Oliver Twist Pub & Grill — Restaurant in Burnaby

Well, what a change. First of all, I'm glad to see that pubs are opening after the pandemic lockdown with all safety measures implemented. I wrote about a year ago how I discovered that I do have an establishment in my neighborhood that I can proudly call my local bar. And it was Oliver Twist with a great choice of craft beer and pretty impressive happy hours. I visited it today again, and I have very mixed feelings. Quite obviously, the management has changed. And jumping ahead, I want to say that the waitress did a great job, was very attentive, and had an amazingly positive vibe – kudos to her for that. The kitchen now mostly leans towards Korean and Japanese cuisine. Well, the pasta menu is still there, and I find it odd. Trying out a few dishes, I can tell right away that cooking got much better. Wings are juicy, even salt&pepper and only 39c per wing till the end of 2020. Bulgogi burger was something I've never tried before and was pleasantly surprised – a great alternative to your classic beef patty. Now, the Volcano roll was quite something. It literally looks like a mountain of sushi. Please don't misunderstand me, it was delicious, and the amount of food you get for the price is impressive. However, I would remove part of the ingredients and serve it more like a traditional roll. I think that sushi rolls in their conventional form are a great pub dish. Plus, the owners can save some money that way. A bit of bar criticism. Margarita's rim needs to be modified – either keep the same fine salt and double the amount, or go for more coarse salt, something like kosher. That rim is the star of Margarita cocktail, and what is offered here doesn't look like one. Like many places these days, Mimosa here made using white wine and soda water instead of sparkling wine, which is bearable. Nonetheless, it has to be served in a champagne flute, or it has absolutely nothing to do with the Mimosa. Whatever direction the new owners chose, they need to understand that they still position it as a bar/pub, so it needs to meet specific criteria. What I DON'T like about the changes. What I adored about the "old" Oliver Twist that it was the only pub in Edmonds/Highgate area that served a decent variety of local craft beer. The best they can offer now is the Red Truck, and it's the only IPA on the menu. Don't get me wrong, Red Truck is a true Vancouver classic, but before this place offered products of breweries like Four Winds, Backcountry, Steel & Oak, etc. Not anymore. Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed, especially after confirming that another local pub with chicken wings themed name still has a previous awful choice of brews after reopening. So now the Edmonds/Highgate area officially has no beer connoisseur, so to speak, spot. I do imagine that the new owners want to switch up the regular clientele and change things around, which is common and understandable, and judging on the wings and other menu items that I've tried there, they are heading in the right direction food-wise. And I'm not sure if this comment will ever reach the owners, but I sincerely hope they will update their beer menu and gloriously head the area's title of the best bar. Because of what happened to the bar, I don't think it deserves four stars, but I will put that for now for noticeably improved kitchen. I will be back for another review in a...

Last night my friends and I had one of the worst experiences we have ever had at a restaurant or pub. I’m taking the time to write this because I want all of you to avoid this establishment at all costs so you may spare yourselves the insanity in which we had to endure.

We wanted wings. I remembered that I saw a sign for the Oliver Twist Pub a while back for Wed Wing night. We looked it up online. Sure enough, their website stated it was and wings were $0.39! We decided to go. When we got there, our waitress informed us that they cost $0.59 each. We let that go since we were parked and seated. We ordered 6 orders of wings, yam fries and beer.

When the wings came they were barely sauced. We sent back a few orders. While the waitress had our orders of wings on her tray to take back to the kitchen, she stopped to make sure all her other tables were ok first and punched in some orders on her computer. All within eye shot. 5 min later she brought back our wings, this time they were so soaked in sauce that they were practically inedible. As well as cold!

We didn’t send them back. We ate a few and left the rest. We ordered more beer and she brought us the wrong beers. We mentioned to her, the mistake but said its fine, we will finish them and leave.

She brought the bill and the machine and we tried to pay but it died. She talked to the manager for about 15 min before bringing another debit machine that also didn’t work. This repeated two more times and took roughly 40 min.

All while the manager and her refused to take blame and kept telling us it wasn’t their fault. Clearly, it was. If you are working as a server or bartender and you don’t charge your machines how do you expect people to pay? Someone who is good at their job, even ok at their job would know to keep them charged.

They told us we now had to use their in-store ATM which gives a hefty service charge there then again through your bank. Had it been mentioned as we sat down, that it was cash only, we would have been fine with it. However, after a terrible meal, terrible service, then having to wait almost an hour to leave, we were quite angry.

I asked to speak to the “manager” the bartender who was posing as the manager called the owner who drove over. He was barely apologetic and said that he would knock 10% off our bill for the inconvenience! Can you believe that? What a slap in the face. The hilarity of it was that I explained to him everything that happened. He tells me “I’m sorry, I had a heart attack a month ago.” What does his health have anything to do with this situation? I told him that this was unacceptable. He didn’t budge.

We were basically forced to use their ATM, pay and leave. Even after we pulled money out of the ATM, our server made us wait another 10 min for her.

The owner obviously has no cares about his customers. He doesn’t know customer service and all he cares about is getting money. So do him a favor. Show that you will not support greedy establishments like this and spend your hard earned dollars...

TERRIBLE SERVICE!!!!!! I will NEVER go here again.

One Friday night in October my husband and I decided on the spur of the moment to use a dinner coupon we had seen in our local paper for Oliver Twist Pub and see what they were like. (The coupons are printed regularly, and usually last for a month at a time.) When we walked in, we were overwhelmed by the smell of a combination of smoke and cleaner - ugh! That should have been my first warning. The lower floor is very small and has a "beer parlour" atmosphere, and a couple of tables were occupied by people who were clearly regulars. As we made our way to the upper floor where not many tables were occupied, we noticed people on the main floor being served food and thought that seemed like a good sign. The upper floor was about a 1/4 full (it's not a very big pub so that was only about 3 other tables.) After we waited for about 10 minutes, a waitress finally came and took our drink orders just as we were starting to wonder whether we'd made a bad decision. The waitress was very friendly, but it took her almost another 10 to bring our drinks - odd since it was only a bottle of cider and a glass of cranberry juice. We gave her our orders, which weren't complicated - just a couple of burgers. And so the wait began.

After we had been sitting for about 40 minutes, during which the waitress came once to ask if she could refill our drinks (which we were rationing because our meal was taking so long) my husband flagged down the waitress and asked about our meal. We had seen only one table served food in the time we had been sitting there. (The place was still not full, but it seemed as if she was the only waitress.) She apoplogized and said it would be right out.

We continuted to chat and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally when we had been there for 55 minutes we just got up and went downstairs to the cashier and asked to pay for our drinks and told her to forget the meal. She apologized again and said that it should be ready any minute. I told her that we had stopped there because we were hungry and an hour wait when the place isn't even that busy is just no good for us. She said that they only had one person working in the kitchen because someone had called in sick, so it was really hard for him, and they have this coupon deal about to expire so they've been really busy because everyone wants to use their coupon. The thing is, the coupon we had wasn't due to expire for another 10 days, and then the next month there was ANOTHER coupon in the paper.

We drove up Kingsway and stopped in at a Chinese restaurant that looked promising, and 10 minutes after sitting down, we had hot steaming food in front of us, and the best meal we'd...