Northwinds Brewhouse & Kitchen — Restaurant in Collingwood

OK! I’m sorry! But I just couldn’t help it! I had to have at least one bite of the garlic bread before taking a photo! I’ve literally been waiting a year for it!

Full confession time: I’ve been working as a prep cook in the Northwinds Brewhouse & Kitchen in Collingwood since April 1st 2023, and it’s March 31st, so that’s about as close as you can get to being a year! I’m one of the local retirees who work a few short shifts a week here… gets us out and gives us a feeling of being able to contribute! I’ve been prepping primarily the pizza/garlic bread dough and the soft pretzels. And I’ve prepped the actual garlic bread, and I know for a fact that the final touch on each pan is to place 9 garlic cloves in a pattern on top… Pisssst… the recipe calls for 8, but no one so far seems to have figured out how to make a square pattern with 8 cloves.. we all opt for 9… a bit of inside info that’ll probably have Sous Chef shaking his head!

Anyway, the food! Yet another confession… my soup was free… my choice for my free lunch today… and I paid regular price for the garlic bread… not included among the free lunch choices! And my ginger beer was free… it could have been any one of the numerous house beers, but I felt like the bite of the ginger beer today!

So the soup… a delicious butternut squash soup… I was looking forward to a hardy bowl of soup… not happening… this butternut squash soup was so delicate that I wouldn’t have know it was butternut squash, had I not been in the kitchen an hour earlier and saw Sous Chef obsessively blending it to perfection! The sweet carrot and the house veggie stock must have added to the magic!

Now back to the garlic bread… while I’ve personally prepped 100’s of them, I’ve never actually had one all to myself as part of a meal! Wow!

While the butternut squash soup proved to be a surprisingly dainty yin, the garlic bread was a formidable yang! Hardy, but tasty, boldly flavourful, without being overwhelming! Loved it!

But of course I’m biased! Though there’s got to be a good reason why I’m faced with stacks of empty pizza and garlic bread pans every morning when I come in to work! It all goes somewhere! And keeps going somewhere everyday! So maybe there are others who know how yummy it is as well! Just saying! ...

Let me start by saying our food and drinks were good and our waitress was amazing! The low stars are for something that happened in the restaurant that, in my opinion, should have be diffused by a staff member or manager. My husband and I were out with another couple for what we thought would be a nice evening out to celebrate a birthday and a job change. We had waited for approximately 50 minutes to get a table. No problem, we expected a wait. We got in and were seated. As I said at the begin, our food was good, our drinks were good and our waitress was amazing. It was towards the end that a person from another table decided to get up and berate us because in his opinion we were there too long. He proceeded to loudly tell us that we were being completely rude and a bunch of other nonsense. (This was while standing in the middle of a few tables with customers). He tried saying we were there for over two hours (more like an hour thirty to an hour forty) and other people were waiting in the parking lot (which we had also done for 50 minutes or so) and we should leave (which we were pretty much in the process of doing). We were all in shock with this behaviour! This was not the ending we had wanted for our evening. He was totally out of line and none of the staff did anything to diffuse it. We were humiliated, and this after spending a fair bit of money on our food and drinks. This customer and the lack of intervention will cause us not to go back anytime soon, if at all. Everyone is going through a difficult time right now and there was absolutely no reason for this person to be the jerk that he was! This review is in no way meant to warn people to not go there but to instead hopefully have the managers train their staff better in how to deal with situations like this. It totally ruined what started out as a great evening of...

Had high expectations, was disappointed. When we arrived, they were busy. We asked for a booth but got a table and were told that when a booth was available they will move us. We thanked them and agreed that was fine. About 25 minutes later, two booths emptied and they filled them with others who just walked through the door as we watched them do it. Although I did hear the one friendly hostess at the front telling them we requested a booth as they emptied. We forgot about it, it wasn’t a huge deal however, it would of been nice if they had of approached us about it like they had promised. About our meals. When we checked online it stated on their website that they have separate menus for vegans/ vegetarians. They do not. In fact, they hardly have any vegetarian options in their menu. Everything we ordered was spicy, which we were not warned about. We honestly didn’t finish either of our meals or our appetizer. Our server was horrible. She never once returned to refill our drinks or ask how our food was until we asked for our bill. We paid full price despite having eaten nothing, tipped her much more than she deserved and went next door to Toppers and ordered a pizza. In conclusion, the website is misleading. The whole, “we love meat and appreciate those who don’t.. that’s why our meals start out as vegetarian meals with meats added later.. ask for our separate vegetarian/vegan menu” is completely untrue. Maybe the location in Blue Mountains caters more to plant-based diets but this one does not. Changing the website would save people a lot of time and frustration.

On the positive side, the interior is nice, there are no straws for drinks, and the children receive a little DIY craft which is a nice change from crayons and...