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Menu includes many fresh made dishes, organic pasta, creative pizzas and tapas. Cuts of meat are of the highest quality and the seafood is ocean wise. Several TVs to see the game and two private rooms that can be booked for any function or party.
In the past I enjoyed the food for the value at the Quick Serve. My colleagues and I would grab our lunch from there several times a week. Now, however, we notice that the servings are WAY smaller yet the price has increased. It was good at first, but am optimistic on the number of times we'll be grabbing lunch from there in the future. Too bad as the food was pretty decent.
Pretty sure Usher was talking about this place when he sang "Love in this club"
Club Ilia has friendly servers and management,tasty food, and a substantial beer and wine selection. They often have cheap lunch specials, and recently opened up an even cheaper 'quick serve' bar for those of us that want tasty food to-go.
I love that the staff often know their customers by name, or at least by face. Every campus needs a friendly watering hole like this one!
Went for lunch with some coworkers. We waited 40 minutes for food and at no point the waitress showed up to apologize for the long wait. Ordered a salmon burger which turned out to be a half a finger thin piece of overcooked salmon that would need a help of a gallon of water to chew and swallow. Sent the food back and ordered a seared tuna salad that was mediocre to say the least. My coworker ordered a medium rare steak that showed up well done. I guess it was still sizzling on its long journey to the table.
This is a good place for after work drink but for good food look somewhere else.
I've been to Club Illia probably close to a dozen times now, mainly because it's one of the only places to have a good sit-down meal at SFU. It seems like there are many more staff or faculty members than students here possibly because it's one of the only places like this, more time can be spent here and the food is more expensive than the fast food places on campus. The prices are comparable to restaurants and the food I find, better than some mainstream restaurants like East Side Mario's in Coquitlam. Wine, beer and the usual drinks are available as well.
Other than ordering a salad once which cost close to $10 which I didn't find to be a worth it at all, I've always ordered pasta -- the portions and value are generally good. The daily special chicken and mushroom fettuccine is good -- very rich though. I have to pack up the rest. Another good daily special is the Caesar salad and cannelloni. My friend had a seafood cannelloni recently. It looked yummy. He said was very good. I'll have to try it next. I tend to order spinach linguine with meatballs Florentine. It's filling and has a good variety of textures and flavours. Btw, you can select from different kinds of pastas for many dishes. I wouldn't say the food here is outstanding as I can find it a bit bland at times, but that may be my personal bias towards very flavourful and very fresh-tasting food.
The place is very busy at lunch time and there can be a wait. There aren't many smaller tables for 2 or 4, so that makes it a bit problematic for seating. You can see 2 people sitting at a table for 5 at times. I suggest making reservations if you really want to ensure you'll get a seat and leave at a reasonable time.
In terms of time: you can end up there for an hour or more, easily. Between waiting to get a seat, having your order taken, being served your meal and getting the cheque -- it can take a while. Service has been a bit of a hit and miss. The people are pleasant enough. I think they can check in more often and in some cases be more aware of their customers and what they might need: water/coffee refills, condiments, packing up leftovers, or the bill.
Oh how I wanted this place to be good! I live and work on Burnaby Mountain and most of the restaurants in UniverCity are aimed at students - cheap, fast, and forgettable. So my neighbours and I were so excited when it was *finally* announced that we'd be getting a proper restaurant with a patio and a liquor license. (The Indian place below needs a similar but separate review.) No such luck. In three out of five visits to Club Ilia, this has been my experience:
1) I ask the server what is the difference between the 'Lunch Special' Chicken Caesar Salad and the Chicken Caesar Salad on the regular lunch menu as they are the same price. She informs me that the feature Chicken Caesar Salad has less chicken. Our table laughs politely and asks why anyone would order that. She doesn't get it and repeats, exasperatedly, "It's the same price - it just has less chicken". I try to point out more directly that that makes little sense. She goes to ask the manager about this and comes back insisting the same thing. I then point to the regular menu and order the salad with 'more chicken - same price'. Salad was mediocre at best, but my table had a good laugh.
2) My family of 4 comes here in August for a dinner on the patio. We order wine and 4 entrees. 3 entrees arrive after a long wait. They are plunked down by someone other than our male server and we assume the 4th entree is on the way. We wait. And wait. No servers are to be seen. Our food is getting cold as we wait. Finally I track down the girl who dropped off our food. She doesn't know where our server is. She says she doesn't think he entered 4 entrees. We start to eat our food and share with our son who is missing his dinner. The male waiter shows up to clear our plates away and drop off our son's meal. No explanation or apology is offered. He just looks sheepish. Then our bill is dropped off to us - which we just assume given the VERY long wait will not include our son's entree, or at the very least, will be discounted. Nope. We're charged for all of it and we never hear a word about it. Being Canadian, we leave a small tip anyways and go home because we don't want to wait another half an hour to have a complaint dealt with.
3) Come for a work luncheon. One member of our table explains as we sit that she needs to leave sooner than the rest of us so she orders her food immediately while we peruse the menu for a further 5 minutes or so. Guess whose lunch arrived last, well after the rest of us? Yup, the only person who ordered in advance. I will say this - my pasta lunch was actually pretty tasty this time and not so reliant on cream to improve the taste.
4) Only because we live nearby do I do this. I arrange to have my husband's birthday party dinner for 30 people at Club Ilia. Convenience and a nice private party room are my only reasons - really. That, and I hear they got rid of their former cok*d out manager and replaced him with someone better. She is helpful in our email correspondence. I give her the number of people and we arrange a set menu WEEKS in advance. Closer to 34 people are coming, I warn her a few days before. That's fine, I hear in response. The hostess I speak to the day before is delightful and helpful. All looks good. Our party arrives on the Saturday night and they have two servers - TWO - for the entire restaurant on a Saturday night with a party of 30+ coming in, and no bartender. Again, no explanation or apology. The servers seem annoyed that we're there. It takes some of my guests 40 minutes to get their first drink. The servers complain rather nastily whenever someone inquires into their drink, "There's only two of us you know!" and we can't tell if they are mad at management or at us. Nightmare.
And that is why I am done with Club Ilia.
Decided to try this place out - because I was sick of subs and cheap sushi.
Have to admit though that it is pretty bad value for what you get. Decent portion sizes (no complaints of that here), food is bland, and the vegetable chicken platter had stringy chicken. It wasn't horrible - just not good enough for the price.
Positives - nice place, good service. Only place on campus to get beer on tap that isn't flat.
Negatives - average food, not great value.
I've only been once and I'll give it another try.
I work at SFU and I am really happy to have this new restaurant up here on "the hill". I have eaten here about 5-6 times now and I have enjoyed every dish I have ordered except the nachos which were made with a weird type of taco chip and didn't have the typical toppings (no olives or jalapenos). Other than that though I have had pizza, salads and pastas all of which I have enjoyed. The staff is generally friendly and eager to please. Occassionally you have to flag someone down if the restaurant is busy so perhaps they should add another server during the busy lunch time. Still I am very pleased overall with the restaurant service, menu selection and overall ambiance. I would definitely recommend it and plan to bring friends and family here for something/somewhere different to come on a nice evening or weekend and follow up the meal with a walk around the beautiful campus and trails.
I am a great believer of the old adage, that your favourite restaurant is the one where they know you and welcome you. I live up at SFU and Club Ilia is the best thing that has happened there in recent memory as far as a place to go for a drink and sometimes a meal. The Himalayan Peak downstairs is good too, good food, good prices, but it is strictly a restaurant and doesn't have the casual atmosphere of a bar/restaurant. I live here, so a place to go where in this era of one drink is one too many many, is important. Service is always friendly and welcoming, food good and well prepared, I mostly go for pastas or salads, I'm too cheap for much else. Also if you like hockey, nice spot at the bar. There are always negatives to everything, but on balance, a nice bar/restaurant, nice ambiance, lugubrious owner, but most owners are and he's not there often. Anyway, I'd be miserable if I had invested what he clearly has to make a very nice place that cannot be equaled this side of Yaletown. Four out of five, especially Wednesday when a bottle of wine is $5 off.
Perhaps because the servers are students with greener pastures ahead, they don't put their heart and soul into their current job. Not to say the service is awful, but I wouldn't call it anything special either. I would rank the food 3.5 if I could, but I rounded down to 3 (instead of up to 4) because on several occasions the food has taken FAR too long to arrive. This usually isn't the servers fault, and I place blame on an (at times) unorganized kitchen staff. Having said that, I've had good experiences at Club Ilia and I will go again.
The food here is pretty good, however being at a university and catering to many students its more on the pricey side of things. However, being a student having lived in residence for 3 years it is a much welcomed change to other eats on campus off hours. Dining hall food leaves much to be desired.. and the pub is closed weekends. As I said the food is delicious, I had pasta and many in my group had pizza as well. The service was a little slow which was a tad frustrating and compared to the pub the drink prices are a little steep.
I wouldnt go here all the time, but it is a nice change to cooking or other campus options. A great place for a date if you dont want to leave campus, and somewhere nice to hang out on the weekends with your on campus friends.
We ate at Club Ilia with friends of ours -- a total of 4 adults and 3 kids. We ordered the cheese pizza for the kids, I had the chicken breast, my husband the penne with rose sauce. Our friends had the chicken pita and another pasta dish with meatballs. We also had the garlic bread and the bruchetta. Overall, the meal was okay. My chicken was good, I ordered it with roasted potatoes which I thought were under-seasoned. I also had a garden salad with a honey vinaigrette dressing that I did not care for at all - way too sweet. The kids liked the garlic bread and pizza but it's hard to mess those up. My husband thought his pasta was just okay. We also ordered glasses of beer but the glasses weren't cold enough and they didn't have an IPA on tap, not good! They also seemed to run out of a lot of things including the Sapporo that they were supposed to have on tap and the restaurant wasn't really all that busy. For dessert we had vanilla ice-cream (although they say they have chocolate it also wasn't available) and a creme brule. The creme brule was good but again, kind of hard to mess that one up. The portions were enormous, I'm not sure if they're trying to attract poor students but it was way too much food for any of us to finish. Oh, and they also don't have an espresso machine although the waitress said that they would be getting one soon. Overall, it was okay -- we work up at SFU so it's convenient to go there after work. It will probably work into our rotation, mostly because my daughter likes pizza and my husband likes beer. Might be nice in the summer as they have outside seating.
| 1. | Ichibankan Express (20 m) |  |
| 2. | Spicy Stone (58 m) | |
| 3. | Himalayan Peak - Indian Cuisine & Lounge (60 m) |  |
| 4. | Nature's Garden Organic Deli (245 m) |  |
| 5. | Bamboo Garden Chinese Restaurant (306 m) | |
| 6. | Donair Town (306 m) | |
| 7. | Clan Pizza Point (306 m) | |
| 8. | Triple O's (657 m) | |
| 9. | Subway (682 m) | |
| 10. | Booster Juice (769 m) |
