White Spot Central Saanich — Restaurant in British Columbia

Waited 20 minutes for a table, wasn’t busy but short staffed.. that’s understandable. This review is not about the wait. I get it as I am in the industry. So we were watching while waiting.. I guess the cook is the bartender and nobody knew how to make the Caesar drink. Lol.. so .. Firstly waiting for someone to take drink orders. It wasn’t long, getting the drink was another story.. they didn’t have the ingredients for the berry blast.. we were by the bar and nobody was around.. pretty sure they didn’t know how to make it too. We watched them pour our ginger ale.. look at it.. taste it and a sour look ensued and not people at the bar discussing it said it wasn’t good but served it anyway. Well that tasted like soap and didn’t look right.. we complained about that and said we will skip that drink. Then waiting for our food.. when it arrived the poutine lacking in cheese, undercooked fries and cold with a nice glob of gelatinous gravy skin or the bottom of the pot.. hard to tell.. fish and chips.. same issue with the fries.. cold undercooked and some overcooked and dry.. the fish.. cold soggy and oily not crispy at all. We didn’t eat both meals and barely touched them. The Server took about 10 minutes for her to come by and check on us and then we voiced our complaint. She apologized and was nice about it.. not her fault, so she said she would go talk to the manager, she came back and the manager would like to talk to us and would be a minute fair enough as I had no problem doing that. and she offered to remake the meal. We politely declined, I offered to pay for my beer which was ok. and said we would wait.. 10 minutes later nobody showed up so we got up and left without paying. I’ve been a chef for over 35 years, dined at white spots all over and never has this poor of an experience at one of them. Waiting for a manager was not acceptable and should have come right out to address the issue. Understaffed or not. Not acceptable. I also get the waitress was young and not very experienced so I’m not blaming anything on her. I’m blaming the management for not providing the proper staffing tools, the cooks for putting sub par food on the pass that I wouldn’t serve my customers.. so take pride in what you do or find another profession. And that’s being polite...

Mistakenly ordered the shrimp Florentine Benny... Over-dilled puddle of thousand year old, previously frozen, micro-shrimp swimming in an ambiguous miasma of slimy spinach meets Hollandaise fear factor challenge. No gluten free English muffin substitute so had it on a sad bed of shredded fried potatoes. When I say bed... It was a 1/3 cup of flavorless shoestring crisis. I scraped away the very bad Florentine mush and got down to the eggs. The fourteen + dollar breakfast was two rescued, medium poached eggs. My daughter had the smattering of goat cheese scramble. Not only was the portion to dollar ratio screamingly skimpy, it too was a bland medley of unimpressive. Not sure what's going on with breakfast at the spot these days but we got the impression that they're trying hard at upscale dishes at higher prices and missing the boat entirely. In this gluten free conscious dining age, you really need to secure a quality gf bread option. It felt like a scene from Lemony Snicket's-raiding the corners of cutlery drawers for whatever could be scraped up and coming out with something that was better off left in the drawer.These were two very bad breakfast dishes totaling over forty dollars. The only redeeming factor was the service. Our waitress was positive, funny and genuine. Were it not for her service, we'd have no stars to offer this review. Saanich white spot breakfast was a disappointing expense. Either stick with the eggs and bacon guys or figure out what Florentine should taste like.. You're on the main run to Victoria fresh off the ferry... Find some decent shrimp for the tourists, generate some quality gf goods-Portofinos is local and superb, create something hearty with fresh vegetables and some artisan cheeses-lots of local Island deliciousness. Do something!.. and start with revisiting those two dishes! Finally, don't charge Victoria prices unless you...

I have been to this White Spot dozens of times, and tonight will be my last. The food and service were appallingly low quality. It took more than ten minutes after being seated before our server came and ask if we would like drinks.

I ordered the Pineapple Sambal Chicken Burger, which is meant to come with coleslaw. Apparently they were out of coleslaw. Instead of telling me that when I ordered, when the meal finally arrived, nearly 25 mins later, there was a small pile of chopped lettuce where the coleslaw should be. I asked about this and the server (Tatum) said "oh yeah, we're out of coleslaw." In addition to this, the burger and onion rings came lukewarm.

My daughter is fussy and didn't like the mayo on her burger, that's on us. We ordered another and waited more than 10 minutes before the server came and told us that she just placed a 'rush order' with the kitchen. We waited another 15 minutes and couldn't wait any longer, we had things to do. I got up and we paid the bill at the front door and left.

We were not offered a discount for our trouble. In fact, we were charged for two full pirate packs when what we received was one pirate pack (minus dessert) and a second, cold cheeseburger on our way to the door.

Like I said, I live in the neighborhood and have been to this restaurant dozens of times. The drop off in food quality and service is completely unacceptable. Frankly, you'll get a better experience across the street at McDonalds, which is where we ended up going to feed my daughter.

They obviously are having staffing problems, but if you don't have enough staff to competently run the place, you shouldn't be running the place. The thing is, there were only maybe ten people in the restaurant, they weren't even busy. I can understand if they're run off their feet but there was hardly...