Church St. Taphouse — Restaurant in Comox

I visited this establishment while visiting Comox from Ottawa. The service was poor and although I have no direct evidence, I suspect the staff are profiling patrons (in a negative manner).

I visited the restaurant on my first night in Comox at about 08:00 p.m. on Thursday 21 December 2023. I told the hostess at the door I was in for dinner and drinks. Although, there were at least three free tables clearly visible from the entrance where I was standing, I was told there was a 20 minute wait. Additionally, there were free tables on the heated patio. As I had been travelling across country all day and was looking forward to a relaxing meal, I enquired if it was possible to be seated at one of the free tables. The hostess re-iterated that there was a wait, even though there were no lines or crowds waiting to enter the restaurant. The waitress then suggested seating at the bar, then immediately doubled back stating it was very crowded. I pointed out to the wait staff that there was no-one behind me and that I was very hungry and tired after travelling all day. The staff then offered to let me sit upstairs at "the ledge" or "edge" or something to that effect.

I was taken upstairs to a very small loft and seated at a rickety stool along a the railing of a half wall overlooking the restaurant. There was a piece of rough 6 inch board attached to the wall where I guess I was supposed to rest a drink and/or plate for dinner. I waited approximately 10 minutes for a server to come and ask for my drink choice. Having waited 10 minutes on a stool without a backrest and resting my elbows on a piece of lumber for service, I was a bit irritated. As the free tables were still free (now approximately 15 minutes into my "visit") I asked if I could be seated at a table. The server simply stated they were unavailable. She then suggested I sit at the bar before, stating it was quite full, implying I should stay seated at the wooden ledge. I said I would take my chances at the bar and she agreed to move my menus down to the table for me, however, seeing that there were no visible empty chairs at the bar, I was not interested in fighting for a place. I waited for the server to come down (as she was busy talking to her friend). I asked her if I could instead set at a seat on the patio. She simply stated "those seats are for other people" then quickly corrected herself and stating "they might have a large party coming in." It was clear they did not want to seat me at a table. By this point I had been at the restaurant approximately 20 minutes and each of the tables empty when I had entered remained empty. As I was talking with the server two women walked in without reservations and were immediately seated at one of the two tables. I left and walked to the Blackfin Pub down the street where I was seated immediately, had a beer within 2 minutes and where they kept the kitchen open for a few extra minutes so I could order dinner.

While it is normal for restaurants to attempt to seat people judiciously in order to accommodate multiple parties, it was late in the evening (for Comox) and I made my intentions clear to spend money. Additionally, as a single man, I would have taken a relatively short amount of time to finish my meal and would not have loitered. My work has taken me across the globe and I have had the opportunity to dine in many pubs and restaurants but I have never been treated as poorly as I was at the Church St. Tapehouse. I can only assume based on my experience that the wait staff and management of the Church St. Taphouse are using an arbitrary criteria to judge how much each customer may spend or if they fit the "right" patron profile they want for their...

Unfortunately today was not a great day for this tap house. Visiting from Calgary and looking for a good place to have lunch before flying back we came to Church St Taphouse. Sat down around 12:05, server came over promptly and took our drink order. Unfortunately our food order somehow never made it to the kitchen (not the servers fault, sounds like an issue with the tablet). At 1:05pm we were updated on the issue and were assured it would be coming right up and could they offer us some chips and salsa in the meantime. We said yes, thinking it would come out right away. How hard is it to put some nacho chips in a bowl with some salsa?! Well apparently it takes a VERY long time…40 minutes to be exact. As the time crept to 1:30 (now 1.5 hrs after we were seated) I let the server know we have a plane to catch and may have to take the food to go. She said sure no problem it’s coming up right away. It still didn’t come…so I ask to speak to the Manager. Well I didn’t actually get to speak to a manager because there wasn’t really one working. The whole time we were assured we would receive a “really good discount” on our bill. Finally the chips and salsa arrived at 1:40. With a very weak apology from the “manager”. We scarf them down because we are starving at this point. It still took another 15 minutes to get our food to go. We were then told that our whole bill would be taken care of, which is unfortunate for this business however based on this entire situation is completely appropriate. All while this is going on, we watched the chef be extremely rude to the servers and kitchen staff. I really hope our feedback that we provided in the moment will be taken seriously.

I totally understand mistakes happen and things get busy but WHY was our food not pushed to the front of the line after realizing the mistake? Why did it take 40 minutes for chips and salsa to come out? Why did it still take almost another hour to receive our food? We had to run to our car with bags of food in our hand…only to find no condiments were provided and the food mediocre.

I hope today is a lesson for this business in how not to operate...

So hopefully a great place, but our experience today wasn't so great. First the good. Nice location, good selection of beers on tap, like the atmosphere (although I think it could get really noisy when full) and the patio looks inviting. Now the bad....the food and service today were really quite bad. We had the calamari and the poutine. So first the calamari...it was calamari. Fried (a little soggy), but it is what it is. Pretty average. The poutine, however, was just bad. The fries were under cooked and soggy and the cheese was one large "clump". The worst part was the gravy. Poutine is about gravy, but there just wasn't any. When I moved the cheese aside there was nothing...nada...zilch...zero. The service is where it really fell apart. After getting our food the waitress did not come back to see if we wanted another drink at all. I mean isn't that the job...to sell me drinks in a tap house? We then finished our one drink and obviously finished (but didn't because it wasn't very good) our food and it was all pushed aside. Very much signaling that we were done. 15 minutes later (yep I timed it) the dirty dishes were still there and I had to ask for the bill. Another 5 minutes later, after the waitress had walked by a few more times, I had to go up to the food order station and ask her again. 20 minutes now to get our bill. And to add icing to the cake while we were paying the waitress started a conversation with another employee at our table and totally ignored us. So yes this is a long and detailed post. Not cause I want these guy to feel "blasted" by my review, but because I want them to fix it and succeed. If I wanted to blast them it would be one star and an emotional rant. Two stars for now and hopefully they'll fix these issues. We need good, modern and consistent...