Liberty Kitchen Harbour Centre (North Vancouver) — Restaurant in District of North Vancouver

I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for 6 years and we constantly talk about how badly we need a neighbourhood restaurant (not more fast food!) and something open past 9 pm. Liberty kitchen has brought both of those things to the table and frankly I’m thrilled.

Enter my next problem - I’m recently diagnosed celiac so is there anything I can eat!? I popped by with a girlfriend for a drink on Thursday and there were a couple options marked gluten friendly but…drum roll, please..there’s also gluten friendly pizza crust! And, to really woo my 90s kid nostalgia, a Perogie pizza. We ordered it and I was preparing for a cardboard crust with tasty toppings. But I was wrong; the pizza crust is probably in the top 3 gluten free pizza crusts I’ve had. It was so good I came home to tell my fiance we had to go. So back we went the second night in a row - two pizzas. One perogie and one pesto prawn. GUYS THEYRE SO GOOD. I was almost concerned they weren’t really gluten free but the steps taken to ensure my gluten free request was an allergy; not a preference; the check in with my on cross contamination risk and the acknowledgement of the bartender that yea, the gluten free crust is really just that good, told me quickly I was wrong.

Non alcoholic drink options were amazing, happy hour selection on point and truly, just the atmosphere was so lovely.

I’m thrilled this is in the neighbourhood and also equally terrified for my pizza and happy hour spending habits over the summer. ...

From first impressions when walking through the door, the new renovations were great 👍 When we arrived, It was later in the evening, the restaurant was pretty quiet.

We were seated right away and our first waitress took our drink orders and brought us waters. We were waiting for about five minutes till we got our drinks. The drinks were delicious.

We ended up getting a second server. She took our order for appys and our mains. She made little to no eye contact, and walked away.

We got our appetizers soon after ordering, but we ended up waiting over an hour for our mains that didn’t show up. The restaurant was extremely quiet, and we could see our server walking around cleaning tables the whole time. Nobody came to check on us.

We were about to leave and just pay for our drinks and appys, when our mains FINALLY showed up. Management was kind enough to take our mains off the bill and pack them up to go.

The restaurant was great other than our server. I understand the restaurant is new, and there’s a lot of new staff trying to understand and navigate the serving industry, but the restaurant was extremely quiet and this situation should not have happened. I hope this was a positive learning experience for our waitress. We will definitely be going back again. Liberty Kitchen...

I get that you’re new, and a little busy…. but wow. What a train wreck of a first impression.

We stood awkwardly at the front while three hosts and one, I believe to be a part of the management team, perfected the art of ignoring us. No “hi,” no “we’ll be right with you”—just blank stares and silence, like we were interrupting their team huddle about how to look busy without actually doing anything.

When we finally got seated, the host excitedly told us about their Monday wine special. Adorable—except it is Friday. At that point, we knew we were in for a ride.

Then came the wait. Ten plus minutes. No water. No server. Nothing. One staff member floated by multiple times, refilling everyone else’s water and not even offering us anything to drink. Meanwhile, seven staff huddled by the host stand, and three more hovered around the bar like extras in a restaurant-themed sitcom.

The table seated right around the same time across from us also got ghosted, so at least we weren’t alone in our abandonment. I don’t think the host even told anyone we were there.

Can’t rate the food because we didn’t get that far. We finally gave up and went to White Spot—got seated immediately, served like actual human beings, and left full and happy. Liberty Kitchen? More like a liberty to...