Chuck's Roadhouse Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Fort Erie

Firstly, my apologies for the lengthy read. However, I’m writing this with great disappointment for a local business. As a local Fort Erie business owner (my shop is literally just up the road from this location) , someone who lives & breaths customer service and someone whom patrons this business extremely frequently with family, business acquaintances and to take our team out after large events (I was just here a week prior where our one bill was $300.00+ generous tip as usual) I’ve spent quite a bit here. Tonight, was something I hope to never experience with my family at a restaurant again. There’s been an ample amount of experiences where we’ve simply summed up some “less than great” service here, telling ourselves “they’re just busy it’s ok…” and allowed better dining experiences here to outweigh those times. Tonight, not the case. After a long day, we decided to dine out with a family member down visiting. We (4 of us) arrived at 8:50pm, we were seated promptly in a less-busy than usual night. No heads up of short staffing or anything unusual. 15 minutes elapses before we’re even acknowledged properly, watching others seated & served drinks, at which point the waitresses stood there deciding which one would attend to us. By that time, we already knew what we wanted for drinks & food. We Ordered accordingly. I’ll say the part where we were told “sorry there’s no glasses so here’s kiddie cups” for our water (attached is a photo of it cracked and leaking all over our table which we had to ask to be replaced) was literally nothing compared to waiting over an hour, (while we watched people come in 35-40 minutes after us be seated, served drinks and have their food come out) to be told our food will still be another 10 minutes, with no actual reasoning. We were frustrated from being disregarded. We had our young son with us, who asked if we could just go home to eat. Since it was much later than anticipated being served we politely waived down one of the other waitresses and said we’d please like our bill (for water and a single beer, as you can see on the receipt in the photo) if it was going to be any longer, as it was completely unacceptable that we’re told (after an hour) our food will be “10 more minutes” while having 15 minutes go by. We were informed it would have been another 10-20 minutes. Our bill was printed, brought to us shortly thereafter (unfathomable you wouldn’t waive that bill for water & 1 beer as an “honest to goodness” gesture) and we received nothing even close to a sincere apology. I had to bring my bill to the waitress at the back of the restaurant. Nothing. No follow up. No offer of compensation for time. No “thank you for being patient with us, perhaps this one single drink is complimentary”. Just “yupp, ok, bye”. Even the young couple across from us shook their heads as they acknowledged their food got to them before us. Charged me for one beer, plus their “honest to goodness fee” and that was it. It was evident, our food wasn’t even started.

I’m blown away at how we left feeling, as someone who spends quite a bit here, alongside being a local small city business owner. I would do anything, to ensure my customers never felt this way. Sad really, even having my son ask “did we do something wrong”. Since nothing else is open in Fort Erie, we still had to go home to cook for an hour. I strongly encourage this place to look into managing the overhead costs to pull on more (perhaps attentive, experienced & considerate) staffing, as this seems to be an ongoing reoccurring issue. Even a review from just a few hours ago, seemingly same issue. Plenty of the staff here are great and I tip accordingly, but the level of lacking consideration for the simplicities of service industry for tending timely & entirely to paying customers, is impacting this place that could otherwise be much better. Perhaps even review responses that aren’t automatically generated, would be a great start. I hope this place takes it upon themselves to build a team that works together to collectively care for...

(1-20-24)

As we got there it took over 10 minutes for us to be seen to order drinks. After we received drinks, my female received the wrong one. We waited another additional 10-15 minutes just for the waitress “Brandy” to come to our area so I can flag her down and let her know we received the wrong drink. Instead of the Iced Tea that was ordered, she received a can of tonic water (which she doesn’t drink) and a glass to fill it. Although the can doesn’t even fill the glass all the way. We finally received it. She apologized, we said it was ok. It was a quite friendly interaction all around. It was not too crowded in there. We received our food not too long after it was ordered. She never really checked up on us. Like other waiters and waitresses do. One set off for me not to even tip. Was the fact that when I was going to tip originally. I noticed the price was a little high (I forgot I ordered a Heineken). So when I canceled the tip. It terminated the transaction as a whole on the little card machine that they distribute to pay. I don’t know if that made her frustrated or what. But it was an honest mistake. When she returned with the card swipe machine. I asked her why the price was so high and I then explained how the appetizers were 50% off after 9pm. But before I can even finish, I was cut off and she asked “What was confusing? Didn’t I give you a receipt?😐” With a very STANK attitude. But it was her mistake, because when she gave us the to-go containers. She put the receipt underneath it. So we didn’t even know we had a receipt. As she was standing there my girl, pointed out that I ordered a Heineken. Which made sense as to why the bill was slightly higher than expected and we understood why the price was the way it was. The waitress was still standing there and seen that I understood why it was so high. She continued to find and take the receipt from under the to-go container and read the receipt out loud to us. Every little detail from the things we ordered. As if we didn’t already clear the air a few seconds prior. She made me feel stupid. The whole interaction was quite unnecessary. After I originally was going to tip her $10. She ruined it and got NOTHING. What I should’ve done was tipped the nice gentleman that told us “Have A Good Night, I hope you enjoyed, thanks for coming”. I was going to tip our waitress ¢0.01. But that would’ve been too petty. I usually enjoy coming here. But after being serviced by that ONE bad apple. I will never be returning again. I appreciate the service that I received in the past. But man if this is the type of staff the establishment hires. I would rather spend my money elsewhere.

EDIT: (1-30-24) You are probably wondering why I cared about the price, if I was going to originally tip $10 anyways. ($10 for y’all is like $7 for me. Since I am paying as an American. I always try to help out when I can. I know prices in Canada are ridiculously high for y’all). I was just wondering that’s all. I did not expect it to be $38, but I see in Canada y’all have a different taxing system. Like “Harmonized Sales Tax” and “Honest To Goodness Fee”. But again yea the total price was not a big deal. I was simply just...

I will state first that this horrible review involves a server called Danielle as well as this kitchen staff working at the time of this review. Me and some friends decided to go to chucks for some half off apps, before arriving over the course of a couple of hours we had tried calling over 10 times to check if they could seat 9 people which all calls were met with their answering machine. Due to this me and one of the people in our party went ahead and checked if they could in person before the rest of us arrived which at first they hesitated despite well over half of the restaurant being empty and the 5 tables that were seated were almost done eating.

Once our full group was seated we had ordered drinks where I had ordered an iced tea, it then took over 10 minutes for our drinks to come where my drink was never even delivered yet all other 8 people in the group did receive their drinks. Following this the waitress had asked for our food in between this 10 minutes wait time, as to which everyone else's order was taken, where I said I needed a minute and then she promptly took the rest of the orders, took everyone's menu and left until the drinks came.

5 minutes after the drinks came the waitress asked "I didn't miss anything, did I?" where I have now been waiting 10 minutes for my order to taken and told her I won't be ordering anymore. Now besides the waitress being rude, dismissive, forgetful, and blatantly ignoring me, the food was also terrible.

3 people in the group ordered the spinach dip where 2 of the people eating one of the orders got sick and the pita bread of all 3 orders were rock solid, proven by us banging the bread against the table without it breaking or flexing. Approximately 5-10 minutes later the waitress only asked 1 of the dip orders if they wanted chips yet didn't ask the 2 other people that ordered it if they wanted the same, when the chips finally came out they were cold meaning they had been sitting for probably 10 minutes and forgot to take them out with the main order.

As we were all very upset and annoyed with our experience at this point, the waitress tried to double charge 2 members in the group as she miscalculated how much money she was supposed to have taken and proceeded to try and scam them into paying for more than they were supposed to. This is the worst experience I have ever had with food and this is comparable to McDonald's and even burger king where the people were nicer and had better food.

If my dying words could be one thing, don't touch this place with a 20ft pole, it will be the biggest waste of money you have ever spent. The best part of the negative reviews against this business are also the computer generated responses asking for the customer to send an email for them to look into it. This...