Alice's Restaurant — Restaurant in Nanaimo

We have a normal Sunday breakfast joint we love, but decided to switch it up this morning and head to Alice's, a place in the opposite direction from our usual haunts, because their menus were huge and varied.

It was probably about half full when we arrived shortly before noon, and we sat down immediately, ordered, and then proceeded to wait almost 30-40 minutes for our food.

Not a great start, but luckily, this is the only really negative thing I have to say.

I opted for the black forest waffle, which is a waffle, with a piece of pork schnitzel on it, covered in mushroom gravy, with eggs and hashbrowns on the side.

Because I'm a fat kid, I also opted to poutine up my hashbrowns (shredded) which was a modest $2.50 upcharge.

The waffle was huge, basically the size of the entire plate, and the schnitzel was just slightly smaller than the waffle, and it had a substantial portion of mushroom gravy. It was all very tasty. The poutined shredded hash were also good, though I think if I was gonna do it again I'd opt for the chunky hash instead.

My partner was craving a grilled cheese, so a grilled cheese she got. For a very modest price, it hit all the right notes (looked to be kraft singles rather than cheddar, but it was still great) and it had a generous helping of fries.

All in all we enjoyed the experience and we'll definitely be back. They do all you can eat schnitzel on Saturdays so I might have to come back and experience that.

The above with sodas (free refills) before tip...

The food was good,but that didn't make up for the extremely rude behavior of what we found out later was an off duty staff member (Sue). We entered the restaurant and were told to sit ourselves. The tables were laid out so there was proper social distancing. However, when we tried to sit at a table, when Sue rudely snapped at us that we couldn't sit there. I asked why, and she said that we weren't 6 ft away, which we would have been 6 ft away. Just to appease her, I told her that my friend would sit at the end of the table. Sue didn't seem happy about it, but oh well. Then she repeatedly walked right by me 5 times a few times (less than 2 feet away). Sue also visited other patrons getting within a foot of them. For someone who is so worried about people getting in her personal space, she obviously has no issue getting in others. This off duty server is just another "Karen" who thinks the whole world revolves around her. I certainly won't dine here again, and I'm going to spread the word around on social media, friends and co-workers to avoid this place. None of the staff members respected any distancing policy or masks. Shame on you for letting someone like this work in this...

I went with a friend for breakfast and was looking forward to Eggs Benedict. It was $18.95. I thought it was too big, so I ordered the single, with hollandaise on the side. The egg was just like a hard boiled egg - hard with no running yolk. I dipped my fork into the sauce and it was horrible - tasted like chicken noodle soup mix! The waiter didn't ask me how I wanted it, and when he came back to the table he didn't ask how it was (which was obvious since I cut into it and didn't eat anything but the hash browns) nor did he comment: oh, didn't you like it? He simply took it away. He never came back. We were waiting for a bill, so finally we just went to the front to pay - and he handed me the bill which was $17.95 for my single Benny. I said oh no, this is a mistake, I only had one. He said well, just because it's half doesn't mean it's half the price - we just deduct $1. I said: well if I would have known that, I wouldn't have ordered it! And now I have to pay that much for something that was awful? I didn't expect half the price, but I surely didn't expect one terrible egg for $17.95. It sucked and his attitude sucked. I'll never go back....