Beefeater's Seafood & Steakhouse — Restaurant in Nanaimo

I have never left a bad review like this- but our experience here seems to call for it. I would have posted sooner but we have been travelling and it will be a bit lengthy. We were visiting family in Nanaimo and wanted to go for a nice meal and were excited to try Beefeaters - this was a mistake. We arrived around 6 and there were 2 tables finishing inside and 2 outside. The server asked if we had a reservation and we said no. (This is the same server we had the whole evening- she was cold, not friendly or personable. I believe I heard her say her name was Victoria) and She responded to us with “walk in.” …. And that was it. So we stood there and then I said “anywhere?” And she said “no, where do you went to sit” we asked if it would be possible to be seated on the patio. She told us she has to go talk to her coworkers and left. We waited for 5 minutes before she came back. When she did she asked us again where we would like to sit and again, we asked for the patio. She then sat us. We waited for another 10 minutes and we were finally asked for a drink order. My partner was told they didn’t have pints of beer - to which at one pint we pointed at another table who had one- but she insisted they didn’t have them. After ordering drinks we received them 10 minutes later. We waited another 15 for her to return for our order. We ordered fresh oyster to start to share. They took over a half hour. We also each ordered a cup of chowder before our meals and the main dishes. After over another hour we never saw another plate or bowl of food. We asked her if it was going to be much longer for our soup or anything and she was so rude we ended up walking out without eating. We did however have to pay for everything without even an apology from the staff, manager or anything. It was the worst experience we have ever had in a restaurant. On a good note, the server who did take our payment (not our server or management) was extremely apologetic and couldn’t believe she had to take...

Our Beefeaters experience was beyond embarrassing. Table for 15, reservations made a week in advance. We all arrive at 6 and there is no waitress or bartender who is old enough to serve drinks. I let the girl know that she can legally bring closed beers to the table and she said she wasn't sure and refused to do it. 15 of us sat for 30 minutes sipping on water before they got the cooks to come out and make the drinks, which weren't exactly correct but they did their best. After that point we rarely saw a waitress and even after we ordered it took 1.5 hours to get our food. It came out so staggered, the first people to eat were finished before the last people got their plates, much of it cold, and I finally received mine last a full 2.5 hours after we arrived (my medium rare peppercorn steak was medium well and had no peppercorns, just some cracked black pepper). In the end we asked for the bills and it took them 45 minutes to figure that out and we only got to leave once 9pm came and the waitresses didn't want to stay past the end of their shift. It total we were there for over 3 hours and we each got 2 drinks! That's where they make their money, right? We had designated drivers and were there to drink and we couldn't get any sort or service. Someone eventually went and tracked down the waitress and she was standing there cutting limes! To top it off, the place was empty. There was our table and one other table. And the entire staff treated the situation like it was totally normal! They didn't even acknowledge the long waits, the lack of service, and incorrect orders. No apologies, nothing. We were all just dumbfounded. I can honestly say that it was the most ridiculous restaurant experience I have had. What else could we have done? They knew we were coming, it's not like we walked in off the street and...

Listen, I HATE leaving bad reviews... but I feel this needs to be said. Our server was wonderful. That's why that got 5 stars. She did her absolute best, it's the manager/kitchen that had the issues. We aren't locals, so the only things we knew about the place were online, glowing reviews so we tried it. We were celebrating our anniversary so we wanted a nice place. First off, the prices from the online menu vs paper menu were way off. Like 3-5 bucks higher off. Okay fine.. not a big deal that happens all the time. 2nd my husband's meal was under cooked (risotto still crunchy) so we asked for a remake. (They said they were training a new person, no big deal they're fixing it) the new fire took MAYBE 3 minutes to come out? Not a lot of time. When it arrived it seemed okay... but when he bit into a large scallop is was RAW. We let our server know, she said she'd get it discounted for us because of all the issues. Lovely, he did eat a decent amount of it so a discount would be sufficient. In comes the Kitchen/Manager... "that scallop was cooked to a safe temperature, so no discounts will be given." Well then.. you would think that making the customer happy and trying to mend your first mistake was worth a 30% discount of the 1 entree...? We had a $120 bill! I had even said I wanted to come back on our next trip! Not any more. Too bad, the...