Despite the window sign promising a “unique tapas menu,” this is no restaurant.

No one inquires about our half-eaten food. We have leftovers wrapped up to feed someone on the street. But the container leaks red oil on my pants and the stain does not come out (thanks a lot, Shout Triple-Action).

A restaurant is a business – a big investment. It’s hard to fathom the bank employee that would approve a loan for a restaurant, in any neighbourhood, serving tea-infused tapas dishes.

The Annex doesn’t needs [typo] this, period. There is already a tea shop across the street, All Things Tea. There is no shortage of options for chicken wings. A merging of the two (chai chicken wings with peach green tea plum sauce $8) is far less than the sum of its parts.

Despite being in possession of Dooney’s’ liquor licence, there is no alcohol. Maybe this is for people who love wings but hate beer.

I might feel guilty picking on T cafe, but there are plenty of people around town working their bums off to make the best food they can. There is no excuse for this.

Popcorn at the Bloor theatre is a better meal.