gomer300VancouverSince June 20, 200726 Reviews
(2.8)- Food
(2.7) - Service (2.5)
- Value (2.6)
- Ambiance
(3.5)
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(2.8) (2.7) (2.5) (2.6) (3.5)Went in tonight on a whim after passing by many times. I don't like the inside much it feels a bit like a cafeteria or a RCL. The staff were very kind and genuine (it's a family run business). This isn't the same 4 points I'd give Le Crocodile or Chill Winston for service.
The food was good. It might have been a touch overpriced, but it was good. My vegetables were a bit cold, my roast lamb was one of the better ones I've ever had in Vancouver. If you live in the neighbourhood, it's one of the better places to walk to.
I went in on a whim since I've lived nearby and always intended to go. As far as these kinds of places go, it was good.
I'm not going back because it's cash only (I'm skeptical of business practices that operate on a large scale with no electronic payments) and they offer shark fin soup. I think it's bad form to have that on the menu.
I swung in prior to an event at 5.55PM. By 6.05PM no one had approached me. 6.06PM, I got a menu and barely a hello. 6.10PM I ordered a drink and asked about how long a salad would take. Response: "15-20 minutes." I said I would pass, but the server insisted on checking with the kitchen. Updated Response: "5 minutes." So I agreed. 20 minutes later I had my salad. Then the bill took forever to arrive and I eventually went up to pay it. Never going back. $21 to waste my time.
I do love this place and the next time I visit, I hope to replace this review. However, my experience tonight was worth posting.
The only visible menu on the chalkboard when I showed up was what I ordered from and I felt like a veggie burger so I ordered just that. Upon ordering a "Veggie Burger with cheese and hash" per the menu, I was informed that the only visible menu wasn't valid and that fries replaced hash in the evening. They could have pulled the blinds down over the menu (like they had for the breakfast menu), but they decided the lunch menu provided some value at dinner (perhaps comparison?).
I elected to replace my standard lunch veggie burger with a Pineapple Veggie Burger with fries - this was $1.65 more than the lunch edition I originally ordered. I sat at a table and waited about 15 minutes for my food. Upon arrival, I was informed that there was no pineapple left, but that my burger was ready. I asked how my "Pineapple veggie burger" could be ready without pineapple and the server explained that he didn't know there was no pineapple left. I went on to ask why on earth the cook would go ahead and make a pineapple burger without pineapple and I was met with the offer of a side salad instead.
I didn't want to send back the food as it was surely fine and I didn't want to waste it, but it was pretty dry without the requisite tropical fruit. The side salad was a nice offer and was decent, but I did pay extra to have a pineapple.
I love the atmosphere, but sometimes the crew on-hand is just "trying" rather than "doing." They tried and failed tonight.
I swung in last night at random and won't ever do that again with this place. The food was downright greasy, the booths have a bench that sits you so low you can barely sit at the table with any comfort and the clientele on this particular night was sketchy. Drunks at 8PM screaming f-bombs at the bar and the guy in the booth next to me (who was fidgety - could tell because the cheap bench kept moving all over the place) wreaked of smoke. The menu is pretty broad and the service was great, but it's a poor man's Caffe Barney (except they charge the same price and are a further walk from Broadway).
I walked by this place a lot before swinging in for a special. I felt it was a touched overpriced, on the same level or close to East is East without the same delivery. The staff really lack passion to complement the decor and location. Very much left me feeling like I was in a diner as opposed to a restaurant that it seems to be aiming to be. It's close, but needs some tweaking to really get to the next level. It's average, I'll be back.
I've reviewed this place before, but I think it keeps going downhill. I always forget to never go back because the location is great. Sometimes, it's fantastic service. Other times, they ignore you in a totally empty room. It's really a crapshoot as to the experience you have here. The food spends so much time under the warming plate in the basement that you can rarely touch your plate once it arrives at your table. And their beer is so-so. I don't recommend this place if you have reasonable expectations.
I really like Prado. A lot of people consider it the standard for coffee in Vancouver, but I wouldn't go that far. I go there most mornings for an Americano and the odd muffin. You can't go wrong with their fresh muffins just after 7AM.
The service is good. They used to have a reputation for being snooty, but I think that's really turned around the past year. Are the baristas as good as the snootier ones? Hit and miss - I find the odd grounds in my coffee and they use 49th Parallel coffee which is pretty sensitive in terms of how the shot is pulled (so I hear).
Along with Continental Coffee, Bump N Grind and the Italian shops on the Drive, this is a great place to swing in and have a nice cup. Wireless is typically available, if not from Prado, then a neighbour has one unlocked. There aren't many power outlets if you're into camping out.
I went in for a dinner for one. The server was well-meaning, but a bit rough around the edges. The food was bland. Uncreative BBQ sauce for the BBQ Chicken which was incredibly dry and my lasagna featured soggy noodles and a watery meat sauce. Nothing vile, but I could have made it myself for a quarter the price and put in just as little effort.
The kicker came at the end when I went to pay and they said their debit/credit machine was down. Rather than take my credit card in the hand machine, I had to walk to a bank to get cash. Worst rain all year and I had to walk 2 blocks past my car to pay them. I asked where the sign was or when they planned to tell me and they said there's no sign.
All in all, not a great value. I'm going to put just as much effort into going back as they put into the whole dining experience this time around and we'll see if we cross paths again.
Back for my 4th visit. Like the earlier post, been here for food and drinks on separate occasions.
It's got the feel of a Cactus Club, but a bit more ambient and much more realistic prices. I really like that we have a place like this in New West.
The service has been good-to-fantastic each visit. The food - mediocre-to-poor. The salmon with the salad is so unbelievably dry that its barely edible. The plates are a bit annoying.
It's a great place to go for a few drinks and to hang out - not a place I'd go for food. For pub food in the area, the Paddlewheeler, Brooklyn and Heritage Grill are better options. For classy-feeling drinks, there's no better choice downtown.
The title says it all. Everyone there was quite nice, it was busy. I would have given it a Poor rating for service if everyone hadn't been so nice. Took us a while to get some menus and our water glass (holding about 150mL of water) didn't get refilled once. It seemed like a one-off kind of busy, maybe short-handed, day though. The food was good enough - nothing spectacular if not just a touch on the pricey side for some things.
I don't think I'll rush back or take people there on my own, but I won't hesitate to go back if someone else wants to go there.
I like my coffee shops a fair bit and had mixed expectations about a new Waves in the neighbourhood. For a start-up franchise, the staff has been consistently inconsistent. I've visited this location about 6 or 7 times since it opened and had one experience where the staff could understand my order on the first try. The communication between the register and barista seems weak, they are often slow and I'm almost never certain I am actually getting the drink I've ordered. They have a tendency to play terrible music much too loud more often than not. I will, however, inevitably come back because it has good wireless access and isn't Starbucks. If you're not picky about location, better to head uptown on 6th St around 8th Ave to the Coming Home Café or the café across from the courthouse on Carnarvon if it's during the day.
I was surprised reading the other reviews of Hapa Izakaya. Went in tonight on a whim and took a seat at the bar near the kitchen. I've never seen the kind of camaraderie in a workplace that the staff seemed to have and it's some of the best service I've had where dinner is <$100 for 2 people. The food was creative and decent - everything was fresh and presented well. It wasn't the best food on the planet, but it was a good price and interesting to check out. Based on this visit, I highly recommend it. I'll be going back and will update if my experience changes to be more of what these other reviewers have experienced.
The wireless is a definite plus - I'm able to write this review right from my table.
I think anyone who has been here since the change in ownership in 2008 knows the service is "okay." The food - it's average pub food at best, nothing too spectacular. It's all pretty much as you'd expect right down to the food being priced for The End's location rather than the quality of food.
Tonight I swung down with my girlfriend to hang out for a few drinks and wrap up some work. Our experience was less than standard without question. They kept cranking up AC/DC - changing music mid-song so that they could ensure that we only heard half a U2 song, a quarter of some Johnny Cash. If something mellow came on, we'd get a few bars before it was replaced by some mediocre heavy metal.
Pretty average on a busy night and not a bad place to watch a game - if it's dead, I wouldn't go back in though.
Tonight was my first time at Dix. I swung in with my mother and step dad visiting from out of town and my brother for a concert at GM Place. They were swamped - likely due to the concert.
We ordered our food and my mother's steak sandwich was missed. The rest of us had our dishes and they had to start hers from scratch. On a deadline already, we were cutting it close. The person who took our order, the manager came, apologized, committed to comping her meal and brought the salad that would accompany her meal to tide her over.
They were a bit overzealous in getting her meal out - the steak wasn't quite medium rare and my mother was not comfortable eating it. They offered another, but time was of the essence and we had to pull the plug.
I pulled the manager aside and explained that comping the one meal wasn't good enough given that we were late. He was swamped, but took the time to hear me out and we came to an agreement. It was great follow-up to a series of events that can happen anywhere.
I'll be going back just based on this, alone. Great ambiance with the 1890's feel inside and all the old lumber. It's not a 5-star pub, but a good place to check out - decent prices for downtown.
This place was great when I last went before it moved last year. Today the salmon was farmed Atlantic. Three servers, two tables eating and no one around to help? Very nice people, fresh food but a better value is Kirin a couple blocks away. Would eat there again but am prepared not to love it.
Would have been great if we didn't have to slide thetable back and forth to sit in the booth. Some paint would be nice as well.
We just went to Wings for a birthday dinner. For a drink, I ordered a Diet Coke. The waiter asked if I wanted a double. My response was "For a diet coke?" He responded "Yes" so naturally I got one. I got a Jack Daniels and Coke. After clearing up the mix-up, he brought me a regular Coke. Being averse to sugar, I couldn't drink it. I'm sure the issue would have been easily resolved quickly to everyone's satisfaction, but he didn't come back for about 20 minutes.
I ordered the pan-asian salad. My girlfriend ordered a spinach salad. It didn't take long for the food to arrive, but without any cutlery, save my chopsticks, we were at a loss for a while before we stole some from another table. The servers didn't really come back to check on us much. They seemed like good people, but their organization was terrible.
I suppose being on the hottest strip in town provides a sense of entitlement that will likely provide a positive ROI simply because it's there. I'd encourage people not to give into that and spend their money elsewhere. I know I won't be back.
This place is different than most in Vancouver. You need to engage the service a bit in order to get engaging service. They're not there to draw you out of your shell.
Good value on the paninis, good family atmosphere. It looks brilliant on the inside - great atmosphere. Nice place for something different and something authentic without heading downtown for something expensive.
Very traditional though - cash only, no soy (I'm a lactard, not a yuppie...)
Went by today for a coffee and some work on the laptop. When I found a sticky mess that needed to be cleaned up, they promptly gave me a crusty rag to clean the table myself. I had to wash up after using the rag and certainly didn't want to put anything on the table after it was (mostly) no longer sticky.
Decent coffee, lacking service. Essentially the same as I've found at other locations as well.
We happened in for a burger today and were surprised that the burger and fries easily compared with The Red Onion and Vera's in terms of size and quality. $13 for a burger and fries - a bit steep, but par for the course when eating on Granville Island. If you can eat better for less in the market, I'd be surprised.
