Yellow Door Bistro — Restaurant in Calgary

We had our after wedding day brunch booked at the Yellow Door Bistro. My fiancé called a week ahead to book a reservation. The manager was on the phone at the time and told us to move our 11am booking to a noon reservation on a Saturday because we wanted a sit down breakfast and she advised that it would be too busy to have a sit down meal at 11am. If we wanted a buffet it wouldn’t be a problem, but we wanted hot fresh food especially since it appeared to be a more fancy and expensive place for breakfast.

We showed up and right off the bat, our server advised us to the buffet because of how busy it was. My finance mentioned that we booked for our noon slot to avoid this issue and she said it would take 40-50 minutes to get food served to us so we should stick to the buffet. My fiancé and I were very upset by that especially since in addition, we were told that an automatic 18% gratuity was being applied to us for having a group of 6 or more. My fiancé asked why would we have this gratuity applied to us if we did the recommended buffet, we’d only be paying for coffee and water refills for service. The server argued and said that we are being served and that’s when we asked for the manager.

The manager came by and she was the same person on the phone when we booked. She vaguely remembered the conversation, but she did recall, and tried to explain the gratuity. She also remembered about telling us to come at a later time to avoid this problem with the food. She wanted to try and resolve this issue and her solution “to avoid a bad review” as she said, was to try to get our orders as a priority to come out at a reasonable time. We were okay with that but still annoyed by the whole situation as my in-laws didn’t want to wait so they got the buffet. The buffet food looked unappealing and the in-laws weren’t happy with the food quality and how we were treated at the beginning.

We eventually got our food after 10-15 minutes or so and it was okay. At this point after talking to the manager we were waiting for over half an hour before the food was put on priority. The flavours were good, not great, but everyone ordered an egg’s benedict with different egg preference. Not a single egg had yolk coming out when pierced, they were all over cooked. At this point, we just wanted to get the brunch done with. It didn’t help that our server from the beginning would passive aggressively ask if we were all okay like: “Is just water okay for now, are you sure?” or, after she would ask if we needed anything and no one responded: “Everyone is okay? Everyone?”

We will never recommend Yellow Door Bistro until new management comes in. We paid around $250 for brunch with tip (automatic gratuity) that we felt was overpriced and disappointing. We went to a much better breakfast spot the day after and told them of our experience. The server there understood as she has heard about how Yellow Door has trouble right now with retaining staff and that the quality has suffered because of that. That is a giant red flag when other restaurants know exactly of our experience.

There are plenty of other good breakfast/brunch places downtown. Do yourself a favour and avoid this restaurant until something positive...

TL;DR - hit and miss, but worth a gamble. (Go early if you want pancakes)

Wanting to venture outside of our regular haunts for brunch, and given the restrictions of Covid, Yellow Door was our easiest non-3-hr-wait. The ambiance and decor of the restaurant itself is a bit like that of a mid-range hotel restaurant, which isn't surprising given its attached to Hotel Arts. With the patronage restrictions the space seemed quite empty, which made conversation easier, but felt a little odd. We went the first weekend of re-opening, and you could tell the staff was still getting used to the "new normal". Everyone was seated 2m apart, masks/gloves/sanitizers were in use, but I was seated

Very disappointing brunch at $34.00 a person. The list on the website of what was supposed to be available on the buffet was not accurate. That aside, the food that was available did not anywhere meet the requirements of the price range. It all sounds good when reading the labels, but when eating it the quality was greatly lacking. Chocolate waffles were cold and so dry they were unedible. The croissants were dry, and had no flavor . . . just horrible! The scrambled eggs were watery and really cold. There was one salad which was a ceasar so drenched in dressing that it was a soggy mess. There were supposed to be hash browns but the warmer was empty during the entire time we were there. The steak eggs benny were very tasty but the warmer also sat empty for over an hour. When it finally came out of the kitchen we were long done our meal. Myself and my tablemate did go and get one each to try. When we began eating it mine was piping hot and my guests was not even luke warm . . . actually cold to touch! The best thing was the tomato soup,( which we both added sugar to which greatly improved the flavor ), grilled cheese sandwiches, and the tator tots with cheese and salsa. ( sounds like the lunch of a six year olds - lol ) The desert cart at 12:30 pm was virtually empty. We had a choice of jello, a dried out strawberry mouse square or a piece of brownie - which incidentally was cut up and placed repeatedly on multiple trays to create the illusion of many desserts. ( as if we couldn't see the obvious ) We also ordered cappuccinos which were horrible. They followed the theme of cold. There was no crema and the espresso was watery. How is this even possible? We did tell our server that the coffee's were not anywhere near servable. Not once were we asked how our meal was by our server! When we were ready to leave our busboy who started clearing our table asked what we thought? We politely said we were very disappointed, he replied that he understood and agreed it could be much better. I think that says it all. If you are looking to spend $34 a person for brunch, I can imagine there are plenty of other choices that would be far superior in quality than The...