The Barley Mow (Almonte) — Restaurant in Mississippi Mills

Hi, I expected a much better experience than what my wife & I received. The comments from neighbours (in Almonte) as well as my wife who has been to this location before (for lunch with her girlfriends) had me really looking forward to my first experience at your restaurant but I was extremely disappointed. My wife enjoyed her Pierogies & I enjoyed my Classic Caesar but that unfortunately was it. Oh, the Garlic Ranch dip for the zucchini was also very good. Now for negative: (1) The table had been wiped but it was still very sticky. (2) When I moved our table closer to me, my hand landed on somebody's gum which had been stuck just under the edge of the table. Gross! (3) Some of the Zucchini were good but the serving itself only consisted of about 7 pieces and only 3 were actually the size you would expect. The remainder were tiny slivers of zucchini. (4) I ordered the Barley Burger as my main meal and it also was very underwhelming. The burger was extremely thin (not much thicker than the cheese added to my burger) and even as thin as it was, it was still raw/very pink in the middle of the burger. (5) I upgraded to sweet potato fries and I received the smallest serving of sweet potato fries ever (and I order sweet potato fries from most restaurants when I am ordering a burger and this serving was skimpy). (6) The thickness of the burger, the number of zucchini and the amount of sweet potato fries almost seemed like the kitchen was running out of these items and somebody was trying to stretch whatever they had left on hand to last for the remainder of the evening. Not sure if I will ever go back to this restaurant again which is extremely disappointing because the restaurant has a great location near the "falls" in Almonte and the inside of the restaurant...

I've been a few times. It's never been anything spectacular. I would return occasionally because Almonte doesn't have too many options.

Unfortunately we had a bad experience today. Finished a good day of work and we stopped by for some food and a pint. We had parked our truck and trailer in the parking lot taking up 4 spaces, as out of the way as possible. I usually don't do this unless I have no other choice, and there wasn't any other choice. We were seated and received our beers, waiting on a third person to join us, and a guy (my guess would be the cook, but I don't know for sure) came to our table and asked if the truck and trailer was ours. We said yes, and he asked if we could move it, as we were "taking up the whole parking lot". I politely asked where we should move it to, as there are no double-long spots and no public parking nearby. His answer: "not my problem". I was pretty surprised by that answer. If he had given me a reasonable solution, I'd have been happy to move the truck.

To note, there were still plenty of open parking spaces in the lot. If I had to guess (I didn't count), probably 6-8 open spots. The restaurant was empty aside from our table and one other table, at 2pm on a Monday afternoon. This was not a lunch or dinner rush. This was not a holiday or weekend.

We finished our two beers, paid our bill, met with our third and went to Joe's Italian Kitchen. We were welcomed by much friendly wait-staff, and enjoyed much higher-quality food.

Don't worry, I...

We went to the patio in Almonte for a birthday dinner. We’ve been there a lot, and have generally liked their food in the past.

We both ordered the “Cattle Dunk”. It’s basically a beef au jus sandwich, with a “generous portion of Shaved Angus Prime Rib”.

While the taste wasn’t bad, I take serious issue with the word “generous” here, as the lack of a decent amount of meat was the problem. I suggest they remove the word "generous", and replace it with "minimal". I don't think they could have put any less meat on this sandwich.

If you look at the photo, besides looking minimal, but worse, what you can't easily see is that half of that filling is mushrooms, so it’s really a very tiny amount of beef. It's just a straight our ripoff, but even worse when they specifically used the word "generous" to describe the meat.

Also, the fries were a little too overcooked for our liking - maybe some people like them this way, but we do not. I don't remember them being burnt like this in the past. Maybe they have a new style. Strangely, when the waitress took our plates away, she never even commented that both of us left almost all our fries.

I understand that restaurants are still recovering, but cheating on the meat on a $19 sandwich just puts me off ever going back - and it put a damper on what could have been a nice birthday dinner. I hope the money they saved on my sandwich helps their recovery, but it's not a good way to ensure...