Niko's Bistro — Restaurant in Calgary

WORST SERVICE I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED ANYWHERE!!!!!

My husband booked MOTHER"S DAY, with Niko's Bistro, about a month and a half ago. At the time, they offered a 6:30 pm seating and a later one. We chose 6:30 pm. They called to rebook us, because I think they realized Sunday May 10th, was Mother's Day, and they wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to serve food to the increased quantity of people looking for restaurant meals. As the 6:30 pm time slot, was originally, their FIRST seating, and they moved that seating up to 5:30 and then created a 7:30 seating, we were a little disappointed, having booked so far in advance, to be moved back an hour. We decided that we could live with that, and didn't seek a reservation elsewhere.

So switched to 7:30 pm, we arrived a little early for a table. The "maitre d" acted like we were an enormous inconvenience, and then seated us at one of 3 or 4 empty tables. We sat and sat there, without even a glass of water, watching other people arrive for their 7:30 pm reservations. Somebody did manage to drop off some menus and state the special.

Eventually we were asked to move, because a grouping of 4 had turned into a 5. Already a little perturbed, at the extremely poor level of service, up until that point in time, we moved tables. AND again............we sat and sat.

My husband signalled the waitress but she simply scurried about serving other people. The table beside us were well into their wine and beer and they came in, about 10 minutes, after we did. Still we waited for someone to arrive at our table and see if we would even like some water.

Eventually, about 22 minutes after our arrival, the waitress arrived, apologized for the long wait and stated that everyone arrived at the same time, and she was rushing to get everyone started. We ordered waters all around, because we were already so put off this poorly run, enormously under staffed little restaurant, we weren't sure if we even wanted to stay.

Finally we just decided to leave. I told the waitress that she had already brought drinks, that were half consumed, and then the appetizers, to a table that arrived 10 minutes after we did. Everyone DID NOT arrive at the same time!

With soooo many excellent and well run restaurants to choose from, I can't see why anyone would ever choose Niko's Bistro. We prefer restaurants that know how to add to your evening out, not detract from it, especially when it is a special occasion. It is especially disappointing to see a restaurant so ill equipped to handle the task they have...

I am currently finishing up a disappointing experience here at Niko's.

From the start, all eight of us were sitting around the table waiting. We weren't given our menus for maybe ten to fifteen minutes. They asked what drinks we wanted and left again, and still didn't give us our menus.

One of us had to go up and ask the waitress for some menus and she finally came with them.

We browsed the menus and ordered an appetizer, and asked for more time with choosing our mains.

We ordered our mains, and then not too long after, we got our appetizers. The appetizers were pretty good (highly recommend the coconut shrimp, though the portion was small). Once we finished our appetizers, the waitress left our dirty appetizer plates and cutlery on the table for far too long.

The kitchen seems to be backed up, from the looks of it, there are only two chefs in the kitchen and the restaurant is full. It took too long for our mains to come.

They finally started bringing out our mains, the dirty appetizer plates were still on the table and we had to ask the waitress to take them at that point.

My family enjoyed their meals enough, I had the gnocchi with the salmon in a lemon butter sauce. The gnocchi had a metallic taste to it (it tasted a lot like packaged gnocchi), and it was drowning in this tomato sauce that tasted like it was store-bought. The salmon was good, except it was not very tender and flaky. There was maybe a handful of steamed vegetables, not much at all.

My family, as I said, enjoyed their dishes a bit more (though all the pasta was drenched in sauce).

Others in the restaurant were waving their bills around in attempt to get the attention of the waitresses so that they could pay. I can't stress enough that the...

Skip the salad that is one thing i would not recommend. Their Caprese salad (not sure why it’s called this, as they have no idea what a Caprese Salad is ) You get three slices of small tomatoes and three little pieces of cheese, and the rest is just greens. . That is not a Caprese salad. I look at the rest of my group Salad and they were not very appetizing. there was a complaint at one of our meal seemed extremely small in comparison to the our partner in which the same dish was served. It was was about thrid amount as the other. you can tell there was an error made by the kitchen and instead of fix it as most place do. The restaurant didn’t do much about it, except argue with client. To me that was disappointed it would have been a lot easier for the waitress to take it back and have the kitchen redo the dish or add a little bit more food. or even offer a desert as I am sorry, instead they spent 5 minutes arguing which cause a stir at the table which made the group feel uncomfortable that when request for desert was asked the answer was very simple No and left as quickly as possible. It was disappointing experience which is too bad because it should have been a very nice experience. Don’t get me wrong, most of the food was good. It’s pricey for what you get and if the atmosphere was better and was not so loud and I mean very loud I think it could have been overall a nice experience. You do need reservations as this is a small restaurant. However, when it comes to Italian food, there’s so many better restaurants just around the corner. It’s hard to recommend this place but it was OK to try once it won’t be a place will...