The Bean Bar — Restaurant in Hamilton

I'd like to start by saying I've never made a review for anywhere before this experience. We were seated quickly and the staff was friendly however the food was horrible!! I ordered the basil pesto penne and my partner got the 8oz steak and frites. For some reason my dish was very sweet (in a bad way!). I would never expect this dish to taste this way as I've had this type of plate many times before elsewhere and in traditional home cooking. It totally ruined my meal. I forced myself to finish the dish because we did not have time to get something else and I would not have eaten for the rest of the night. My partner asked for her steak to be medium rare and when it came the inside was fully cooked and not even pink in the slightest! For a 28 dollar steak it looked like it could have been from McDonalds. I ordered an "espresso marquini" that was listed at $8 on the chalk board and was charged $15 on our bill. Normally I would have brought this up with the staff however we were already sitting with our food finished for almost 45 minutes twiddling our thumbs before someone asked if we'd like our bill making us very late for our plans. We watched staff tell people coming in it would be an hour and a half wait before they could be seated meanwhile we've been waiting to leave for a long while. On top of all this my stomach felt sick for the rest of the night. This was our first time at Bean Bar and we will never be back. We will be telling everyone to never go here. Worst $100 we've ever spent. Massively...

We made reservations for last Saturday night at 6:00pm. We did this as we were going to a show at the Westdale theatre. Our show was for 7:30 pm and was literally next door. We had visited The Bean Bar 10 years ago. It was a great experience with delicious food. This visit Totally did not resemble that meal! The restaurant was pretty full but we should have been able to enjoy a meal and still make our show with time to spare.We sat down and patiently waited for a server. We did notice that it was only 2 girls doing serving, cleaning, bar, and they could not keep up. We finally gave our order for drinks, appetizers and dinner. No drinks, no appetizers no dinner showed up. We noticed and heard a lot of other patrons dealing with the same problems. After 45 minutes I finally walked over to one of the servers and told them we could not wait any longer and to cancel our entire order. I hate to say it but the girl didn't seem to offer any suggestions and just let us walk away. I think they were overwhelmed and had no solutions. Still hungry we grabbed a slice of pizza next door and then made our show. We were not alone as we saw numerous couples at the show that had been at the restaurant and either were disappointed with the long long wait times or not very impressed with their food. This restaurant is not the Old Bean Bar!!!! The sad thing of it all is we got the impression that this kind of conduct is perfectly fine and totally acceptable. Needless to say we will...

I used to really enjoy going to the bean bar and having the beef dip sandwich. I was very suspicious of ordering it because the place was completely empty at Sunday around noon. I didn’t think the food would be fresh and usually the bean bar was packed every time I went there years back. The atmosphere was terrible and the bathroom really dirty. They were playing some sort of weird Elevator music. We were there with five people. One person got their food five minutes before the rest of us. And then two more minutes later, two other dishes came out. Then my dish came And finally, we waited awkwardly staring at our food for another two or three minutes for the last person to get their dish. The beef dip was not what it used to be. It seemed like they had covered it in kraft orange salad dressing. It was served on regular toast and not artisan bread and with gravy not au jus. The Caesar salad was served using iceberg lettuce, not Romaine. There’s no reason why this should have cost 22 bucks. I also ordered an Italian cherry soda, which was basically red sparkling water. When a server cleared out food they noticed I barely ate my food and asked me if there was a problem. I said it wasn’t good. And she didn’t do anything about that. Don’t go there. The bean bar is not what it used to be and is under different management it seems. Too bad they ruined a...