Sawmill Taphouse & Grill — Restaurant in North Cowichan

We really want to like this place… it’s got so much potential. The atmosphere/ambience is great, the food is good, and they have a great drink selection. Unfortunately the place is really lacking in people who seem to care about giving the customer an outstanding experience. We have been here twice, last weekend and again yesterday. When we arrived yesterday we were greeted by a hostess who gave us an unwelcoming vibe. A smile and a “hi, how are you?” would have been nice. A hostess is supposed to be friendly and welcoming, and she was everything but. We asked for a booth and she said “potentially” and lead us quietly to a table directly across from a booth which sat empty the entire time we were there. Keep in mind that this was 4:00 and the restaurant was not busy. She didn’t provide us with an explanation why we couldn’t sit at the booth . It made us feel like we were being a burden on her by asking to sit there. This is what I mean when I say the place is lacking in people who seem to care. The server wasn’t much better than the hostess. She didn’t smile once during our visit. She brought my husband the wrong drink, no big deal… he liked what she brought and drank it anyway, but getting a drink right is pretty simple! We asked for an appetizer right away as we had 2 little hungry girls with us so we wanted to get something on the table quickly. We then ordered our mains and the appetizer never came. When we asked the server she blamed it on the kitchen. Coincidentally the same thing happened last weekend when we ordered an appy,… it never came. However, the server apologized and admitted she forgot to ring it in. The server came to do a quality check on our meals when we were almost finished. It’s a good thing the food was good or we didn’t need anything. Quality checks should really be done after a couple bites to ensure things are good and the customer doesn’t need anything. When we were leaving I told the manager (or maybe she was the owner) about the missing appy that happened at both our visits. She explained that the server we had tonight was new and it was her first time serving. Fair enough, it’s not her fault. But, if that’s the case then she should have been monitored more to make sure the customers are being taken care of properly, especially considering it was not busy and there certainly time to be supervising the server a bit closer. We were really quite stoked to find a nice new place to go out for dinner with our girls. If only they focused a little more on caring and hospitality it would be our new weekly dinner place. It’s not enough to have good food and a nice atmosphere, good service and friendly staff is so important in making a dining experience superb. We won’t be back for a while, but will give them another shot in...

You wait for this day when something was good for awhile and then it changes. Today was that day. Caught the end of a busy period. Everything was normal at first. Then as we were finished our drinks we kept trying to get the servers attn. No luck. After an hour I just started waving my arms which got someone's attention. Our food arrived shortly after. No apology no coming to us just to let us know they were busy. Just brought the food and said they were busy. The server came back and asked how our food was. I said it was fine other than having to wait an hour to get it. She said she would send the manager over. My wife's pizza was good as it usually is. On mine the server had convinced me to try the special a Philly cheesesteak over a Brisket sandwich. It turned out they had basically the same ingredients. After having a few bites I begin to think this was a bit Bland. So I opened up the sandwich and other than meat and a little aioli along the edge of the sandwich there was no caramelized onions they as promised and no cheese. So I waved the manager back over and showed it to her her. At first she said oh the cheese is hidden. so I had her look a little closer and I asked her where the caramelized onions were as well as the cheese. She admitted she couldn't see any. She offered to have a new sandwich made or the brisket I originally wanted but by that time I wasn't interested in waiting again so I declined. She asked if we wanted a free dessert which I declined and said I would rather have you take the sandwich off the bill which she said she would do. So after my wife was finished her meal we waited for about 10 minutes for someone to show up. Nobody. So I started waving my arms again. It took two servers walking by to notice. So we asked for the bill and when they brought the credit card machine I noticed they had taken off both our meals which was good but I still for some reason felt obligated to put a tip on although I only put 10%. But doing this must have upset the server as when we were leaving she just gave us the big hairy eyeball the whole way out oblivious to the crappy service. Lots of better choices available so business for them permanently lost. Prima Strada has better pizza and the menus and beer selection is...

Stopped in for dinner with my wife and we were seated on the patio by a friendly hostess. However, It took over 10 minutes after being seated before a server came and took our drink order which was a little disappointing. I was also little surprised by how expensive beer was here since it is a "taphouse" $9 for a pint and $15 for a 3 taste flight is quite steep... so we ordered iced tea and the cheese dip small plate as a starter, which ended up being quite good.

This restaurant was previously recommended to us by local friends who insisted we had to try the ribs with smoked potato salad. We were sad to see this was no longer on offer on the menu as this was the reason we came. We mentioned to server and just received a shrug. I ended up ordering the blue cheese burger and my wife ordered the pulled pork sandwich. The burger was extremely overcooked so the texture was rubbery and dry and the cheese was so overpowering that was all I could taste. I was only able to eat half the burger. The pulled pork sandwich was smoky, which was nice... but somewhat under-seasoned. The fries and salad that came with both entrees were good. During our meal we were not offered refills on drinks and it took a while to flag someone down to get some. Towards the end of the meal we were asked how everything was tasting and I was honest and said I wouldn't order the burger, again but the fries and salad are good. The server seemed surprised, so to avoid awkwardness, I said blue cheese is probably is just not to my taste... but it really wasn't good as a burger in general.

I really want to like this restaurant. It's has a great location, modern decor and loads of potential as there really aren't similar restaurants in Chemainus. Unfortunately at this point I don't see myself returning. Overall the issues I mentioned regarding service and perhaps tweaking the menu, and some additional quality control could...