Original Joe's — Restaurant in Nanaimo

I am writing to express our dissatisfaction about the service of Original Joe’s. On November 25th, I visited the restaurant with my husband to celebrate our special occasion. We ordered two burgers and asked staff to not add any kind of meat/chicken/bacon to our food as we are pure vegetarian since birth. Even after confirming for 3 to 4 times with the staff, they served us a burger with BACON! That ruined our special night! This is VERY DISAPPOINTING!!!

Before placing our order, we explained to the staff that in past we had an experience in this restaurant when we were served with non vegetarian food even after requesting for pure vegetarian. We were lucky in past to find out this before actually eating the food but please be extra careful this time to not add any kind of meat/chicken/bacon!!

After half an hour from placing our order, we received the food on our table. We again asked the staff that please confirm that the food DOES NOT include any kind of meat/chicken/bacon. We explained that we are vegetarian and we can not have any kind of meat as it is against our culture. In our culture we consider animals as God.

The staff confirmed that it is vegetarian and does not include any meat/chicken/bacon. As soon as my partner took first bite from his burger, he saw bacon in his burger. We called the staff and they told us that the chef made a mistake and forgot to take out the bacon from the burger.

We left the restaurant right away after this experience. Now there are many people in Canada who can not have non vegetarian food because of various reasons, like- culture, health, allergy or by choice!

How can someone trust this restaurant and their staff after this kind of experience? What if someone have an allergy and the chef makes a mistake which can result in big damage to someone’s health!! This needs to be reported and someone should take an action...

I’m giving them a one because of the staff the food is incredible congrats to the chef he clearly knows how to cook but the staff are a little different. I called four weeks prior to my birthday and they told me to call a day prior I thought that was weird as my birthday is in December, so I didn’t listen to her and I called the week prior and I got a different lady on the phone and she was in shock that someone told me to call a day prior and she said there was no tables and I’ve already told 20 people that this is where my birthday is so I asked her to accommodate me as I’ve already told 20 people that’s where my birthday is. She goes sure we can try and make that work, and then I got tables that are separated, not super separated, but they were separated. I was like there’s no way you can accommodate me as your staff clearly messed up. This is not fair to me and she goes sorry this is all I can do Honestly really pissed me off so I told half the crowd not to come and to come to my house after instead as I didn’t want to be at separate tables from my friends on my birthday first time I ever spent a birthday in there and probably last time I ever will it took 10 hours for me to get a corona. I mentioned it to the redhead and she goes oh I didn’t forget it’s like OK how long does it take to pop a cap off a bottle and hand it to me whatever this is why I always pick browns for my birthday! Oh well lesson learned The table we sat At literally felt like I was at an A&W. I wanted a nice scene it’s my birthday like hello if you couldn’t accommodate a really nice scene with candles and stuff For me then let me know so I’m not going there and wasting my...

Went there, as we were told they had soy chicken available to sub. Our order was a Kona burger (with the soy chicken), no mayo, bacon, or cheese, with guacamole as a sub; side of quinoa and fries.; Drunken noodles with veg chicken; hummus and a side of fries.

It took an hour to get the hummus and fries. They were tasty and fresh though.

After waiting for another half hour, and decided to have our order to go, we were initially going to be comped 50%, but then our table was approached by management and she offered the whole meal comped.

These are our meals when we arrived home.. after waiting for a noodle bowl and a burger for 1.5 hrs.

As you can see, it's a beef burger, not a soy chicken patty.

The drunken noodles are aptly named, as it seems like someone took leftovers from the night before, and added veg chicken cubes. The portion isn't worth $14, and it was soaked in oil, egg and macaroni noodles (if I picked it apart, I may have found a rice noodle or two), and no sprouts.

So, why complain since we got free 'food'? Because this is abismal. The only difference between having to had paid for this, even at 50% and now, is that they don't have to deal with my boyfriend and I in person.

The only plus was the quinoa salad. Nice portion for a side, and it was tasty. Everything else that we brought home was pretty...