The Tulip Original Steak House on Queen Street East.

The Tulip, originally uploaded by The Oldie.

The Tulip

1606 Queen E, Toronto ON, M4L1G2

Phone: (416) 469-5797

The Tulip is kind of a Toronto institution - one of those places that has been there forever.

My husband and I went on a long walk from our home in West Toronto to Riverdale, on the east side of the city. First we walked around the Chinatown East area around Gerrard and Broadview, but we didn't really feel like eating Asian food that night so we headed down to Queen Street to Leslieville. There's a bunch of trendy new restaurants there, but I wasn't sure I was cool enough to eat in any of them, let alone that we could afford it. Then we came across the Tulip and I knew where we were eating.

I had read about the Tulip online and decided it was somewhere we should go. It's a traditional steakhouse that's been there for a long time. It has a very casual look to it, more of a diner in appearance than the more opulent surroundings I usually think of in a steakhouse.

Are you a vegetarian? If so, then don't go here. Don't bring your vegetarian friends unless you want to make them miserable. I think even the air has tiny meat particles floating around in it. There's certainly not much on the menu for them. Even the Caesar salad I ordered (3.950 had bacon on it, which I've never seen on a Caesar salad before.

My husband ordered the weekend special, Minced Sirloin with Spanish Sauce (a very reasonable 7.95). His comment: Good, but salty gravy. I ordered the Black Angus New York Cut Sirloin (19.25) It was good. A solid value traditional steak dinner from the 1950s without any bells or whistles I would say.

Service was great. The waiter was attentive but not over attentive. The food came pretty quickly, but not so quick that we thought they had it sitting around in the kitchen under a heat lamp. They brought our check promptly when asked. Best of all, my husband realized he forgot his wallet and when I went back they were already trying to call our house to tell us.

I'm not in a hurry to go back to this place. It's good and I'm glad we went for the experience. But I wasn't dying to go back and try other things on the menu.

It's the sort of place that fills up and has a line to get in, especially at brunch.

It also has a comically bad web page with tons of misspelled words, broken code and images that don't show up. Eggs Bebdict - LOL! They even have a promotional video that's not doing a very good job of promoting their restaurant. I couldn't get the video to play when I clicked on it, so I right clicked on it, chose save target as, and then viewed it on winamp when it downloaded.

We were lucky enough to get a table in the window. These are the stickers in the window from local publications saying it's a good place to eat. The earliest one is from 1995. You can click on the photo to see it larger.

Yes, that is a sex shop across the street, so if your dinner date goes well you can stop there afterwards.