Skylon Tower Restaurant and Observation Deck

The Skylon Tower in Niagara Falls, Ontario, stands at 520 feet tall, offers two dining rooms and an observation deck that overlooks the beautiful falls. The dining options include a casual, buffet-style restaurant on the first floor and a rotating, traditional restaurant on the second floor. Both experiences include “free” entry to the observation deck after your meal.

My family and I made dinner reservations in the more formal rotating restaurant, which takes an hour to fully spin, offering views of both the American and Canadian falls. Little did we know, the view only lasted approximately 15 minutes and the other 45 minutes were views of the tourist area parking lots, which, you can imagine, were not so glamorous.

The menu selections sounded delicious as we skimmed through the pages. I noticed in the fine print on the back page the restaurant requires each patron to order a minimum $43 worth of food. While I am not shocked by this rule, I felt it was not fair because the food quality was poor.

I ordered the vegetarian selection — grilled vegetable stroffolino with tofu. The tofu was unseasoned and raw, while the vegetables were not freshly grilled, but, rather, stewed. My parents both ordered the seafood pasta, steamed seafood over plain pasta and no sauce. There was little to no flavor in the dishes. My sister tried the vegetable medley and we were disappointed again as this dish was a piece of eggplant with cheese on top over plain pasta and no sauce.

My experience at the Skylon was not the best, to say the least. The staff was friendly, and the view was beautiful for 15 minutes, but I do not believe this experience was worth the price we paid.