Zen Cafe & Lounge - Richmond Hill, Ontario

While lounges are a common thing in downtown Toronto, there really aren’t too many up north in the Richmond Hill area. Luckily, Zen Café & Lounge, opened in fall of 2016, aims to fulfill this void. They are located in the Richland Mall at Leslie / 16th Ave in ... Richmond Hill. Owner Winter and Fiona are avid organic food supporters and strive to use as much organic ingredients as possible in Zen Café & Lounge. Everything from tea, coffee, meats, to vegetable are organic sourced and makes the meal extra special and healthy. Surprisingly, despite the organically sourced and higher quality ingredients, all items in Zen Café & Lounge are very competitively priced. The setting is very classy and elegant modern loft. The night we visited, there was a pianist performing live lounge music, which certainly gives the restaurant a classier feel and can make your meal extra romantic. There is a private room available for rental on the second floor of the lounge. It has been a very popular venue for birthday party, bridal shower, or other corporate events. There is usually no rental fee but it is subjected to minimum charges, depending on the day of the week and the event. Zen created their own version of afternoon tea, called twilight tea, since it can be enjoyed as dinner. This three layered tea tower features a variety of savory, scones, and sweets. For those who want alcoholic drinks to spice up the night, Zen has a wonderful collection of cocktails and mixed drinks. Zen has a rainbow cocktail, which is just astonishing. Other than the rainbow shots, Zen also has another signature shots that symbolized the different stages of love! Zen has a wide variety of dessert that are made in-house by their specially trained chefs. All premium desserts are made with no conservatives. They also feature crepe cake from Lady M and cheesecakes from Cheesecake Factory. Zen also have their in-house created light and refreshing rose shaped dessert. It is pear simmered and soaked with an organic wine sauce. It is so beautiful and you have to definitely try it! This requires advanced reservation so be sure to call before you go! Overall we enjoyed Zen Café & Lounge very much and would recommend to anyone looking for a special date-night spots in York Region! Read more

I love the live music aspect - that really sold me as a customer, considering the artist was a great singer and guitarist! His energy was especially friendly and the crowd was loving his vibe, despite it being fairly dead lol. The cakes were okay, I do wish they had more ... choices, or maybe switched vendors to Dufflet and La Rocca if anything. Do expect to shout from time to time due to loud ambiance. Read more

Good cheesecake, drinks menu offers few options. Good friendly service. Karaoke available on request. Cozy, Clean and well decorated place.

First off, I originally wanted to give 0 stars, but customer service was nice enough as well as the interior staging. It is April 19th, 2017, at 2:28pm. Just finished or semi finished the set lunch, I just couldn't finish it and I hate wasting food. I ordered the popcorn ... chicken with the daily soup, and my friend ordered the beef spaghetti with salad. The salad is a tiny cup (just a tad bit taller than a espresso cup) filled with fruit salad. My fault for not asking what kind of salad it was. The daily soup was chicken noodle. My first thought, great! I love chicken noodle. When i arrived, it's luke warm at best, and the taste? Its from Campbell's chicken noodle soup. How would I know for those that are wondering, I cook that myself 4 times a week at home, I'm pretty sure I know the taste. Now on to the salad, my friend didn't want it so we asked to change to the soup and the waitress agreed, which was great. They didn't have chicken noodle anymore, but had veggie soup, we agreed anyways. The soup came, and guess what, it was Campbell's Alphabet soup. Since when was alphabet soup considered a veggie soup and again, luke warm at best. We finished the soups, and the main course arrived. I grabbed my popcorn chicken and rice plate, it was cold... I took a bite of the rice, it was cold. I grabbed a piece of chicken and it was only warm in the centre. And the worst part, they are chicken strips you can buy in grocery stores cut into little pieces. The beef spaghetti was alright, hot enough to be called cooked food. But the spaghetti was not cooked through, still bunched together. I only ate all the chicken and 70% of the rice, while my friend only finished 50% of the spaghetti. Both of us usually finish all our food, but this place we just can't. We paid our bill and left. Very disappointed since it was rated at 4 stars. Although the food is horrible, I have no idea on the drinks or cakes, but there will be no chance of me coming back. Read more

Went cause they have a nice selection of cheesecake. However, they have some weird minimum policy that each patron must order a drink (another $3.50), regardless of ordering food to eat.