Atlas Pizza & Sports Bar — Restaurant in Calgary

I live very close by and went for a poutine and it was so good that my boyfriend and I went back 2 days later for more. But the server we had the second time, her name was christine, was absolutely awful. She took a while to come to take our order (it was busy so I understood) but then after we ordered our poutine and ate it we wanted another one, and we had to wait about 20 minutes for her to even come back to check on us, so when she did come back we asked if they had any specials going on for that night and then she offered to get us the specials menu, she then stood at the bar for 10 pictures talking to every body and the most annoying part of this whole thing is, she would come back to check on the people who were literally right beside us and and everyone else around our area, but didn't ask us if we were doing okay (and she was also suppose to be giving us a menu during this time) I tried to flag her down but she obviously didn't see me so I waited about 5 more minutes to see if she would come back with the menu and when she didn't I had to walk up to her at the bar to ask her to just put in an order of steak sandwich with a separate order of a poutine. She didn't even look at me during the entire conversation and I had to ask what the sides were for the steak Sandwich. About 10 minutes later my boyfriends steak sandwich comes out to our table and on the same plate is a small amount of poutine. I was pretty upset because I just wanted a regular poutine for myself , but instead I had to share a tiny poutine off my boyfriends plate. When we informed christine that I wanted a separate poutine she seemed not to care and shrugged. Not once apologizing and she kinda made it seem like it was my fault. She didn't mention once that the poutine was going to be a side for the steak sandwich, only salad and soup, she wasn't telling me anything in fact. She was very unprofessional and rude, she didn't seem to care at all that I was a paying customer who wanted more food. I was giving them business. BUT ANYWAY lol...So the fact that I then had to pay an extra 3 dollars or so for that tiny poutine on my boyfriends plate was kinda annoying because I then had to order ANOTHER poutine because I had intended on just taking the first poutine I had ordered home for work the next day. So all in all, I was really stoked to come to this bar cause it's close to my house and also has very good food, but the one bad server who made me feel unwanted and uncomfortable has made it so I will...

Atlas Pizza was my favourite pizza in all of Calgary and that’s quite a feat. The homemade beef pizza sauce and the baked on cheese crust layer is iconic of Atlas and is super delicious. However, over the years any time I went--which was a special trip, as Atlas is far away from my home—it was a flip of the coin on whether the pizza was going to be rock solid or lackluster (in terms of flavor, no iconic cheese crust, soggy, greasy, etc).

Besides the pizza being inconsistent, the largest red flag of Atlas was the dishware and cutlery given to customers. I’d say on memory of my last five visits, only one visit had clean dishware and cutlery. I would be served with baked on food on my plates and forks. I would then ask for a new plate from my server but I was given a slightly better plate that still had food baked on from more than one occasion. It was disgusting. Because the pizza was so good and had such a legacy, while being served the pizza I would push the thought of the dirty plates and forks out of my mind and enjoy what was before me.

The last straw was taking my fiancé with her parents to Atlas for her birthday because of how we raved about the pizza. This was our experience: dirty plates, dirty forks, rude and inattentive service (had to wait over 20 minutes to get our waitress’ attention to get another drink when it wasn’t busy at all), bland pizza, and the special topping we received on our pizza was a big, black, long hair. Disgusting and unacceptable. To my memory, Atlas remade the pizza that had the hair on it (as they should) but we were pretty upset and disappointed especially taking my fiancé’s parents who have never tried Atlas before.

I wrote my experience on the Atlas website but never got a response back. I was done with them.

Could things be better? I’m not sure, but I would say it’s your judgement call on whether Atlas’ standards of cleanliness is okay with you. I hope Atlas improves because they have a wonderful pizza, but when the consistency isn’t there and it feels like you’re not welcomed or appreciated, the pizza isn’t worth the travel or hassle.

Thanks for...

I’m not sure where to begin so let’s start with the good. The staff were friendly, the establishment was spacious with a good layout and appeared very clean. They also stayed open right until their posted hours (2am) despite it being quite slow all night - which is very rare in Calgary!

Now, the not so good…

Both of the pool tables were in very rough shape. The rubber bumpers were coming apart on both tables preventing the balls from bouncing properly off of the cushions making bank shots impossible. They were also far from being level. Additionally, there was only 3 pool cues between the 2 tables and only one was worth playing with.

My friend and I were extremely hungry and asked for a menu. Our server strongly suggested we try the pizza so we went along with her recommendation. We wanted thin crust but that was not an available option (quite strange for any business with the word “pizza” in their name). When the pizza arrived, the crust had to be close to an inch thick! There was an absolutely ridiculous amount of cheese resulting in a sloppy, greasy mess. The “traditional” pizza sauce we opted for, tasted like some sort of generic marinara sauce (not pizza sauce) straight out of a can. It was quite flavourless and didn’t seem like it belonged on pizza. It weirdly tasted like there was cinnamon and possibly brown sugar in it???

Overall, it just seemed like the unhealthiest version of pizza I have ever had. It makes sense why most of the 4 & 5 star reviewers on here all look to be morbidly obese.

I noticed the owner’s response to another review stating that Atlas has been around for 45 years so “they must be doing something right”. Perhaps that’s true but McDonalds has been around for nearly 70 years and I would never eat there.

Unfortunately, I’ve been to Italy too many times to think that this - in any way - resembled pizza. I’d say it was closer to a lasagna in appearance.

Likely,...