The Checkerboard Restaurant — Restaurant in Kitchener

My girlfriend and I arrived at around 10:30. The place was about full and we were seated and given menus right away. No problems so far. We ordered a water each and I asked for a coffee. They were brought in fine enough time and dropped off. I was told to wait for the cream as they had to "bring some up from the basement." Again, still no issues. They brought the cream up and the waitress put 2 on the table for me and took our order (bacon and egg breakfast and a sausage and egg breakfast with bacon on the side, so, nothing extreme).

Now the fun stuff. I finished my coffee and tried to get some eye contact from the waitress, but she was busy with other tables. We had a seat close to the kitchen, so I watched the people cook for awhile. I noticed that there was food waiting to go out, and the waitress was still talking with the people who I assume were regulars, as they were the only people she seemed to be nice too. They had also came in after us and had been given their food.

After about 5 minutes, the food was still waiting to go out, and one of the cooks went from the grill, walked around the counter, and began to try to get large chunks of vanilla ice cream out of a tub. He used a pretty big knife and when he took chunks out, he removed them with his bare hands. Hands that just moments before had been handling raw bacon. He was doing this right over top of the food that had still not been taken out. I looked at my girlfriend and said "how much do you bet that that's our food." After he had finished, the man and the waitress brought the food to another table. We gave each other a look of relief and then I saw the waitress coming back with the food, having brought it to the wrong table. As soon as she put it down I noticed that my order was missing bacon. I informed them of this and they brought some bacon. I then asked for a refill on the coffee and water (as it had been almost an hour since we ordered). The waitress said "yeah, when I have a second" in a very snarky manner. The waitress walked to another table, passing the coffee pot on the way, and began to talk to the table.

I tried the food and it was unsurprisingly, cold. The waitress then brought over the coffee and I informed them that it was cold, and the food had taken quite awhile to get to the table. She looked at me and said "do you see how busy the kitchen is. Nobody else is complaining." I replied that it's fine and I was done with the food. My girlfriend then said that her food wasnt warm either and we decided to cut our losses and go somewhere else. As we were leaving she said "wow, thanks. Merry Christmas to you." We ended up going to Country boy and had an amazing breakfast, served by a competent and friendly staff.

TLDR: took over an hour to get food. When we finally got it, it was cold and an order was incorrect. We were met with an unfriendly waitress who would rather talk to the regulars, than do her job.

Also, try Country Boy. Or throw a dart at a list of breakfast restaurants, you'll have a better experience than we did...

Like a checkerboard itself, this review is pretty black and white.

Like many of the more recent reviews, my party of three walked in only to wait and stand awkwardly as nobody said “hello” or have any indication of what we were to do. We eventually asked the server ourselves and she said it would be a wait. We didn’t mind. We got a table sooner than we had thought and were off to the races….or so we thought. It took a long while before anyone came to take our order. The lady serving us did not want to be there and made it very clear. While waiting for our food to arrive we witnessed just shy of 20 people walk in and deal with the same experience we did. People left the building because they gave up waiting to be acknowledged. Add to this, every order that came out of the kitchen seemed to go to the wrong table. We predicted, that someone else would receive our order by accident. Sure enough when our order did arrive it was completely wrong, and they forgot my personal order completely! The humanity! :)

So, I waited for mine and would eventually receive it. Lucky for me, I was prepared and only sipped my coffee while I waited for my food as there were no refills being offered to anyone.

All in all, it was a terrible experience. I understand the odd mishap, but when the entire experience was consistently bad, it’s hard to forgive. Worst of all, there was no sign of a checkerboard anywhere. :)

There are much better options in the KW area. Places that are friendly, professional, and delicious. Won’t be...

Food is hot and tasty and the prices are good, although the tables are sticky, as are the drinking glasses, at times. We were able to overlook a lot of that. What got us turned off was when the waitress had trouble with the debit machine. She grabbed my card, quickly re-entered the information, adding in a huge tip, and then tapped my card, before we knew what was happening. We were too shocked to say anything, but we certainly won't be back again after that.

Edited to reply to the owner: Correct, that would be the normal way of having a customer choose the tip. The mistake was that the waitress grabbed my card and inputted her own choice of tip percentage at the last second before tapping the card. We felt that her "mistake" was not very honest and that she was taking advantage of us. We visited your establishment fairly regularly and always tipped her well, but because of the dishonesty, we won't be back.

Edited again to reply to the owner: Yes, you are correct; it was the lady owner who needed the extra tip money and who did that. (I wasn't going to post that part.) No, unfortunately we no longer have the receipt, but I'm sure she'll remember doing it, if you ask her. ;-) Hopefully you'll find a way to fix the situation so that she doesn't continue doing this to others. Again, we were too shocked and embarrassed by her actions to say anything...