Bar Ganadara — Restaurant in Montreal

The WORST experience of my entire life. I’ve never felt like this and I don’t wish this upon my worst enemy. I reserved a table for 5 for my 21st birthday. We were missing 2 forks and 2 cups. The waitress told me “we’re out of forks and cups” which is ironic for a restaurant… They forgot one of our dishes and the waitress never came once to ask us if we needed anything even after trying to get her attention several times to get water refill and make space on the table since the table was overflowing and we couldn’t move but she never came. As the bill arrived, I was opening my gifts with family so the waitress knew the occasion but she still decided to act disrespectful towards us. The total was 200$ and my brother who paid gave her a 15$ tip. In our opinion, a 15$ tip wasn’t even deserved since we did not get any sort of service that night but we were still willing to give a tip because the food was good. She gave us a bad attitude and she went to complain to her manager about the tip amount. The manager came up to us and we immediately felt ASSAULTED. He was so mad, disrespectful and spoke in such an agressive tone. He said, and I quote “Was the service that bad, was it that horrible that you couldn’t even tip 15%” my brother, confused, told him I’m sorry but we did give a tip even if we didn’t receive any type of service. That waiter said no, it’s not enough. You have to give at least a 15% tip because that’s the bare minimum in a restaurant, next time you have to give at least 15%. We were then chocked by his statement and told him that a 15% tip on that amount was equivalent to 30$ and we’re not willing to tip 30$ for the inexistant service we got because like a said, they forgot 1 dish, we didn’t have any napkins, we were missing 2 forks and 2 cups. The waitress, with her bad attitude? never came to refill our water and to clear the table because it was overflowing even after several times of trying to gain her attention by any means (like raising our hands). I’m glad my brother stood his ground and didn’t budge by giving him the 30$ even after we got treated so poorly. Even though the food was good, we will NEVER come back again after they treated us that way instead of apologizing and trying to improve on their customer service. We then stood up and left while all the staff were eyeing us down as if we were criminals that didn’t pay. We felt so ashamed even though we paid 200$, plus the taxes and plus the tip. It’s a shame that in 2024 instead of trying to improve and apologize to your paying customers, you treat them like they’re some kind of animal. Overall, the experience was horrible and I don’t think we’re going to miss out on much after discovering that they got fined 1300$ earlier this year for not respecting...

My first time at Bar Ganadara and it will undoubtedly be my last. This restaurant produced an unwelcoming, biased, and unsafe environment to a SELECT portion of their diners -- resulting in a restaurant experience like no other. To begin, we waited in line for 1.5-2 hours without ever being greeted, addressed, or told how long the wait would approximately be. We also overheard a group of diners that got to cut in front of the line because they knew one of the staff members. The front-of-house then made us feel like he would have rathered us leave than be seated and made mistakes when seating us. Once inside the restaurant, we were rudely met by an extremely large, loud, and arrogant party of diners -- and in the midst of Covid times, were disrespecting so many safety regulations -- actions that were neglected by all staff members. They were yelling belligerently, and with numerous complaints from multiple other diners, the restaurant workers never told them to behave. We had requested to be moved out to the patio for this reason. These diners were shoving other clients, including myself, to get to their tables inside, entering through a side-door from the patio that was seemingly enabled by the restaurant (this side door conveniently led straight to their table where the group of 20+ diners was ever-growing; and at the time of writing, I believe the indoor seating maximum is 10 diners), cutting other diners in the bathroom line, walking around the whole restaurant without a mask, pushing other diners' chairs over to get to their tables, and screaming. I completely understand that the misbehaviour of diners is not at the responsibility of the staff, HOWEVER, the safety and well-being of ALL other diners SHOULD be at the responsibility of the staff, and it seemed like they didn't care for anyone else except for this obnoxious party of which staff members seemed to know on personal levels. Furthermore, my table was served TWICE throughout the whole night, we weren't given any water and napkins until I had requested for them, and we were left feeling like all diners who weren't the "friends and family" clientele would ultimately be receiving subaverage service. The only positives that I could recall from this experience were that some of the waiters/waitresses apologized and that the food was good. Overall, the apathy that restaurant staff showed towards regular diners was extremely disheartening. If you're looking for a restaurant where a good customer experience will only be realized if the staff members don't have their "friends over", then by all means, stop by. Otherwise, I would not recommend this place at all and especially during Covid times where your safety is...

Issue 1 - if you are trying to make a reservation over the phone, forget about it! They do not answer the phone at all. We were a group of 10-12 so we couldn’t book online and had to submit a reservation request on their website. We never got a reply back so we tried to call for 4 days with no answer! Voicemail box full.. I literally went to the restaurant in person to make a reservation and that was no issue. I have truly never experience such trouble getting a hold of a restaurant (still was never able to over the phone).

Issue 2 - We were excited to drink lots of soju but when we started ordering the waitress informed us that they had no soju! There was a whole section on the menu for soju and sake and no one told us that they didn’t have either of those until we started ordering. We ordered some cocktail pitchers instead, which were just fine (not very strong).

Issue 3 - There was some water from the ceiling leaking on half of the people of our group so we asked the waitress if she could switch to a different table. She was only able to offer us a separate additional smaller table behind us. This was frustrating as it split our group and we were planning on sharing all of the food we had already ordered as they told us we could only do 1 bill for the group. Each time we got a plate we had to decide which table would get it and we had to pass down some plates back and forth to both table. It was a mess and super inconvenient. About halfway into our meal we were moved once again to a larger table that could fit our whole group. Nothing was offered to us to accommodate for all the inconvenience. I had to ask the waitress if she could possibly offer a discount or free items as we were disappointed with our experience. I even asked her to have the manager come and talk to me if necessary. After some back and forth they offered a pitcher of beer and cocktail.

Issue 4 - Finally, we had ordered 2 calamari which literally took over an hour. I also found that there was limited vegetarian options.

Overall I was mainly very disappointed by the customer service and that there was no soju. This really affected the whole dinner and they could have made it up to us by being proactive and offer us a discount or some free items to apologize for the situation. Instead we had to ask and « fight » for it. They definitely do not know how to give good customer experience. Only redeeming quality is that the...