The Juniper Bistro — Restaurant in Alberta

I stayed at the Juniper recently and friends joined me for dinner and then I had breakfast the next morning. Room was nice. The Bistro food and service is good. Atmosphere - the atmosphere and experience was spoiled by the end of meal push to put in a Google review and mention the server by name. This policy likely comes from management. Maybe a bonus is paid to a server if a review of the Bistro is positive and the server's name is mentioned. A card is given to the customer that has the QR code and server name when the bill is rendered. It was even suggested that I could do the review before I left the restaurant. I was on my way to cross country ski not hop on a computer to do reviews. I know it bothered me at the time as it was an annoying upsell in a way (just like most phone calls with banks, utilities etc.) as well as environmentally unfriendly to print cards that are likely tossed. It is unfortunate management has put the staff in this position. If I am happy with service, it is reflected in my tip.

I was pushed to write this review when I was going to the mountains again for 2 nights. I thought of the Juniper because of the rooms but chose not to stay at the Juniper only because I was not willing to eat at the Bistro and be pestered for a review. So instead of gaining a positive Google review (questionable value), 2 hotel nights and at least two meals of real $$ revenue were lost. Because the hotel is further out, eating elsewhere is not easy and I decided to stay elsewhere instead. Just something for management to consider. It is management's job to supervise staff, assess their performance and assess the food - it is not up to the customers who are already paying. If I wanted to work on my computer, I would stay home, not go to a hotel that notes it is remote to enjoy nature.

Response to mgmt response - limited due to character limit. You are blaming the servers because they can't read the table. I am a person, not a table. And your servers should not be expected to read minds. What a push down of blame! Also, it is quite well known that publicly advertising you are out of town on social media, including reviews, is very unsafe. Pressure to post a review before I leave the table so I let everyone know I am out of town. Really? This is a bit of a generalization but more "one and done" travelers look to reviews. People that live nearby such as myself tend to use personal referrals and suggestions. We are on different pages so for my safety and enjoyment of meals without the end of meal pressure, I am better...

My boyfriend and I had breakfast at the Juniper Bistro last week Friday, the weather was beautiful, and the view overlooking the mountain, and Banff Springs Hotel was just made it even better.

We entered the restaurant, and waited a few minutes before someone came into the welcome desk to great us. The lady welcomed us to the restaurant, and asked how many people were dining and I said two people are dinging today for breakfast, she asked if we had a reservation, and I said no, so she went to the computer and check to see where can we be seated, it took her a while to find a place for us to sit, that one of her co-workers asked what was wrong, and I heard our server say " oh.. these people want to eat in here". I don't know why she said that maybe because both of us are in our mid 20's? My boyfriend was wearing a collard shirt, and jeans, and I was wearing a sweater, and jeans, so we talked under our breathe maybe they have a dress code, and we are not unto par. then she asked if we like to be seated on the top table in the corner in the main restaurant, but I was looking at the corner and there was another room, with big window's so I asked her polity if its possible for us to be seated there, and she said "yeah, you can". As we were walking to our table we saw a couple beside us wearing shorts, t-shirt, shorts, and slippers, not like noting was wrong with wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and slippers, but we realized then that the Juniper Bistro had no dress code, and you can wear comfortable clothing and dine in.

When she sat us down, she gave us a few minutes to scan the menu, then we were ready to order, she felt really cold, and snobby, and we realized she wasn't only rude to us, but to the table beside us as well. We ordered the Salmon benny, and French toast, The food was EXCELLENT! Perfect pouched egg, home made hollandaise sauce, and don't forget to try their house made jalapeño hot sauce. The food and the view made us forget about the horrible experience we had with our waitress. If only the waitress treated us better I would have given 5 stars. We might come back only for the food, and view, other than that, there is no point coming back because of the horrible service we have encountered in our lives.

Maybe she needs to...

made reservations. btw you have to enter your credit card info for this and if you don’t show up they’ll charge $20 a person! i’ve never seen this anywhere!

this was at least my 3rd time here. anyways, we were able to choose any table we wanted. we chose one by the window as you have a great view of the mountains, and you can go out to look/take pics. our server said they will take some for us, but never did

for our meals we ordered bennys and a burger. i had a trio, my dad had the salmon, and my aunt had the short rib. they took pictures for us so that was nice

first thing i noticed is they are incredibly small bennys that i could eat in one bite. my dad said his was very salty. so was mine. i think they put an incredulous amount of salt, pepper, or other seasoning. like random bites would be extremely salty. it was strange

my moms burger was really dry, you could see how cracked the bun was and hard the cheese was. she took a few bites and didn’t like it. they did take it away and she ordered the squash soup instead. it was better, but she was really disappointed

there were only 2 servers in the whole restaurant, and they would disappear a lot - i heard the back of house calling for hands for like 5 min and i knew it was my moms new soup order, just sitting there. anytime we needed a server it took quite a while to call anyone for our initial water, water refills, checking in on the food, the bill.

when we received the bill, they still had the $27 burger on it. we had to ask them to take it off as she only had a few bites and they took it away. after waiting quite a while for our new bill, the lowest tip option was 18%. i know you can do custom, but they know most people won’t bother.

overall the staff are personable but take a long long time for everything, are forgetful. maybe they are understaffed and overworked? management should put on an extra server if that is the case. the food is just ok, maybe it depends what you order. maybe the cooks changed and aren’t as attentive to what they throw on. the wait is long even though it wasn’t busy. the atmosphere out the window is the best part. having this being my 3rd time here, it seems the quality has gone down, esp the food. not sure if i would recommend...