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I see some negative reviews about service, so I'm not sure if my friends and I were an extreme case, but we had an excellent time at Glowbal.
Firstly, we arrived into a packed room. We chose to meander to the bar to see if we can get seats, but as all seats were taken, we stood there for a few minutes. During this short time, two managers came up to us and assured us that they will find us seats. One came back with an option of seating in the front of the house and the other offered us an option at the back, in Afterglow. We chose the latter and were seated. The manager then came by with a round of complimentary shots before taking our drink order. At this time, one of my harder to please friends decided that she would rather be at the front of the house, and so the manager assured us we will get the next table that opens up! (Again, we were there on a very busy night as it is!) We continued with our drinks and suddenly two complimentary appetizers were sent to our table.
When we moved tables to be closer to the front, the second manager also came by to see if we were taken care of and to introduce us to our server. He then brought another round of complimentary shots. Both managers and servers were available during the night and came by periodically to check on us. All of my friends felt like we were really taken care of.
The food was good, and similar in taste to Italian Kitchen, their sister restaurant. No complaints.
I went here twice so I think I can give a fair review of this place. First, it is really loud and unfortunately, that takes their ambiance marks down. First time, we came late & we had a good table. It was big too. When we booked another table for the second time, we got stuck in front of the grill/kitchen. It was cramped & we constantly felt the heat of the kitchen and smelled like food after. Second, the brussels sprouts are not good. They were burnt. They said they're fried. You don't fry things until they're burnt. There's something called golden brown. And then there's chocolate brown. That's when you've gone too far. I saw someone else call them char-grilled. That's what's missing from their description. Sneaky! They're also way too salty. We didn't finish them. They also did not offer to replace them with something else. A bowl for $6, come on! Their meals don't come with vegetables. The rigatoni was good but I don't like the flavor of the sausage. It's odd. Their steaks are their best asset. However, when we ordered a ribeye, it came out burnt. The server said that was because we asked for Chicago style. Uh, chicago style does not mean burnt! It means crispy! When he heard me, he shut up. However, we had to wait for the steak to be redone. For a restaurant that's this expensive, when you make me & the rest of my party wait for my food, you should give me a discount. Nope. None there. Prefer Joeys but the meat from Glowbal group seems to be of a better standard. The service the first time wasn't caring or personal. The second time the attitude was snippy. The bread pudding was not good. It was crispy on top, but after the first layer, it was literally bread soaked in chocolate pudding. I prefer mine to be crispy throughout. Learn from Burgoo. May come back if in the area and it's late at night. But prefer Coast. Their steaks are of the same quality. I don't remember ever sitting near the kitchen. Seating is also better at Joe Fortes.
I had brunch here once and it was so disappointing I vowed never to come back but it was a friend's b-day so I thought maybe it would be better for dinner... I was wrong.
Food: poutine was blah, ahi tuna was very bland, complimentary rosemary bread was delicious, onion rings were ok, my special drink called something like bangkok nights or was not good, mushroom skewers were laughable and portion sizes were tiny. Nothing was disgusting but it's not saying much when the best part of the meal was the complimentary bread. I was disappointed in so much of our meal that I opted to skip dessert although a few at our table did get dessert and they said it was heavenly. All in all, I would've preferred the food at neighbouring establishments any time of day.
Service: there is a thing called silent service and I really wished and hoped our server would exercise it and it just didn't happen. At one point, he insulted one of dinner party members with some comments about onion rings and how it wouldn't date her and it became very awkward. I don't want to hear about your waitering career, how you're from Montreal, what alcohol is in what different drinks or what you prefer for what time of day - I just want you to take our orders and serve what we ordered in a timely manner, no more, no less. It got to the point where when our server approached our table, my eyes would just retreat into the back of my head from all the chatter that no one at our table was very interested in. The other waiters helping out also need to learn a thing or two about manners and LISTENING. When you ask someone if they were done with their dish, listen to the response before you take it away and dump dirty cutlery into it. Or you could at least ask before taking someone's food away - my friend was not done with her poutine and the waiter just took it away and when I pointed out that she wasn't done, his response was, "well, she's the only one at your table eating now" and walked away. No apology, no explanation. I have not been to a dining establishment with such terrible service in such a long time that it's actually made me thankful for the ones I frequent. One of the men's bathroom doors do not lock which led to a very awkward encounter between a friend and another patron. Who makes such a large restaurant and only has 2 single bathrooms for males?????
Value: Tiny portions of bland food at astronomical prices - not worth the money at all.
Ambiance: Looks great but the music is so loud, you can't hear anything and every conversation must be carried out in a shouting manner.
I will not return and advise others to avoid as well - if you're looking for a dining experience, this IS NOT the establishment for you. If you want to be a downtown yuppie who doesn't care what food they receive and only cares about being "cool", then you belong here. Au revoir Glowbal for life!
Can it get any louder...not bloody likely. Incredible noise and lousy food at astronomical prices. Food presentation was probably the worst I've seen at a so called fine dining place. It's almost laughable but the laugh is on anyone that sets foot in this place more than once. This place is clearly for the unsophisticated 30 or so year olds living off daddy and thinking this is THE place to be seen. Those "trend setters" would never waste their own hard earned money here a second time. Service was strange to say the least but that could be because you can't hear yourself think let alone take a proper food order.
I went to Glowbal on a Tuesday evening for a friend's birthday dinner. My previous experience at another Glowbal Group restaurant (Society) was also poor, but I brought myself to Glowbal because it was for an event, and this was a different restaurant so I gave it another chance. To begin with, when my group of 10 people were ordering our meals, the restaurant itself was not that busy, so they should have been able to give us attentive and correct service. The positives of my experience at Glowbal was that the two servers we had were friendly and that they did manage to get half of the food orders made correctly. The negatives however were overwhelming. When our orders arrived, the servers consistently placed the incorrect meals in front of each person. They were completely unaware of who ordered which dish. For those of us who had ordered steaks, they were all over cooked. We had also been warned by a friend to order our steaks one level below how we actually wanted our steaks cooked, just in case this happened. For the two people who ordered their rack of ribs, one dish had both racks completely cold on the outside and the inside. The other dish had one cold rack of ribs. Both sides of corn were inedible as they were dry, hard, and tasted like old corn. The completely cold dish of ribs were sent back because it was inedible. As the ribs were actually part of a set menu dinner, it also came with a side salad and a dessert of pecan pie. It took a half hour to actually get the pre-made, pre-set dessert. We had to flag down a server to check on the status of the dessert. It turns out that the server had likely forgotten to ring in the order for it to have taken so long for a pre-decided dessert. It then took another 20 minutes to simply get the bill. After speaking with the manager about the poor service and quality of food, the manager blamed the kitchen staff for the errors and simply removed the ribs from the bill, only simply making excuses for what had happened. Considering that the only thing eaten on the same bill were the side salad and the dessert, the proper thing for the manager to have done was to actually comp the entire bill. To add to a poor dining experience, there was an 18% gratuity automatically attached to our bill because we had 10 people in the group. I would advise patrons choosing to dine at Glowbal to either have low expectations, or be prepared to pay a lot for a little value of their meals.
Let me start with the positives, Glowbal is a gorgeous room with a good menu, well in concept anyways. What I like is that it serves food late and being from Maple Ridge, a place that has the worst dining scene in the lower mainland (beside out a few small gems) There isn't much happening after 10PM on a weekend. We ventured out to Glowbal on a Saturday Night around Midnight expected an amazing meal. After looking online and seeing prices and what they have to offer we were excited. Upon arriving the place was packed, extremely loud, and obnoxious. The clientele consisted of way too many yuppies, want to be seen, think we are important the louder we speak kind of people. Standing room only from the front door all the way back to the lounge, glasses being dropped people screaming just to be heard and just too much of a night club and a little short on being a restaurant. We got seated be an extremely over friendly and loud manager and shortly followed a drink order by another server. This was all fine yelling to one another asking questions about the menu and wine list. After we ordered a bottle of wine we were greeted by a second server, telling us he won an arm wrestling match in the back and since it was a slow night he would now be taking us as a table. I myself ordered the satays (premium satays at that). The concept of the satays was an interesting one, only problem being the time it took to plate something like that it was cold by the time it reached the table. Amongst all of the satays only one stood out, the meatball, it was easily the best tasting meatball I have ever tasted and to this date will probably ever taste. In saying this though, I am not quite sure it was worth the 10 dollars I had to pay per meatball to have more. My better half had tenderloin, Canadian Prime. Steak was nicely cooked but sides were another story. Mashed potatoes were extremely gluey and tasted reheated and over whipped. And 7.99 for a side of asparagus and hollandaise, ouch! The Bill was 300 dollars for two people to eat and for that kind of money I would expect more then to sit in the back corner of a night club listening to pretentious people talk about how good their job, life, and restaurant are. To top the night off at the end when we received our bill we were handed a business card and asked to go onto tip advisor and to write a review so they could bump vij’s off of top spot. I saw this as extremely unprofessional and frankly a little bit annoying. I might expect this from a pub, a Milestones, or a Keg but not a top rated fine dining restaurant in Vancouver. All in all food was okay nothing I would hurry back for, the ambiance was quite atrocious (maybe I need to go at 5 o’clock and not at midnight) and the service was plain out right annoying and pretentious.
Girlfriend K and I found ourselves at Glowbal for a birthday celebration. There were probably about 40 of us in a space normally fit for about 20. Everyone was literally sitting on top of each other. However, the restaurant was very accomodating and it was no fault of the restaurant's, since additional people showed up last minute. What really bugged us was that when K and I arrived, we sat at a table at the end and just as we were making ourselves comfy, the server said that table did not belong to our party and we could not sit there. So we shuffled on to each other's laps at the other end. By no more than 10 minutes later, more people (our party) showed up and for some reason, they were able to sit there w/ no problem.
Service was okay throughout the night. As friendly as our server was, he kept forgetting people's orders. He didn't bring out a dessert for the 3-course meal, my entire meal was forgotten, another friend's main course order was not even sent to the kitchen. Everyone's meal came out staggered.
The server that took care of drink orders, however, was fantastic. Water within 3 minutes of arrival and cocktails served up immediately. Too bad our auto 18% gratuity didn't go directly to him as he deserved it more than the other.
The food was tasty, but well overpriced, IMHO. The average bill came to about $50/person, and I don't think anyone left full.
My bill came to $40 incl. tax&tip. I had one cocktail, a side beet salad, and 3 small skewers(chicken, salmon, oyster).
As beautiful as the ambiance was, I think I would prefer Zakkushi next time for skewers.
We got a gift certificate to head to one of the Glowbal group's of restaurants. We looked over all the menus and the Glowbal Lounge was the only thing that was vaguely interesting.
Considering we had to wait 5 (literal) minutes just to see anyone, they started on the wrong foot. We selected to sit on the patio as it's nearing the end of summer so you might as well take advantage of it, right?
We orders the Kobe Meatball skewer, the blackened wild salmon and a prawn skewer. These were quite uninspired.
I ordered a 10 oz strip loin steak and my wife did the same. We both ordered medium rare and I had the polenta side and she had the mushroom risotto. My wife's steak was medium rare to rare (which we're ok with) while mine was almost spot on.
My polenta was great and matched well with the bottle of shiraz we got, while the risotto was done well, yet kind of bland...
Dessert was lemon cheese cake and the Baily's bread pudding. The lemon cheesecake was more like a vanilla custard with lemon rind on top while the bread pudding was superb.
I think I might be projecting a bit, but my expectations with respect to the bill was not to par. I felt for the same dollar I could have received a better meal. I guess if I cared about "being seen" that would have been a terrific experience, but if I bother to venture to Yaletown again, I think I can use $200 better at the Blue Water Cafe.
I think the product they are pushing is simply "lost on me." I don't wish to be a character in the Twilight saga or Perez Hilton...
Went for a friends birthday, incredibly horrible. The food was the only saviour, excellent! Would comment on our drinks, but only had 1 as the server never offered me another one, and he would not stay at the table long enough for me to even have a chance to catch his attention. Seemed incredibly not interested, made no attempt to be slightly friendly, only came by to our table all of 5 times; 1st to take our drink order, 2nd to drop off drinks and take food order, 3rd to check on food ( after we had it for 15 mins) and inappropriately try and sell us shots, 4th time was to drop off the bill and tell us about the auto gratuity on the bill, and the 5th time to collect our money. Would have complained to the manager but he totally creeped me out when he escorted me to the table while staring at my chest the whole time. Doubt I'll be going back anytime soon.
I joined a co-worker for dinner at Glowbal last week and was really impressed with the level of service as well as the food. I've had a bit of bad luck with service lately so I guess my expectations were low, but our server Ben was exceptional.
We were greeted very warmly at the front and I believe my friend had just been there the week before, and Ben recognized him from that previous visit. He came over and personally escorted us to a table in his section and when I asked where the ladies room was, he didn't just tell me, he actually walked me there - nice.
When he came by to take our drink order, he brought a complimentary starter of kobe meatballs and short ribs. Both were delicious. We couldn't quite decide on what to get, so he made a few suggestions and asked what we were in the mood for. We ended up choosing the tuna tartare, which was incredible, and also the prawn popsicles. I would have to say the prawns were the low point of the meal for me (and the reason for only 4 stars) as I found the batter much too heavy - it was similar to a beer-batter for fish & chips. I think a lighter panko-style crust or tempura batter would have been more suitable. I really liked the wasabi mayo though - very smooth texture and a nice kick - helped to cut through the doughy texture of the batter.
For our mains, we both chose one of the specials - a pan-seared halibut with pesto risotto and a jumbo prawn on top. Wow, was that ever a fantastic meal. The wine our server recommended - I believe a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc - was a perfect match to the flavours of the dish. Every bite was superb.
Even though we were full, we were presented with a complimentary dessert plate - a vanilla creme brulee, a white chocolate mousse and a chocolate lava-style cake with pistachio ice cream. I'm not a huge chocolate fan, so wasn't loving the lava cake, but the pistachio ice cream and the creme brulee were very good. I thought the white chocolate mousse had a slight oily taste to it, so I didn't have much.
I would definitely recommend this place if you're looking for great service and a great meal - and have the cash to spare. The value is only so-so, and even though we received a few "extras" I don't think this is common. I would go back for a special occasion, only because there are so many other places in Vancouver that I want to try and the price point of Glowbal doesn't fit my regular dine-out budget.
Went here a couple years back and remembered having a good time, with good bread and good food. Came back last week, and the bread was not the best... and the food was lacking. We ordered the satay platter to start, and while tasting decent... all of the satays were very cooold. I had the halibut and it was pretty rough and chewy..
Another point is the dishes seemed very unimaginative.. as me and my date had ordered two very seeming different plates.. yet they came plated exactly the same way, with only the fish being different. For some reason, I don't mind it when that happens at Horizons.. but it just bugs me to see it here... esp when the food doesn't taste good.
I have been to Glowbal twice, and the food was great both times. Their satays are not what you would expect from a Malaysian restaurant -- they are creative, fusion, and a delight both to the eye and to the taste bud. I had a steak one time, and it turned out to be one of the best I have had anywhere in Vancouver. Service was good and the decor was very nice but short of being special. I will return for the food.
Brought a date here, and in retrospect, not a great date decision. HOLY LOUD. I get the whole loud music vibe, but if you're with a date, don't go there, we literally had to repeat every second thing we said.
Entered through some weird back entrance, had to cross the whole restaurant and go right out the other side to the hostess stand.
Anyway ...
Food ... first round of satay's were spectacular ... Scallop, Short Rib, Tuna, Sablefish, second round less than average ... Chicken, Mushroom, Prawn, Salmon. Also, great amuse and bread.
Service, EVERYONE seemed to be in a great mood, smiling, but empty glasses and slow clearing brings it down a notch. We probably had 5 different people looking after us at different times, a little disorganized.
Value ... pretty decent I thought, small portions but at $3 or $4 each, just get lots. Forgot to charge us for a couple glasses of wine, that helps
Ambiance ... typical Yaletown, packed like Sardines, and LOUD. but everyones hot which is nice.
Went for dinner on the weekend but was to busy to get a table when we wanted. We descided to stay for some drinks and people watch while we descide what to do next. Drinks were great but expensive. I would deffinatley go back for some drinks but thats it. The place is deffinatley a busy place but not what we were expecting.
But please change the techno-freakin music and turn it down. It's nonstop techno - I'd go nuts if I worked there.
Otherwise, the food, kobe meatballs and spaghetti were amazing and the (over-priced at $28) prawns(4) with small bowl of"poutine" fries and stirfried mystery greens were great.
Partner loved the caesar salad at $9 and the cocktails were good, but who really buys a $14 martini - like seriously . Even if I were a millionaire I'd find it stupid. And I can tell you no bottle of $680 wine could make me happier than having $680 in my pocket. By the looks of all the young people in there dropping $200+ for dinner I'd say they must have alot more credit that brains 'cause I know they don't all have that kind of cash. I can afford the place but don't do it often.
The service was top notch though which helps compensate for the prices. We walked in on a Saturday night with no reservations and were seated in 10 minutes even thought it was busy. I would return.
Came here 3 times. First time was 4-5 yrs ago and I still remember that their black cod was really good. I think their food is consistent but their portion is quite small for the price I paid for. I guess it's ok cuz I kinda expected it since they're located in Yaletown.
The other times were 2-3 yrs ago and we ordered the appys which was fun and tasty.
I like it how Glowbal remembers my bday and anniversary. They always send me a letter every yr asking me to visit them again. And if I present that letter to them, they will give me a complimentary dessert.
Cool.
This is the one restaurant in Yaletown that I have returned again and again. I love their satays, their servers are fun and friendly, they make great drinks and are always reliable for a good eat. Even on busy nights like Dine Out Vancouver, they churn out awesome plates and good service despite the lines of people waiting. Their Sunday brunch is the best. I don't know how they do it but on their menu is an awesome fish and chips for only $10! We must have been there like at least 20 times and each time, just as satisfying if not better. They have made so many accomodations for us, like special requests from the kitchen. rushed dining as we had to make a concert, everything. For a good dining experience in Yaletown, Glowbal rules!
Amazing food, great atmosphere but the drinks are way to expensive.
Would go back for food but will save the drinking for another lounge in the area. Waitress was good and knowledgeable on the menu. Very nice patio. Manager even came by the table to see how the food was.
Highly recommend the steaks!
We had lamb and chicken, both very tasty especially lamb. I appreciated very discreet and pleasant service, who did not unnecessary interrupted to ask how is everything, but at the same time vigilant to notice when we needed something. Very nice ambiance, and clean washrooms. Highly recommend, great value for money. Had feeling that I was respected and well taken care of.
Exactly that. I was there for Dine out Vancouver. The presentation of the food was quite different. I had the tuna spring roll, the seared salmon and the decadent chocolate with two cute little mini donuts on the side.
They came in small dishes, but the food was really tasty. The music there was a little too loud to my liking, but I think it's the "in" thing now.
We even got a $25 coupon for our next visit.
| 1. | Boulangerie La Parisienne (6 m) |  |
| 2. | Fuse Pan Asian Express (14 m) |  |
| 3. | Earls (17 m) | |
| 4. | Euro Pastry House (26 m) | |
| 5. | Yaletown Brewing Co (40 m) |  |
| 6. | Blenz Coffee (47 m) | |
| 7. | Afterglow Lounge (53 m) | |
| 8. | Phat (55 m) | |
| 9. | Yaletown L'Antipasto (58 m) |  |
| 10. | Bistro Sakana (58 m) | |
