Ivy Arms — Restaurant in Milton

Had a bad experience here based on an incident that was handled poorly by the staff. Had gone out with two friends visiting me for the long weekend to enjoy the patio for a drink. We got seated, server was nice, got a drink order from us and went back to get it set for us. We had ordered a pitcher of beer and an ice tea. When the waitress returned, she put the pitcher on the table, but lost her balance on the tray and dropped the ice tea and two waters for another table all over our table and onto mostly my two friends, but also some on me. She was very apologetic and went back to get napkins. We were trying to get things off the table and wait for her to come back, she took a bit longer than expected. She returned with a handful of napkins and a tray of drinks she had for another table, which didn't sit well with us because we were sitting there covered in ice tea. After cleaning what we could we found that a lot of things were wet and sticky like phones and wallets and some bees had become interested in the ice tea so they were swarming the table. At this point we decided we just wanted to leave, we had not touched a drink or consumed anything. So we got up and started to leave, and as we were leaving the waitress stops us and asks if we were just going for a smoke. We said no, we are leaving, when she promptly said okay, well you'll have to pay for the beer before you go. We were very mad at this point and told her, we know you didn't mean to spill those drinks, but we would just like to leave without paying because we are soaked in ice tea and haven't touched anything you brought to the table. It was slightly embarassing as most of the other people were now starring at us having this conversation with the waiter. She continued to say that we had to pay for the beer, but the ice tea would be free because she dropped it. This back and fourth continued so we escalated it to the manager. Inside the we told the situation to the manager, the spilled drinks, bees and not consuming anything, where we were offered to sit inside. Again, we said no we just want to leave and feel we don't have an obligation to pay for anything. She finally said okay and we left. We did not hear a sorry or any sort of apology or compensation after the initial sorry when the drinks were spilled. I'm not sure what's expected in a situation like that, but we left feeling very agitated that we had to argue with waiters and the manager just to leave after having drinks spilled on us in the first 10 minutes of being seated there. We ended up going back to my place where my friends had to shower and borrow clothes from me and went to another pub where the waiter gave us a free appetizer after...

I have been here a few times. I don't believe that one visit can accurately let me know what a place is like. Here os the consistency that led to 1-star:

Rude service staff who are experts at pretending you are invisible. Friendly, fast service for regular customers before new ones (this is known by the friendly and familiar conversation had at those tables, as opposed to the cold, irritable conversation given to lesser known patrons).

A couple of real stories:

A summer's day, last June: We sat on the unfilled patio and ordered two beers and a pound of wings. Keep in mind, this order was taken nearly 20 minutes after we sat - it was not that busy. The beers came, without head, leading us both to believe that they sat at service bar much longer than they should have been. The wings came cold, over an hour later after we asked any staff member who would stop to listen to us. There weren't many.

Another incident was an evening when myself and two friends dropped in for a Saturday night. After finally being seen by the regular Saturday night bartender (a dark hair and portly male) after quite a long wait, we ordered three shots of tequila. They were poured, we paid, and our change was dropped in a bar puddle. Not very nice, but fine. I asked for three lemons and the real surprise came when he returned with the lemons and dropped them on top of our change, in the puddle. I took the change and left the lemons. I asked him if he would eat those lemons and he smirked and walked away.

We've never been back.

For a Milton mainstay, this place is a smear on the entertainment options in the town. What the Ivy Arms doesn't seem to understand is, there are a lot of new residents, with a lot of money. You want it? Earn it. You won't get anymore of ours, though.

We have choices in Milton and are happy to...

Good and bad.

The food and beer selection is good, with great TVs and a nice patio (with TVs on patio). Prices are great. Great wings. Often has game audio for sports which is rare these days. In terms of watching a game, it's far better in terms of set up than most other options. Nice typical pub atmosphere.

Bad is the service. Friendly but unreliable and inconsistent. Often takes 10-20 minutes to be acknowledged or even give a drink order, even when the place is half full and not understaffed. Most recent visit, showed up around 6 with place half full and many uncleared tables, took 10 minutes to be acknowledged and 20 minutes to get a drink. Food was slow to arrive and incorrect. This is typical for most visits.

A lot of apparent regular customers also seem to distract servers often, who are too polite to turn away. Frustrating when a server has your drinks/food in hand 10 ft away but is stopped by two people who want to catch up for 5 minutes.

Overall this is a place that could or should be great, but seems poorly managed with respect to efficient, quality service.

UPDATE Sept 2017: The menu or chef has changed again (not sure which), but the burgers now seem to be frozen, or at least now taste like they're frozen. They're much thinner, with odd flavour. The fish & chips have also continue to go down hill (each time the menu is revised, the fish & chips seem to take a step down).

On the plus side, the server for this visit was much better than average, and one of the better we'd had there.

The Ivy has a great pub atmosphere, nice patio and location, and a decent selection of beers for a place this size, and is probably still fine for a pint if you're not in a rush, but now that the food has fallen with the history of sporadic and often poor service, it's a gamble as to what...