Toronto Karaoke Review: Saxony Resturant

The Saxony is a small sized bar/resturant on the the corner of Sherborne and Bloor. With the sign advertising 42,000 songs, I just had to stop in and take a look on Friday. After all, with 42000 songs, sounded like it could have a lot to offer.

The Good: The only good things were the excellent quality mikes and speakers. The food prices are very low, but the food you get is even lower.

The Mixed: Nothing was mixed here. It was pretty much all bad except for the equipment.

The Bad: Never had I had so many categories to put in this section of a review: The selection is the lowest I'd ever seen, the food was very poor, and the facilities were crowded and make you feel like you are in run down "hole in the wall". When the Fish & Chips arrived I was also surprised but in a negative way: The tarter sauce looked and tasted like it was just mayonase and pickles mixed, and the fish was like a bad TV dinner. In this case, I felt I get like I got less than what I paid for. Looking at the karaoke books itself I was equally disappointed: The selection didn't have enough English songs to come NEAR 42000. more like under 1000. I suspect they have a LOT more Chiense and Korean songs as there were a few people who sang a number of them. The restaurant wasn't really large enough to fold more than 50 people without being crowded, but there weren't many people there (maybe 20), I suspect this won't be a problem if you go. A better selection, or at least more up to date songs would be nice as the limited English songs available were all quite old. For me isn't so bad, but if you want more recent songs, you won't find them here. You'd think given the attendance I could give full marks on the wait time, but they ere also fairly bad: Several old customers were hogging the mike the MC did nothing to balance things out. Frankly, this barely qualifies as a karaoke restaurant/bar. More bar than restaurant or karaoke.

Grade: D

Summary Scores:
Facilities: 6 (They were clean although they give the feel of a cheap American bar)
Equipment: 9 (can't really fault it: It all works great, you won't sound bad here)
Location: 8 (Easy to get to, Sherbourne Subway, one block south)
Song Selection 4 (1000 English songs, please...)
Wait times: 4 (Scaled for Public Venue)
Host: 6 (She got all the selections right so I'm giving this as a gift)
Food Prices: 9 (Careful, something too good to be true...)
Food Quality 3 (Had better Microwave dinners)
Food Selection: 7 (They covered the basics)

Summary: Overall if you want a beer and incidental karaoke, well, go for it. Otherwise I'd pass for places that take their food and karaoke more seriously.

Venue Information:
Fridays and Saturdays, 8 PM to 2 AM
Saxony Resturant
599 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario M4X 1K7
416-929-2300