The Coup — Restaurant in Calgary

Disappointing experience. We will not be back.

We visited as a party of 6 on Saturday Sept 2 at 7pm.

The restaurant was surprisingly empty when we arrived (if I had to guess, I’d say that approximately 4 other tables were already seated).

I asked for a hot apple cider and was told that they didn’t have any left. I then asked for a Vietnamese coffee instead, and was told they could only make it over ice, not hot. I then asked for a coconut milk chai, and was told that they can’t heat up the milk because their machine is broken. In the end, I didn’t get a drink.

5/6 of our party ordered the watermelon poke bowl. After waiting for 30 minutes, the server came to tell us that our poke bowls were on their way, and asked if we wanted to add anything onto our poke bowls like mushrooms or tofu. I have no idea why this question wasn’t asked when she initially took our order, or why she bothered to tell us that our poke bowls were on their way out when we had to wait another 15 minutes after her announcement that they were on the way out. There were two tables that arrived after us, yet received their food before we did. All 3 of us who were seated along the wall made the same observation (tables that arrived after us were being served their food before us).

When the 5 poke bowls finally arrived, the one person in our party who did not order a poke bowl did not receive his order. We waited, and waited, until we eventually decided that the 5/6 of us who received their food should start eating. It was shocking to all of us that only 5/6 of our meals came out together, and that the 6th person had to wait to receive his meal.

In addition to several drink items being unavailable, we also overheard the server tell the table beside us that they didn’t have any sushi rice left (7pm on a Saturday), which eliminates an entire section of their relatively small menu!

The food quality itself fine. I personally found the Poke bowl heavy on the vinegar/acidic taste. In the end, I couldn’t finish it because the vinegar taste was too much (kind of like when you eat too many Salt n’ Vinegar chips) and several people in our party agreed.

As someone who has worked in the restaurant industry for over 10 years, I can confidently say that the experience we had on Saturday night was sub-par in several ways. Even my friends who haven’t worked in the restaurant industry were disappointed with the experience.

If you decide to go anyway, note that the wooden benches along the wall are extremely uncomfortable, and if you end up seated on one for almost two hours, you could end up leaving with...

The Main course was TERRIBLE! My husband and I decided to go on a date night the previous Sunday and after seeing the photos of the dishes I wanted to try the Coup. We made reservations for 5 PM, and got there a little early, but we decided to go in since it looked empty ( My husband said that is not a good sign on a Sunday for it to be empty - he was right)

We ordered three appetizers, the hummus and the beats were excellent. The yams were cold in the inside and mushy clearly not heated properly, but edible.

The broccoli salad was inedible. The broccoli was soft meaning it is not fresh, they forgot the smoked tofu and when she brought it out, it seemed partially reheated, half cold half warm, and the dressing was off… we could not eat it so basically left it untouched after we each had a few bites.

The wraps also an inedible. The falafel wrap was literally mushy falafel. The falafel seemed uncooked and soft and mushy like baby food. They were also cold and seemed like it was thrown on the grill after it was wrapped just to make burn marks on the bread, but not left long enough to actually heat up. I doubt the falafel was actually cooked. The tempa wrap was soggy and flavorless and we could not even tell what it was… strange and cold and soggy! All of this was served with Lays potato chips! I was shocked. The waitress did say that these are actual chips, when I ordered them, but I thought she meant fries cut into chips like you would expect. Who serves potato chips with a almost $25 plate of wraps? We left both wrap meals almost untouched after taking a few bites each. We asked the waitress for the bill and she saw that the plates were practically untouched, and asked if we would like to take them to go, I told her they are inedible, and the salad is off, and we would not be able to eat them at home if we could not eat them at the restaurant. She said she would pass the feedback to the chef, but offered us nothing. We paid in total almost $120 and only ate the appetizers! They should have offered us some type of refund for the food we clearly did not touch…

The waitress was friendly enough, and I had no issue with her, other than she was a bit distracted at times and didn’t bother to offer us some compensation on our bill for the meals that were not edible.

The photos are pictures of the food after we finished eating… we literally only had a few bites each, and we just could...

READ YOUR RECEIPT BEFORE PAYING!! Our son and his girlfriend who are vegetarians came down for a visit from Vancouver. We wanted to treat them to a nice lunch and with us being meat eaters, we started searching for reviews/ recommendations for a vegetarian restaurant. The two best options were The Coup and 10 Foot Henry. We decided on The Coup and I can tell you the food was really good. It was very flavourful and we did not miss the meat at all. What fell through is the service and the restaurant policy. It took over an hour to get our food, the waitress missed ordering one of our order, and we never got a take out box that we asked for. Then it was time to pay the bill. The waitress brought our bill and the debit machine with the tip function open ready to be entered, she then proceeded to leave it on the table, did not say anything and left. When I went to put my card on the debit machine and ready to press the tip button I just happened to glanced at our receipt and noticed that 18% tip was automatically added to our bill already! We are a party of 5 , on their menu it says party of 6 or more will have tips added automatically. At other restaurants, the waitress would have let us know that the tip is already on our bill and to let us know to skip the tip screen, unfortunately this waitress did not say anything so if I hadn’t looked at the bill and I was not expecting automatic tip, I would have given her twice the tip amount. This is just a little shady and not transparent. If this was not done on purpose then I would suggest re training your servers but then as I went back and read more reviews , I noticed other people have had the same experience so.. 🤔

UPDATE:

The management has reached out and apologized for our experience. He has explained that the staff will be retrained and that there was a miscommunication with the staff and that he didnt realize that the debit machine was not set properly to not add auto tip unless it’s a party of six or more. Thank you for reaching out...