Value review insights for British Columbia, Canada, Restaurants

$17.50 for a Guinness after recommended tip and tax? What am I sitting around a pool in Vegas? To be fair it was good, but thats the most expensive beer I have ever had in the country!

$79 for a 14 ounce sirloin of average quality! And NO SAUCE... The flatbread was also nothing special. Beef stroganoff was better but still not what I would call fine dining. I was excited that we were on the roof but the heating and poor air quality was a distraction the whole night. The overhead heater was so hot we were almost medium rare. Then there was the proliferation of propane heaters and natural gas fires. Not sure if that was the cause of the poor air quality and chemical smell or it was something from the kitchen. Overall, not a great experience at all, not recommended and would not go back. I've had better food at half the price.

1. After 5 phone calls from the staff, I was told by the supposed Manager that I could not get a table for 6 at 1 pm and another table of 6 ar 2 pm as promised. When I argued for 10 seconds, he threatened to cancel the reservation and escort me out of the restaurant. I would have walked out but I expected my friends. 2. The waiter was rude because he was getting 18% tip so he did not care how he treated us. It was my birthday and there was a restaurant birthday card on display. I had to ask him for my cake and he gave it to me in a box and shoved it into a bag and said, " Now you've got it you can leave". 3. The food was disgusting. My lobster omelet was tasteless and had 3 dime sized pieces of lobster. The French toast was half a loaf that was toasted all the way round but with no egg and tasted like a cinnamon roll and the inside was just plain white bread. What a joke. We should have returned those brunch items. And they were overpriced at over $30. I actually want a refund. I want the waiter fired. And the manager too. They can check my reservation under Monica Demsky. The Manager also made racist remarks. We also noted a lot of empty tables from 1 to 3 pm so we can't figure out what their problem with the tables.

We planned a family dinner at Dockside in lieu of our sons upcoming wedding. This would be our first visit to Dockside and based primarily on the fact that there is a lovely patio that frequently passed . We reserved a patio well in advance. Gamily would be coming a long way and with a small baby, outside would be ideal. At 2 pm on the day, staff phoned to inform us that the patio would be closed due to the rain. It was too late and complicated to alter 6 people’s schedules. The huge room where we sat was hot, stuffy & noisy. No air conditioning. When asking about turning on the fan, they said " door was open. " Food was disappointing & unimaginative with limited menu items for non meat eaters. Macaroni & cheese! Mussels were skimpy & small portions of halibut decorated with a few peas & potato pops, left all of us leaving hungry. The place was packed. Baby and I, overwhelmed by the noise, spent half the time outside on the now dry patio. Service was mediocre. We repeatedly needed to request water refills although I watched a waiter at an adjacent table actually pour water for guests! Certainly not conducive to the experience we anticipated and at a hefty price. We're always willing to pay for atmosphere, sumptious food and a relaxing meal. While we understand challenges restaurants have faced, this is over the top. Particularly on such a special occasion. Rain does happen & many patios remain open. We returned home to eat some food.

We’d read on the internet about their afternoon tea and thought of trying. We walked in at 2 pm on Sunday. A hostess with the name tag Zophia told us they were fully booked, but she could accommodate us for the last seating at 3 pm, “because of a cancellation”. When he came at three, the tearoom was half-empty. The meal was slightly above (maybe) what you could get at a decent sandwich shop for 1/3 of their outrageous price of $65 pp. A tiny cup of a tasteless watery soup was followed by two stale brioches with supermarket-quality jam and clotted cream. The latter was actually pretty good, even though the waitress called it “chantilly”. It should be noted that chantilly is French for whipped cream, which it was not, but, apparently, she thought that dumb Americans wouldn’t know what clotted cream was, and chantilly sounded upscale. That was followed by tea with milk on the side - said milk must’ve stayed in the milk jug for at least a day, as it started forming a fat layer. The macaroons were dry - frozen stuff from Trader Joe’s tastes a lot better, etc. Shall I continue? One sentence summarizes it all. A ripoff.

"food poisoning, it happens". Seems to be the slogan Stepho's is carrying around these days. I'm pregnant in my 3rd trimester and my husband and I decided to have a quiet night at home for New years eve. We decided to get some greek take out. First thing, we had 3 pitas with our order, they forgot them all. All the salads had very old inedible cucumbers that obviously were going bad. All the pieces of vegetable were cut into giant chunks with the peppers the size of my fist! They obviously were in a rush to go home because they spent no time on cutting the salad at all. We were tired and just decided to eat anyways and not have to go out to rectify our meal. Not to mention, they were already closing anyways. So....I dug into my meal and ate some potato, as a pregnant woman, when I eat, I eat it all fast. So I ate a whole potato right then and there. My favourite. Something was very wrong. It was rancid. My potatoes in my meal were all bad. I'm not sure if it was the marinade or potato. I realized all of them were. In my meal, in my husband's meal. Also I ordered a side of them and they smelled really foul. I spent my whole night throwing up after that. My husband went in his pj's to get our money back, he was so upset that this is how our night turned out. They fought it tooth and nail. They only wanted to give us credit for the potatoes? Finally the manager said she will refund us the full meal if we come back in 2 days when they're open again. I was furious but knew that's the least they could do for us, so it was fair. For 2 days since, my stomach has been just off and queezy. They got me sick. We went back for our refund tonight as promised and it was the craziest thing. It was a spat. For over an hour. All they would do is comp. us for half the food?? We had to throw most of it out as it was not food safe as the potatoes touched all the other food and then they said they wanted us to bring all the food back to them? Like, why would you keep bad food in the fridge for 2 days just to return it? They never even mentioned it in the first place. We were so confused. They kept saying it's their policy. We felt like we were in a twilight zone. No apology, nothing. I was shocked. I asked what's your policy then on giving your customer food poisoning. They guy responded with, verbatim "Food poisoning, it happens. It's no one's fault. Just happens sometimes"... really?? That's not a thing, like at all! What?? This is how they run their business guys. It's insane. After going there for over a decade to both locations and making it our favourite for holidays, birthdays, it went just down the drain. They increased their prices. Hired everyone new. The quality has gone down. Until this event, I kept trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. But this event was just crazy. This is not how you run a business. You don't shrug off food poisoning. Making food is literally their one job and being casual about making a customer sick and refusing to a refund for the full meal, the least of which they should be doing, is insane to me. Stepho's good bye, I'm done.

My experience was overall okay, but it didn’t quite meet expectations. The food was average and felt overpriced for what was offered, especially for a standard menu. The service was also just average, and unfortunately I was served the wrong wine due to an ordering mistake, which took away from the experience a bit. At a price point of around $60 per person, I would expect both the food and service to be top-notch, but that wasn’t the case for us.

Review rating: 3.0

My husband took me to the Teahouse to celebrate my birthday. It was a lovely evening, and we had a great view of the water and were able to enjoy the Sunset. We had a lovely meal. A friend of ours had asked Teahouse to put the bill for the bottle of wine on his credit card. We shared an order of mussels as an appetizer. They were delicious in a nice tomato broth and served with bread for dipping. I was somewhat surprised that we were just given very small plates to put the empty shells in as usually the container for the shells is larger. I had the rack of lamb and it was perfectly cooked medium rare as requested. It was a very generous serving. My husband had the miso glazed sablefish. The fish was also delicious and perfectly cooked. By the time our entrees arrived it was dark outside and unfortunately it was very dark where we were seated and I could not see my dinner plate well. I needed to move the candle right in front of my plate in order to see well enough to cut the meat and find the vegetables on the plate. We told our server that we did not want dessert because I assumed that I would be given a piece of cake for my birthday. Unfortunately, we were just given a very small bowl of panna cotta. Service was okay. Maybe because there was a wedding party at the restaurant the evening we were there service was not a good as I’m used to receiving at a fine dining restaurant. Our wine was not decanted or topped up during the evening and I was disappointed that instead of the anticipated cake I was given a small dish of panna cotta. I had noticed a table near us had received cake for a celebration. It was a lovely evening but overall I think that I prefer Seasons in the Park.

Review rating: 4.0

$17.50 for a Guinness after recommended tip and tax? What am I sitting around a pool in Vegas? To be fair it was good, but thats the most expensive beer I have ever had in the country!

Signal: 0.0%

$79 for a 14 ounce sirloin of average quality! And NO SAUCE... The flatbread was also nothing special. Beef stroganoff was better but still not what I would call fine dining. I was excited that we were on the roof but the heating and poor air quality was a distraction the whole night. The overhead heater was so hot we were almost medium rare. Then there was the proliferation of propane heaters and natural gas fires. Not sure if that was the cause of the poor air quality and chemical smell or it was something from the kitchen. Overall, not a great experience at all, not recommended and would not go back. I've had better food at half the price.

Signal: 0.0%

1. After 5 phone calls from the staff, I was told by the supposed Manager that I could not get a table for 6 at 1 pm and another table of 6 ar 2 pm as promised. When I argued for 10 seconds, he threatened to cancel the reservation and escort me out of the restaurant. I would have walked out but I expected my friends. 2. The waiter was rude because he was getting 18% tip so he did not care how he treated us. It was my birthday and there was a restaurant birthday card on display. I had to ask him for my cake and he gave it to me in a box and shoved it into a bag and said, " Now you've got it you can leave". 3. The food was disgusting. My lobster omelet was tasteless and had 3 dime sized pieces of lobster. The French toast was half a loaf that was toasted all the way round but with no egg and tasted like a cinnamon roll and the inside was just plain white bread. What a joke. We should have returned those brunch items. And they were overpriced at over $30. I actually want a refund. I want the waiter fired. And the manager too. They can check my reservation under Monica Demsky. The Manager also made racist remarks. We also noted a lot of empty tables from 1 to 3 pm so we can't figure out what their problem with the tables.

Signal: 0.0%