Pickle Barrel — Restaurant in Ontario

When did Pickle Barrel stop giving out pickle plates? Granted I have not been since before covid but today she asked where I wanted to go for dinner I requested Pickle Barrel! Always had a great experience and the food was always really good!! NOT anymore!!!! Ordered the lettuce wraps and the steak with a French onion soup!!! We started out strong except for the missing pickle tray… lettuce wraps arrived delicious… soup arrived… delicious…. Steak arrived… potato’s were lukewarm and veggies ice cold.. informed the waiter and he was very reactive in getting me fresh ones… great!!!! Manager brings them out and apologizes!! Good manager… except this time the veggies were lukewarm and the potatoes were cold.. defeatedly she states, I’m just going to take it off the bill, it was steaming when it left the kitchen!!! Uh ok, stuck your finger in it then lady. Idk what to tell you. I guess I’ll go eat somewhere else then. It’s also important to note that every dish delivered to our table was sat in-front of my 16 month old niece.. Ok scalding a toddler with a fresh out the oven soup pot wouldn’t be my first choice but to each their own!! I figured I would just ask for some steak sauce and just eat the steak, flavour was good but a tad over cooked for my liking…. NOPE…. We have no steak sauce. The manager left and we ran out 2 days ago!!! Shame there isn’t a grocery store close by to get some!! Manager on duty states “I told them that but they didn’t want to do that” Nieces sweet potato fries were the last to arrive, hotter than every other item delivered and served in a stainless cup, great for retaining heat but not great for a toddler.. probably should have dropped the fries the same year they cooked my potatoes so they would have been cool enough to her to eat….

It’s important to not that the other 2 dish’s that arrived were both warm and tasted good!

Server gets a 7/10. Friendly and engaging but didn’t offer refills

Manager on duty gets a 3/10. Removed the meal but gave up on the guest experience way too easily and did not offer a substitute meal.

Experience 2/10. Where are the pickles???

Kitchen 2/10. How hard are vegetables??

Overall probably will not be back. Which is a shame because pre Covid this was one of my...

I'll preface my review of my own dinner by stating that my wife thought her hamburger was "excellent". My wife and I had dinner with another couple. I'd never been to the Pickle Barrel before. I went in with an open mind...

We were eating dinner early (5:45 pm is when the other couple arrived) so when I ordered a can of Guinness, I was a little shocked to hear our server say "we only have two cans left, so I'll hurry back and make sure I grab one". I get that Guinness isn't super popular in Canada. But two cans? If I hadn't been driving, I would have had to put a hold on the other can. Yikes. I perused the menu, and settled on a Nathan's Footlong hotdog with chili and cheese. My mouth was watering at the thought, as I haven't had a good chili/cheese dog in ages. And to be fair, the only good memory I have of my father is of him taking me to A&W back in the day, getting a whistle dog and some coney sauce, and putting the sauce on the hotdog. Mmmm. Curse A&W for no longer serving coney sauce. Up there with "New Coke" in terms of corporate mistakes. In my opinion anyway. The server returned to our table to inform me that they were out of Nathan's hot dogs. Um, it was 5:45 pm, and you are out of a menu item? Yikes X2. I decided on the fish and chips. BIG mistake. The fish was terrible. Looked like something you'd get out of a box of frozen fish fillets. ZERO taste. The fact that I'd had AMAZING fish and Chips and McCabe's a couple weeks ago only made me realize how utterly bad the fish was at this restaurant. I get it isn't an Irish pub, but take the fish and chips off the menu if you're going to serve something I could buy at M&M Meats. I mean, it was an utter disappointment.

Again, my wife loved her hamburger. And our server was good. The atmosphere was okay. But I was beyond disappointed...

When we first got there we were seated at a booth, we reserved seats ahead of time. It was great but we are Plus size people and six of us couldn’t fit comfortably. We asked to be moved which they did :) We had a bunch of different orders. 6 drinks in total and only 3 came together and we waited an additional 15 minutes for the other 3 while watching other tables that came in after us get served first. Two of the burgers had hair on it we didn’t say anything which is on is. Both burgers came with special Sauce there was hardly no sauce to taste which was so disappointing. I asked for goats cheese in sub if regular cheese there was hardly none in there and couldn’t taste neither the cheese or sauce. Both burgers were delicious otherwise. One of us also ordered a Caesar salad with the dressing on the side and never received the dressing . I asked a waitress who came back to see if I got it yet which I didn’t. One ordered a corn beef which was meat slapped between two pieces of rye bread nothing else so it was really disappointing. We had said it was our birthdays two of us in February and one coming up close to March. So we asked if they did anything he said you can’t just come in here and do different birthdays. Which we have never had issues at other restaurants before. He did bring ice cream back. Two people came all the way from Kingston to go out so we could all enjoy the family day holiday weekend together. They said they won’t be back. We went to the pickle barrel in Waterloo and had a much more...