Mimi's Pub — Restaurant in Edmonton

My parents, boyfriend and I arrived on a Sunday evening at about 5:45pm, on the day that Mimi’s had their ‘Grand Opening’ event earlier from 1-3pm. I also believe that it was the first or one of the first days that their patio was open (however, the restaurant has been open for about a month at this point). We opted to sit inside, in the corner near a window so we could talk to each other away from the main bustle of the restaurant- it was self seating.

The table had a small menu with daily and happy hour specials on it, which we opted to order a few appetizers from. We then waited ten minutes before a server brought us drink and dinner menus, for which she apologized. We ordered the appetizers and decided we needed a minute to pick out drinks.

We waited approximately 20 minutes for her to return, at which point she asked us if we were ready to order our meals (we had no drinks or water on the table). I let her know that we actually hadn't ordered our drinks yet, but that we could order our mains in addition to our drinks, all of which she wrote down.

Our appetizers came after that. The fries and aioli were crispy and delicious, but the margarita bruschetta flatbread was lukewarm and wasn't an authentic bruschetta- thin tomato sauce and an excessive amount of mozzarella cheese.

At this point we had been waiting 10 additional minutes for our drinks to arrive, (we had been in the restaurant for 45 minutes). I approached the bar to inquire as to whether there had been an issue or misunderstanding and a woman asked me what I needed. I informed her that we were still waiting for our drinks after having been there for 45 minutes. She said “ok I’ll get it sorted”. Then another, entirely different server came over to take our drink order for a second time. They finally arrived about 10 minutes after that. We then were wonder where our food was after having ordered it almost an hour ago, and my father waved our server down to ask when it might be coming. She said “I’ll go check on it for you”, and came back with an unapologetic “It’ll be out super soon,”(it was clear she either had forgotten to put our order in/had some sort of miscommunication that she wasn’t willing to be honest about). We waited 5 more minutes and then put some cash on the table and left, without eating dinner. None of us will be back.

Additionally, during this whole fiasco of an experience, there was an employee of the restaurant directly outside the front window we were sitting beside for most of the hour+ that we were there, smoking and talking on his cell phone. Maybe there isn't a lot of room for staff breaks inside or out back, but that is not a great look for the restaurant or the employee himself.

I am extremely disappointed as I had been looking forward to trying out Mimi’s. The atmosphere and unique quirks of a neighbourhood pub are hard to beat- but only if done right. I don’t know where in the chain of command the missing link is for Mimi’s but it is very obvious there is a big gap between what they are attempting to deliver and what they actually are. I think the space is really nice, the menu seems well thought out, and it has potential. However, in the restaurant industry, part of the reason people return is because of how they are treated: whether they feel their business is valued, time respected and how mistakes are corrected when they happen, because they are inevitable.

A word of advice to Mimi’s: Invest in what you are delivering. Hire people who care about every aspect of the business, from the kitchen/menu, the bar program, the service, and maintaining the relationships you build. Train your staff until they are proficient at all the skills they need to perform each shift, and don’t do them the disservice of putting them on the floor alone before they are ready. Be clear and firm on the vision you have for the restaurant, and be honest when something doesn't work effectively. And, carefully consider how all of those aspects come together to create an experience for customers, and ultimately, the recipe...

Mimi’s is in our neighbourhood and for whatever reason, we had never eaten here before. Last night we wanted to try something different and I was craving a pub experience so we decided to finally give this place a go.

Seating service was pretty fast. We arrived right before the rush so we were seated quickly and had our choice of seats. We ordered beer, I ordered the Sea Change Red and he ordered the Mimi’s Lager. Both arrived quickly. The red was good and the lager was meh, but house brew’s typically are.

Before ordering we asked if the wings were considered appetizers because it was buy 1, get 1 appetizers. We were told yes. So we each ordered a pound of wings and split a New Yorker pizza. The pizza was on special with the Mimi’s lager for $25.

The wings took awhile to arrive, about 30 minutes, but I overheard the cook say someone called in sick so he was on his own and just trying to keep up. They were delicious wings, so we weren’t too fussed about the wait. I got salt and pepper, he got BBQ Whisky. I recommend both.

Pizza arrived shortly after the wings and had to sit while we ate the wings. Usually this is something that irritates me, but again, I was giving the kitchen some slack because they were shorthanded. The pizza was awesome. It is a thin crust, stone fired pizza. Quite basic but that is exactly how I like it. I highly recommend.

When the bill came we were surprised to see a full charge for both wings so we called the waitress over. She clarified that the wings are not part of the buy 1 get 1 special. So we had to pay full price for both wings. We also didn’t notice until we left that they charged us full price for the New Yorker + Mimi’s lager.

All in all, the food and drinks were good. We are a little disappointed that we chose items that we thought were on special but received no discount. The final bill before tip was $86ish. We probably wouldn’t have ordered the wings as they’re $18/pound.

Despite the confusion, we will be back to Mimi’s and do recommend others give it a try. The miscommunication around the specials is as much our fault as theirs because we didn’t explicitly ask for the discount so we will take this as a lessons learned and make sure to be more...

So I ordered food for pickup for the first time from Mimi’s Pub. Man was it bad. Like worse than anything I’ve had before and I’ve been on this planet for a very long time now.

The so-called Ginger Chicken was a pre-frozen boiled piece of chicken with fake bbq lines on it. Absolutely tasteless and completely boring looking.

No ginger sauce on the side. It was triple salty soya sauce in a little plastic side container. The “root vegetables” they say come with it would be “French fries” that’s a new one for me to swallow since I was looking to swallow actual healthy vegetables not deep fried potatoes that everyone else in the world calls FRENCH FRIES. No vegetables came with it. Unless you consider cold cabbage in a 1 once plastic container to be vegatables.

The so-called Chinese fried rice was dry and tasteless as well.

I also ordered a side of fries (cuz I wanted fries but I was not advised that the “root vegatables” in the Ginger Chicken were fries so that was $10 I’ll never get back - and for some reason a side of fries is called fries not root vegetables. Funny that). And ya. Even the fries came not as described. They came with fake powdered cheese stuck to all of it. Nothing was stated that they put chemical cheese powder on their fries. What if I was allergic to dairy?? Oh wait. It probably wasn’t real so maybe that makes it okay. So bizzare.

So nothing was as advertised. NOTHING.

I’m sad cuz I wanted to make this my local. I called them thinking they’d listen and be open to constructive criticism but I was told by the guy I was “being argumentative” where I swear I was being curtious and respectful but I had to speak loud cuz I had to speak over his background noise and I told him I was doing that.

I guess maybe ONLY ORDER their frozen reheated bar food with a drink and you’ll be fine. Don’t go in expecting a nice tasting proper meal however. That ain’t going to happen. And don’t call in to let them know if your unhappy cuz they didn’t want to hear anything I had to say about the horrible food...