The Backyard Smokehouse — Restaurant in Northwest Industrial

We made a reservation on Thursday, at 8:30 for 2 and were seated pretty quickly but it just went downhill from there. We decided to be patient and we expected some delays as the place was fairly new and pretty hyped up on social media. We sat for around 25 mins before politely one of the staff if they could have the waitress come over to take our order.

Before the waitress came by, two of the staff, came over said they needed (yes 'needed') to take half of our table away. Hesitatingly my husband and I agreed as we thought they were quite busy but nope, the entire the entire second floor was empty and there were quite a few empty tables on the first floor. My husband and I decided to let it go because it didn't seem like a big deal and we don't really like confrontation.

The waitress took our order after 45 minutes of us just sitting there, (and she didn't even come on her own, we had to call her over after we noticed her). We got the Three-yard. We got brisket and lamb shank with a side of caesar salad, sweet fries, roasted potatoes and rice. The food came out but everything didn't come all at once. YALL, the portions were absolutely horrendous for a $100+ platter that's supposed to feed 2-3 people. I could tell they were all individual portions for each side, as in, you would have to share ONE small bowl of rice between 2-3 people which is absolutely atrocious if you're paying $100+ for a platter. Why did the platter come with just one slice of garlic bread and cornbread if it's meant to be a sharing platter for 2-3 people? Don't even get me started on the potatoes because we only got 4 small potatoes for a side that apparently 2-3 people are supposed to share like seriously. The table was way too small and we were unable to fit most of our food on it. We had to resort to putting some of our food and water on top of a chair next to us. Our side of sweet fries never ended up coming out and we had to wait 20 more mins for our sauce platter to come out and by then our food was stone cold (it arrived barely room temp.) We had to take the side of fries to go and I think it was the manager who came over at the end and apologised for all the delays. He got our bill and the fries pretty quickly (like 5 mins) but I shouldn't have to take a side of a $100+ platter to-go because the kitchen failed to send the order out in time.

My husband and I couldn't even finish the food and just decided to leave because we didn't want to ruin the night further. The food also tastes bad, the brisket was too salty, no flavour on the lamb shank and the leftovers are currently rotting in my fridge because neither of us will eat it because of how bad it tastes. Total waste of a $100 dollars.

Also to add, they seemed to be favouring bigger groups over smaller groups. Two bigger parties that arrived after us were treated much better than our party of 2. They got seated immediately, got their orders taken immediately and were served immediately too and honestly this just made us feel so neglected and angry and it wasn't just us either, an elderly couple next to us were neglected just like we were.

I will be avoiding and I have already told friends and family to avoid the place if they don't want mediocre food, no attention/service and a night that would just piss them off. Would give it a...

This is a restaurant that feels distinctly catered to the FOMO influencer crowd. When the server who has made a big point about asking him about the items was asked about the BKYRD sauce and what it was, the answer was "it's Mayo based, and like, yeah it's like the Wendy's sauce you know? The Krabby Patty one, I had it like 3 times". Other than that though, our server was actually very attentive, more so than anywhere else and more extrovertesld, although if a little new or awkward, but did well, no issue with him, but i I think that answer perfectly sums up the restaurant experience, because it's not really an answer at all unless you're always chasing trends, but overall it just lacking anything. I still don't actually know what the sauce was but for people who are chasing the next viral thing maybe that's okay. It's just another limited time now or never thats for influencers and the general public be damned.

For some people, no liquor may be a thing to mention, but this is a halal restaurant so that didn't bother me, the lemonades were actually pretty good in lieu of. A small personal gripe I have is the lack of paper menus but that's everywhere nowadays, not so much this place exclusive.

The experience really felt like, unless you were there to show them off on social media and rive up their exposure, I don't know why you'd come here. And speaking of social media:

Allows random customers into the kitchen area of food prep as long as they're an influencer. Health regulations be damned. While we were seated there was a reserved seat behind us that sat down 10 minutes after us and were missed for a little before someone noticed that they were there and took an order. Now as a case of potentially saving face to someone who would give them more exposure they were suddenly inundated with free food and the food came out in such a rush, despite the fact that we had ordered 5 minutes before they got there shortly after we got our drinks and they were having a full amount of platters. Now this could be due to the fact that they could have easily reserved ahead of time and had things ready. But it did feel very much like the priority was to the influencers who were going to attempt to increase the brand and not so much everybody else because we're just revenue for them.

I've attached 5 pictures from a video of a food reviewer who happens to be seated behind us during our visit here and who not only got priority service but was allowed into the kitchen with his go pro to film a bunch of food prep almost immediately after he was sat down from outside. That's a bit disgusting and also frankly might be against Food Safety' standards. "TheDadReviews" is the name of the video that was recently posted. In this video there's also other Food Safety being broken, a tim Hortons cup is seen in food prep area

I believe I am to follow up with AHS about this, as non-kitchen, let alone non-worker being allowed into prep areas cannot be a regular occurrence as it seems to be on social media and the other issues present in the...

DISASTER. CLOWN SHOW. Incredibly terrible service.

Want to start off by saying that the food was pretty good and we’ve been here many times before. But today was a disaster. I get that they’re offering 50% off so it might be busy, but don’t give people a discount if you’re going to give them this service, has the total opposite effect. We arrived are 12:05 pm, right when they opened. We understand that people might have had reservations and that it was busy. There was a huge line and they were giving out tables on a first-come basis. They told us that it would take 15 mins. In reality it took more than an HOUR. Got to our table at 1:15. While we were waiting, we could already see the disaster that was taking place. Then we ordered our food, which took AN HOUR AND A HALF TO ARRIVE.

While we were waiting, many people were complaining about how it was taking sooo long. Besides that, they were taking orders and had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA which order belonged to which table. They were going around with the food asking people if that was their food or not.

The table in front of us got their food and touched it before getting it TAKEN AWAY because it actually wasn’t their food but a different table. And they subsequently took the touched food to another table who ate it without knowing anything. Then they brought them another platter of food, which they turned away because it was the wrong order. They subsequently finally got their food, but the servers still forgot a portion of their order. The large table beside us got the wrong order at least 6-7 different times, and touched some of it, and the servers took it and gave it to another table again. COMPLETELY DISORGANIZED. This happened to so many people around us.

Then once we were done, we asked for a take-out box. They took 30 minutes to get it, and we had to chase after them to pay our bill because they forgot about it. And on our way out, we saw numerous people who were rightfully upset at how long they had to wait, and the guys at the front were not hospitable at all. We overheard this lady get told that it was a 3 HOUR wait and to come back at 5:00ish, but then also say that it was the estimated time and it may take more or less than that and that if they weren’t there when their name was called off the list then they would give the table to someone else. I mean what do you expect the customer to do then? Stand there for 3 hours? And we came at lunch time. It would be funny to see what it is like during the dinner rush. Probably even more disastrous.

None of this were the waiters/waitresses fault, they were trying their best to manage the situation and were nice to us. It was totally on the terrible and greedy management. Safe to say that we won’t be coming back anytime soon, and I don’t think many of the people there will be either. They lost a lot of customers...