Tap & Barrel • Shipyards — Restaurant in North Vancouver

We visited this location again today after receiving a gift card from the restaurant manager. I have to say, a year later, the food have definitely improved in quality. We ordered the truffle onion burger and the chicken pesto linguine. The burger was done perfectly and not dry like our last visit. The linguine was cooked to al dente with nice basil kick from the pesto. Overall we enjoyed our food and experience this time around. They were busy as usual, but with the temperature rising, I’m not one but surprised.

Original review:

Tap and Barrell have also been busy and popular, and with good reason. It has huge seating inside and a million dollar water view.

The decor and atmosphere inside is great for hanging out with friends and watching the game. They have two levels and a high ceiling with many neat decor pieces.

We ordered the Humboldt squid, Tap burger and Fried chicken Mac & Cheese. The squid was nice and tender, but the coating could be more crispy. The fried chicken Mac and cheese was truly the highlight of the meal. The chicken was okay, the breast meat was a bit too dry, but the thigh meat was excellent. The Mac and cheese was the best, the pasta was still al dente, there was plenty of sauce to coat the pasta. On top the melted gooey cheese was wonderful, and just the right amount of crispy bread crumbs. It was one of the better Mac and cheese I’ve had.

Towards the end of the meal, when I filled my water again, out comes a dead mosquito swimming in my glass. Not exactly sure how it got there as we were indoors in the dead of winter. The dead mosquito really turned off our appetite. I was so shocked I immediately told my waiter and she replaced the water bottle and glass promptly, however, there wasn’t any apology, which was really disappointing.

Overall our server was attentive and speedy. Just the fact that we had been drinking dead mosquito water our whole meal really dampened...

EDIT: I did respond to the restaurant via email, as requested in their response below. It’s been about a month with no reply, so I’m a bit unclear what the point of that was. Also I can see Tap & Barrel staff checking out my LinkedIn profile from the day the reply was posted. Kind of creepy.

I love the pizza. I kind of stopped coming here though, because lately I’ve found the bar staff to be rather mean. Not just to me… in general.

I work from home so I usually go out alone and sit at the bar. I like to get out of the house for a bite, watch sports, maybe chat with someone, whatever. The last four times I’ve been in I’ve had some sort of negative experience or observed something.

Most recently, I waited 40 minutes and never received so much as a menu or a drink refill. People on either side of me were served. One bartender had lots of time to be extra nice to her friends. Anyway, I finished my beer and decided to leave. When I paid, the bartender (not so subtlety) looked for my tip. When he didn’t see one, gave me a dirty look and rolled his eyes. They were slammed, but still.

The time before, I watched a bartender become visibly annoyed at the couple sitting next to me over a spilled beer. Huffing and sighing and just being very clear it was an issue.

Another time I popped in recently for one drink on my way home from downtown, and when I went to pay the female bartender looked at me and loudly and sarcastically announced: “Here’s your tab for your ONE lager.”

What can I say? So sue me for stopping in for one. I could have stopped in for zero.

FWIW, table service is always great. No idea what’s going on at the bar though. Like...

I didn’t really want to write this review because this place is in my neighborhood. However it is important to share an experience so that it’s informative to the operation. My family went there two nights ago and we sat in the bar area on a high stool. No offense to the waiter but I think he may be new, the service wasn’t welcoming and attention to order was challenging. When finally our appetizers came not all at once but in piece mail, the soup which was the chowder was extremely salty, I mean who doesn’t like a bit of salt but this was beyond. The soup itself was watery and if you had the clam chowder at the quay nearby, you would know the difference, the calamari like dish was even more saltier and we just had to accept the fried pickles which was fine. The point is that when we told the waiter, he really didn’t know what to do in terms of offering a replacement or something else, instead we get the manager, thinking ok some reasoning or a warm and courteous encouragement to stay and get something else. We actually had nothing progressive come out of it, maybe the person was having a hard day so we let it go. We said we will be ok with the bill please. Again with no care the bill came for only the pickles but we didn’t even eat any of the other dishes, it was a taste of the soup and one bite of the squid like calamari. We ended up paying the ten dollars for the pickles and went home. This note doesn’t really explain in depth the experience but I can surely say that after 6 years of living here and visiting Tap on dozen of occasions, we will not be visiting any time soon again.

Really disappointing service and...