Salsa dancing anyone?

This weekend, my boyfriend came down from Kingston to visit and I decided to surprise him with an exciting night on the town. We are both from Calgary, and, needless to say, don’t have as many exciting places to go there as we do in Toronto.

We both love to dance, and although he may be better than I am, I decided to take him somewhere that we could actually dance without have to unwillingly rubbing up against a million other people. (I.e. a club). This led me to Lula Lounge.

Lula Lounge has live entertainment on the weekends, a dance floor, and the best part: salsa lessons!

We each paid $49.00 for a three-course meal that included the dance lessons and cover for the entertainment. We arrived at about 8:00 and there weren’t too many people there.

Don’t get the steak

The appetizers and desserts were delicious, but we each ordered the Grilled AAA Alberta Striploin, which we (wrongly) assumed would be good as it was from Alberta. I ordered mine medium-well and it came out totally charred. After sending it back, it was slightly less charred, but I was hungry so I decided to ignore it. My advice: order something else.

The “dance lesson”

At about 9:30, they started the dance lesson. It was led by a slightly creepy Latino and showed you the basic salsa steps, but nothing more. He seemed to be more interested in hitting on the many women there for the stagette parties than teaching us too many steps. Having taken other ballroom lessons in Calgary, we were somewhat disappointed. 

Finally… the music!

The disappointing dance lesson was countered by an excellent live band at about 10:30, though. Café Cubano was a group of about 10 guys playing Latin music all night. They were fantastic! Great energy, and really made you want to get up and practice the (very few) steps you had learned in the preceding lesson. It got progressively busier over the course of the night, and by about 12:00 there was hardly any space to dance. 

Overall, it was a great experience. We would never see anything like that in Calgary, which is one of the reasons I love Toronto so much. What are some other cool places you would recommend in Toronto? Have you ever been to Lula Lounge?