Cactus Club Cafe — Restaurant in Central Core

My husband and I are Cactus regulars. Over the last couple of visit we have noticed the Jasper Ave location has gone significantly downhill - but this last visit was terrible enough to need to leave a review, especially given this was a special event. Both the quality of food and beverage were poor, as well as the service was not what we expect from Cactus.

We chose to celebrate my dad’s birthday at Cactus Club on Jasper Ave yesterday. We were a table of 4. We chose Cactus because we took my dad about 6 months ago (albeit to the WEM location), and he loved it. I noted the birthday on the reservation, and also it was very apparent it was a special event from the birthday cards on the table.

I ordered a $20+ glass of white wine, which came out room temperature. When I asked the server she made it sound like this was normal- I said ‘you don’t chill your white wines?’ and then she said she’d go look into it. She came back and said that particular bottle was not chilled, and so the best she can do is offer me ice cubes (to water down my overpriced wine; awesome). My dad’s birthday drink didn’t come out with the rest of the beverages.

Next came our food. Med bowl is my favourite thing on the menu- it was NOTHING like it should be. My husband ordered the same thing. This dish is supposed to have a variety of things in there- which were missing. Most noticeable was the usual colorful array of grape yellow and red tomatoes was gone- only one single halved grape tomato was present in both of our bowls. I requested no olives, but my husband’s bowl had just two little olives… It looked like they were rationing ingredients. Incredibly disappointing. My husband said after we ordered “you should have asked to give my bowl your olives”, in hindsight I should have, he would have had FOUR. My dad’s teriyaki rice bowl was bland and he was pretty disappointed.

As a final note, not even an acknowledgement from the server of the birthday- no birthday wish for my dad. We have had a dessert for the birthday person in the past- all of us were too full for dessert anyways so we didn’t want it, but just a happy birthday from our server would have been nice.

Overall just disappointing and we won’t come back to this location if we...

Great place to go for a beer, food, family dinner or date however.

HUGR ISSUE......

A few weeks ago I sat at the bar alone for a burger and beer. Watching baseball just relaxing on a weekend I ordered the burger and fries. The meal came out in about 20 minutes and the expo ( younger guy ) places my plate on the bartop to my right and walked away. I grabbed the plate with my left hand and burnt my finger really bad. I looked as the expo walked away he was holding a black hotcloth. Why the hell didn't he tell me the plate was THIS HOT. FAR ABOVE THE NORMAL WARM DISH..

I wasn't going to say anything but my finger blistered within 2 minutes so I knew I had too.

Manager came over helped me and I filled out a few things on their iPad to have corp call me later. That manager was great at restaurant level.

I've worked in restaurants along time and there is no reason a plate needs to be this hot for a burger and side of fries. The fires come in its own bowl and the burger comes on the plate.

I know 1000% that the food was left in the window too long and instead of the expo changing the plates he knew he was bringing out a really hot plate before he had to use a cloth to hold and walk the food to me about 70 feet away.

I was expecting corporate to call me and offer me a free meal to come back but all they did was call to say sorry. They didn't take this seriously at all. It wasn't a warm plate this was a plate that clearly sat in a heat window when it didn't need to or could have been changed and a little kid or old person would have really hurt themself if they grabbed this plate.

This huge company needs to take better action because while I'm a 40 year old male what if that plate was grabbed by a senior by both hands or a young child.

Not impressed in how they handed this outside the awesome manager at the restaurant level.

Do...

So we ordered our drinks and order our food right at the very beginning of the sitdown, both steaks came under cooked they brought us our iced tea and our Coke my steak was full of fat they said no problem Let's go get you a new one took my empty pop and now you get a sit for the entire wait of cooking the steak for them to refill their drinks but the steak came first and had to ask for my drinks again, is this not supposed to be a high-end restaurant or is this a low-end restaurant? I'm really unimpressed with why I even came here. Especially when Earl's is a couple blocks away and at least would have got customer service there maybe my drink refilled in between me waiting for the you guys to remake a steak that was undercooked and fatstrapped in the first place. Then you have a management team walking around here only concerned about lighting everybody's damn candles but no checking up or touching tables and ensuring that the meal that was just served incorrectly was taken care of properly or even coming to see if the drinks needed to refill because they don't really care about nothing from the looks of it. Overall this is an extremely disappointing experience Even the remade steak was just all right now. This was at 4:08 pm on Friday they I started the order. So no reason not even dinner rush yet. To top it off the first bill I got was including the remade extra steak. Way to be on top of it.

I have a question. Have people just come to terms that we get is sub par service everywhere and we should just accept it? I don't accept it. If I pay for service I expect The experience to match my dollar value not to feel like a Denny's with cocktails. Sad as I live a few blocks away but I'll go further away for better service. I work in luxury dinning. This was pathetic even for an upper mid...