Lakeside Dining Room — Restaurant in Kelowna

EDIT: The manager ended up reaching out to my friend and remediated the situation

I attended a friend's birthday party that she had here for high tea. She made a reservation in advance, for 13 people. 8 of us showed up. Near the end of the tea, the server came out and stated, that instead of charging is $45/pp for the 5 no shows, they were going to charge us $15/pp.

My friend was obviously very surprised. She told us when she was on the phone, they confirmed the resos but they did not at any point explicitly state "if there are cancellations or no shows you will be charged $45.” It was also her birthday, and she didn't want to make a scene, so she apologized to us and went to talk to the manager about the situation.

I hopped onto the website, as usually there is a note stating last minute cancellations will be charged. This is the case for many restaurants in kelowna, ie: gather, kasai, krafty. Honestly it is pretty standard restaurant practice to state clearly if you're going to charge for cancellations. There was no note. I remember that Gather restaurant also uses the same online reservation portal "Open Table" and that there was a note for their restaurant that a no show fee would be charged. When I compared this to Open Table for high tea, you can easily make a reso with no note of being charged for cancellations.

I joined my friend in talking with the manager after finding out this information. He said that the staff are trained to talk on the phone, but honestly with this kind of incident there must be a serious lack of proper training because stating "if there are last minute cancellations you will be charged full price for each no show" is not a difficult statement to make over the phone, and there would be no miscommunication otherwise. He then proceeded to add unnecessary comments such as "I spoke to the pastry chef and we are being nice and charging you $15 per no show instead, we are not making any money on this. And he is above my pay grade so I can't do anything else". That is a restaurant problem, not a customer problem. I told him that it should be stated explicitly on the website, to which his response was "there's no room to add to the website". Again, I've never heard of that excuse, you're telling me that there is no room for one more sentence? On top of that, I noticed he wasn't even making eye contact with my friend or I, and was mostly just waving his hands and looking above us. I'd expect proper eye contact during a conversation like this.

In addition, other high teas I've attended every guest gets their own tea. There were 4 of the guest at the table who weren't offered a tea or checked in on to be asked "can I get you a tea".

I also asked if instead of the salmon sandwich could I sub for an egg sandwich instead? She said they were pre-prepared and they can't do that. And bring my food out missing a sandwich, with no replacement. Our other friend who was vegan, didn't have a menu. She was fine with not eating but the server said she will talk to the pastry chef and see what they can make. She comes back to state "the chef can make something for you in 5-10 mins! Here I am wondering why they can't make me a replacement egg salad sandwich in 5 mins... They charged her the same price as the rest of us: $45 for essentially 4 pieces of cut toast with toppings and a skewer of berries.

I was excited for this experience as I have dined here before, love the view and usually the service and food is very good. However this experience has left a sour taste in my mouth, and I know myself and some of the other girls in the party will not be returning.

If you're looking for a better high tea experience then I'd recommend making the trip to Neverland...

When I lived in Kelowna, the Eldorado was the place to go for great food, drinks, service and ambiance. I was excited to return to the Okanagan and bring 3 friends with me to experience what I’ve remembered to be a great time. Such was not the case for us tho.

When we arrived, we were greeted by 2 young girls outside who asked if we had a reservation. We did not; and they asked if we wanted to sit in or outside. Given it was a gorgeous sunny Tuesday, we asked to sit outside. They said we were at table #3 and one of the hostesses inside would direct us to our table. Great! We walked inside, and 2 even younger girls were there, and I confirmed that we were assigned table #3 on the patio. One of the girls took 3 steps out from behind the podium and pointed to the patio and said “your table is out there”. I looked at her a bit puzzled and said “sorry, what?!” and she repeated herself taking an additional couple of steps to the patio doors. I looked at her, not impressed, and said “you realize you’re pointing to a patio of a dozen empty tables - you’re not going to show us which is ours? How do we know which one we’re going to?” She responded: “they all have a number on them…” WOW. We figured out which table was ours, sat down, and 2 of our party immediately burnt their legs from the sun-exposure-heat of their bench (which was in direct sunlight). We asked the young guy working near us if he had a cushion or anything that they could sit on. He left to go look and came back with 2x thin black dining napkins and laid them out and said “there, would that help?” We knew it wouldn’t, and asked to sit inside instead. Our server inside was better - her name was Kynsie (or something like that) - and she was definitely reflecting the Eldorado brand and contributing to a good experience for us. She was friendly and chatty - but not too chatty - and made some great food recommendations for us as well. When the time came for our food to be brought out, a high school-aged boy by the name of Stone was our food runner. Stone, on the other hand, is doing NOTHING for your brand and was the most disengaged, off-brand, disinteresting individual we’d ever come across in the food service industry. He schluffed our food out, put our plates down in front of us and blandly said what each dish was, then boringly said “enjoy your meal” as he dramatically rolled his eyes and head and proceeded to walk away. He reminded us of Lurch from the Adam’s Family and we were all shocked that he worked there and was even hired in the first place! Hypersensitive to the lacklustre service, we all recognized the median age of most of your staff is 16. None of them overly interacted with any of the guests; none of them seemed to try and build on your property’s brand in any way; and they all definitely lacked a level of confidence, experience, and care that any patron would come to expect from an establishment of your caliber and tenure. All in all, we were really disappointed with our experience and we’ve all agreed we won’t be returning to the Eldorado when we’re back in Kelowna next. Instead, we’d all much rather support establishments that have genuinely earned our business and value our time...

I would like to first off to compliment the hotel for having a yummy piece of chocolate cake in our room. It was a milestone birthday and it was nice to see and taste.||With that being said, we spent 5 days and four nights. We arrived at the suggested check in time. First off, the provided room had an impressive view of the parking lot. The loud air conditioner helped block out the traffic noise. We asked to be moved away from the parking lot and were advised that no rooms were available for the rest of the week. I guess we got this room because we made reservations 4 months ago and any expectation of having something worthy of the price was not something to be factored in.||On the first evening we had dinner at the hotel restaurant. It was a great view and were seated promptly. However the heat at the patio area was above 35 Celsius. After a good period of time, a waitress arrived and provided a menu and a half glass of water for my wife and me. I asked to please fill up the glass. The response was a childish response of "Ya, for sure". Not sure if this was in the employee handbook, but all the restaurant staff used this phrase with any customer interactions.||The restaurant was not busy and we waited over 15 minutes for our meal. As I had already drained my small glass of water, our waitress along with the other gaggle of serving staff were talking amongst themselves and were interested in flicking their hair and comparing fingernail colours. I went up to the serving staff and asked if we could have more water. "Ya for sure" with an eye rolling event from our waitress as we of course broke the cadence of the gossiping.||Breakfast next day was a okay but a very limited and expensive menu. No a la carte items of just simply toast, a fruit cup or pancakes were available and there was absolutely no flexibility on anything on the menu. I ordered a full breakfast and voila, it came with toast. A sigh of disappointment came over me. That was the last meal we had at that hotel. "Ya for sure". ||Any meals at the sister restaurant Maestros was a complete and opposite experience. Attentive coherant staff, great food and the same view. We were genuinely welcomed and enjoyed an adult conversation with all of the serving staff.||One other morning we needed to check with the front desk staff on checking out early as our Kelowna holiday was coming to an end. I cringed that I had to ask the restaurant staff if there was a front desk clerk. After I was told, there wasn't one and if I wanted anything I had to come back later. As I sensed that there was no offer or interest to help, I said thanks and the response was "Ya, for sure". The slow burn of continuous disappointments lead to looking at my watch wondering on how much longer I had to stay.||In closing, an expensive experience was not in keeping with the reviews on this place. I assume other guests were lucky but I suspect others will resolve to not...