Bernie's Supper Club & Cinema — Restaurant in Kelowna

We had an exceptionally disappointing experience at Bernie’s this evening.

My wife and I were visiting from out of town and had one evening spare to enjoy a nice meal out in Kelowna. After deliberating over the many available options, we finally settled on Bernie’s as there were a couple of entrees that we really liked the sound of. We started by ordering a few appetizers off the happy hour menu, and then ordered the mains that had caught our eye - the chicken and the porchetta. We ate most of our appetizers but deliberately left some of them to finish off with our mains - as we pointed out to both our server and a busser when they came to clear them away. The trouble was, our mains just never came, and for quite a long time, neither did any more staff. Eventually our server returned to ask if she could bring anything else over, at which point we reminded her that we were still waiting for our dinner. That’s when it dawned on her, and us, that our mains order had never even been put through. From that moment she handled the cock up admirably - she was completely straight with us about the mistake, and said she would run them through now and take them off the bill. By that point though we’d been waiting over an hour, and were hungry, tired and frustrated enough that we decided to just call it quits and go elsewhere to grab something quick to eat. Not the date night we had hoped for. When we explained we’d rather just leave rather than wait some more, she took care of the bill for the appetizers which we appreciated, and I understand that forgetting to run something through is an easy mistake to make on a busy night. A large part of our frustration though is that a simple mistake was compounded by the general lack of attentiveness throughout the service. After our appetizers no one stopped by to check on us for a significant period of time, and in that window the mistake could and should have been noticed and rectified in time to save our dinner.

Incidentally, when we were first seated, the table was really wobbly so we had asked for something to even it up. That never happened so after nearly losing our drinks a couple of times, we ended up doing it ourselves with one of our napkins. That moment ended up encapsulating our whole experience - mostly being left to our own devices until we sorted things out...

I want to start off by saying that I am easy to please. I have worked in the food industry in my younger days so I understand the issues that go on. I want to also say that I think all of my reviews are positive save for one other one and this one. This is why:

This was our first time coming to the dinner club and so we made reservations for my wife's birthday. We showed up a half an hour early as suggested and made our appt picks and ordered our drinks at 5:45. The movie was due to start at 6:00 p.m.

When we were a half an hour into the movie we still had not received our drinks and our appetizers had already come out. Our drink order wasn't anything special. It was an espresso Martini for my wife and I got a Coke and a coffee. We mentioned to the server several times that we could still not had our drinks and she said that she was working solo and that they were coming out. We get that so we gave her the benefit of the doubt. After an hour of being there our drinks had finally came out but we were now worried that our entrees that we had ordered might not get there before the movie would be close to over. It wasn't a long movie and we were almost an hour in at this point.

We just asked for our bill and we decided to go home. We have the movie at home as it was one of our favorites (Hot Rod). And we could also pour drinks at home. Before we got the bill the manager came over to let us know that everything we got was on the house and she apologized and said it was unacceptable. I was okay with things taking a long time but it was what the waitress had said to my wife when we had asked for the third time about our drinks and cancelling our entrees.

She told my wife that if we canceled our entrees now they would be throwing them out and they would go to waste. She also said that the drinks and the food were separate entities. It was at that point I got really angry as she must have thought we were pretty stupid. That was when we decided to just finally leave.

I love movies and I love food and I really wanted this to work out. We might be back in the future we might not be. But it was a terrible experience this tine. We ended up getting take out and going home for my wife's birthday.

The 2 stars are for the food...

Movie was great but dinner was inconsistent for the price. We were there on a Tuesday night. Cons: we were the only patrons when we arrived, yet were seated right next to the front door on a rainy evening with nothing much to see out the window. I wish I'd spoken up to be moved to a seat with more ambience. I walked through the restaurant and it looked nice, but we couldn't see much of it. We were constantly disturbed by the stream of people arriving for the movie. Appetizer prawns were nicely flavored but so overcooked they were chewy and tough. Hamburger was very tasty, but they don't have gluten free buns and the lettuce wrap consisted of one piece of romaine lettuce on either side of the burger, making it impossible to eat without messy hands. Cauliflower steak was interesting, but under seasoned. Waited a very long time between appetizers and mains considering we had noted we had limited time when we arrived and the restaurant was super quiet (we had pre-purchased movie tickets and asked whether we should be reserving a seat upstairs and were told that seats were saved for us. By the time we got upstairs we had limited choice with an oblique view) Pros: the Caesar salad was very good. Interesting twist on a classic with roasted Brussels sprouts as crunch in lieu of croutons. The pesto fries were very good according to my date. The movie theatre area is comfortable and intimate and the table service is great. Will definitely be back for movies, but will likely skip the restaurant. Suggestion: If people reserve for dinner in the restaurant and purchase tickets for the movie, actually reserve them seats in the theatre area instead of leaving them whatever seats are left once they finish their meal and all the rest of the movie goers...