The Pub at Brentwood Bay Resort — Restaurant in Central Saanich

I don’t suggest anyone with allergies to eat here, specifically if you have a gluten allergy/are celiac.

First bad experience I got the Thai beef salad and told them about my gluten allergy(celiac). My boyfriend who does not have an allergy got the crispy chicken burger. After one bite of my salad I notice there are bits of batter (looked like it was off my bfs burger) scattered all through the salad!! I tell the waitress and she was so apologetic and ended up getting me a salmon sushi roll to sub. Mistakes happen so it wasn’t a big deal to me.

Didn’t return until we were craving sushi and I thought since they subbed the sushi last time and it was fine that it would be okay this time too. We ordered over the phone, told them about my allergy and to please separate our orders as my bfs sushi contained items with gluten in them. We pick it up and the order is all in the same box. The hostess again was so apologetic and said they would remake it right away and that there must have been a miscommunication. Okay no biggie, mistakes happen. We wait another 10 or so minutes, they bring it out and we take it home. I eat a piece of my sushi at home and then notice my sushi roll has bits all over the sides of it from my bfs sushi!!! They didn’t remake it, they just got us to sit around and wait while they took it out from the other box to put it in a new box.

I called and talked to a manager who again was nice but seriously I have never had a restaurant take an allergy less seriously. They offered to remake it and come back right away or they could give me a gift card but I would never in my life trust to eat there again. I was sick all night and the next day. Sucks because we were excited when we found this restaurant because they seemed like they had a lot of gluten free options but unfortunately the cooks do not care.

The only saving grace in all this is the staff I did interact with were...

Management for this pub needs a serious overhaul. This place is begging for someone to come in and get service up to snuff. You can tell when FOH staff have come from other places with great service training, as they are the stand outs (and anomalies) here.

As locals, we wanted to love this place, as it’s right down the road and the food is consistently fantastic (nothing but great things to say about what’s happening BOH). Nearly every time we come, we’re standing at the door, watching hosts and bartenders chit chat, glancing over without greeting us we stand there waiting to be acknowledged so we can be seated. It’s customer service 101 to stop what you’re doing, even momentarily, to greet your guests.

We’re big time foodies and love sitting down for a few drinks and a good bite with a view. Almost every time we come, we’re waiting 5-10 mins for our server to come by and even longer for our first drink. Multiple times we’ve decided to settle up, despite originally wanting more drinks, as our server took so long to come by. We would have spent way more money here over the last couple years had there been someone around to serve us.

Coming from someone who been in this industry for over 10 years, this is 100% a training or staffing issue so individual staff are not to blame. They all seem like lovely people who, unfortunately, have not been given the tools, training or sufficient staffing to make this pub what it could be.

The view can’t be beat and some staff are awesome, but it’s just so consistently inconsistent that we end up begrudgingly going elsewhere.

I can’t tell if management responds or cares to read to reviews, so we might just be yelling into the void, but I genuinely hope something changes so we can make this our go-to spot in the neighbourhood.

With kindness,

Your neighbours who want to spend...

We've been going to this pub for years, but lately the service has been lacking. The staff are all kind and friendly, but they don't seem to be able to work together as a team. We were recently there for lunch and sat inside but the patio doors were open. We waited ages to place drink orders and then another long wait to receive drinks. Like, really long. We were very relaxed with no time constraints, but it was still too long before food orders were taken. The food did come out pretty quick, but then it was like they forgot about us. Our server seemed to disappear and nobody else would bus our plates; it actually felt like they were avoiding looking down at our table. The trouble was, we were being pestered by wasps and really needed the plates taken because more were showing up. Also, we would have loved more water or the opportunity to other another round of drinks. Eventually, we flagged a server who helped us out with getting the dirty plates bussed. Then our server showed back up suddenly with a bill but she hadn't even offered us coffee, tea or dessert. We did actually want tea.... But we got the message! We went for dessert elsewhere.

This hasn't been the only sub standard experience I've had around service at this pub in the last year. I know things are tough during the pandemic for the hospitality industry, but I didn't like the feeling of being forgotten about and then rushed out, especially when the restaurant wasn't full. Also, I was really frustrated with how the serving team didn't work together. A server with empty hands probably passed our table two dozen times, but I guess since we weren't their table, we didn't matter. Very...