Symposium Cafe Restaurant Oshawa — Restaurant in Oshawa

On Friday of last week my wife and I decided to go to the Symposium Cafe for dinner. It took a while for a server to come but when he did come he was very polite. On Fridays they have a number of specials such as 50% off bottles of wine so we ordered a bottle of wine. We then waited for quite a while (close to 15 mins) for the waiter to come and tell us that they didn't have the wine we ordered. My wife decided on a Sleeman 2.0 beer and I just switched to a pop. I then proceeded to watch the owner pour a regular Sleeman, not the Sleeman 2.0. When the waiter brought the beer we said that's not the Sleeman 2.0. He said "that's what I put in the system". I walked up to where the beer taps were and multiple taps had sticky notes saying they were out of service. When I asked the owner about the beer he said "yes we were out of Sleeman 2.0 so I just poured a regular Sleeman". My wife then just cancelled the beer ordered a diet coke. The owner poured the drink, started walking over and then retuned to repour the drink as he obviously had poured a regular coke, not diet as my wife had requested.

We then ordered food - my wife ordered the Chicken Club with fries I ordered the Fried Calamari with fries. A special on Fridays is that if you order a seafood entry you get a bowl of seafood chowder - more on that later. Our food came and the Calamari was totally inedible as most of it was soggy and the first 2 I tried were cold and rubbery - totally under done and not safe to eat being seafood. Also - no seafood chowder. We decided to cancel the calamari at this point and my wife and I just decided to share the Club Sandwich which was just OK at best as the chicken was rubbery and had an odd taste. The fries were good though. They did end up bringing me the Clam Chowder but it was also inedible as it was soooo salty. My wife tried it and she agreed it was very salty.

So, we finish eating and the new Assistant Manager (as we were told) comes over and asks us how our meal was. We told him of the issues and he laughed at us and walked away!! My wife and I were stunned by this response.

We then asked for our bill and our waiter said he had to wait for the owner to come back to adjust the bill as the owner had to go to the store and local LCBO for product as they were running out of things that people had ordered - wow. The 2 waiters felt so bad for us that we had to wait for the owner to return and they apologized multiple times for us having to wait and for the poor food and service. The owner then returns, comes over to our table and has the audacity to ask us how the meal was after he had been informed of all the issues by the wait staff. We told him again of all the issues we had and he then informed us that in regards to the soup that “we don’t add any salt we just reheat the soup we get from the supplier”. Once again wow – also explains why the chicken club sandwich was rubbery.

We finally get our bill and the owner tells the server that he has taken 50% off but all he did was remove my Calamari entrée and he still tried to charge us for the beer that we had returned! After correcting the bill again we paid and left and will obviously not return again.

To the owner of the establishment – I get not every service will be perfect as I have travelled the world for work and eaten in thousands of restaurants. However, the restaurants that I return to are those that own their mistakes and address them which didn’t...

We regularly attend sporting events in the Oshawa area and our family always looks forward to our visit to the symposium cafe Unfortunately, we will not be returning to this restaurant, at least not to this location. upon arrival, the restaurant was fairly empty and a few of the waitresses were standing near the cash. Although we were acknowledged quickly, that welcoming feeling wasn’t the same as our past visits. My daughter, who is 13 requested to order something from the kids menu which has an age restriction of 12 years. The owner came over to inform me that that would not be a option and questioned my daughter’s age. Although she looks older, she is 13 and we were honest about that and I offered to pay full price for the pasta which she agreed to. When walking away I heard her comment to the waitress to not include other items in the kid meals and charge for the chocolate milk. Again totally acceptable , given the accomodations made. When our entrées arrived, they were extremely salty. There was definitely added salt after cooking, so much so, that it was visible on the food. You could see the salt caked on my french fries and my daughters mac & cheese was also incredibly salty. we tried not to complain and attempted to scrap off as much as possible from surface but we could not stomach the saltiness. The fish was also undercooked and you could scrap the uncooked batter off the inside. in addition for a 2 pc fish I received about a table spoon of tarter sauce, a tiny splice of lemon and very small serving of slaw. Definitely not the portion we always receive. my daughter asked for water, which was not provided at the beginning of the meal as it had been in past visits and i decided to inform the actual owner who came to the table that the food was horrendously salty. She immediately took offence told me they didn’t add any salt to it in a angry tone. I repeated that neither of us had added salt to this meal either and she basiccally stood over us rolling her eyes. she began to argue so I told her to taste it for herself.. and after no response other then eye rolling I said just bring the bill of you are not going to do nothing about it it’s not even eatable . I paid over $50 for a fish and chip and mac & cheese that was totally inedible. She did not even discount the food nor offer us any apologies or meal replacement. And when an alternate waitress came by to finalize our bill. She asked me if I would like to take out box and I again expressed that the food was inedible and salty and she also began to tell me that they make 30 of these meals a day and no one else ever has a problem or complains. I was going to walk out, and not pay this bill but I just had the feeling, these people would probably start something so I paid 50+ dollars for nothing. I will not be returning to this location and plan to express concerns to head office. Very intimidating and...

My family and I usually love Symposium, loving the menu and trusting the franchise to give us a good meal regardless of where we go. However, this specific location gave what we thought was going to be another one for our spectacular symposium lunches into one of the worst we have ever had. When we ordered our food, not only did the waiter continue to get our orders wrong, but she also questioned our decisions on starters and mains. Saying we shouldn’t order them because it would be too much food, which almost made us feel bad for wanting to enjoy our favourite dishes. We explained that we would be okay with packing it up, knowing the usual portions of what we ordered from being frequent customers. Yet still, she questioned us, starting to make us feel that ordering too much food was a bad thing? Wouldnt they want us to order more for the sake of their business? Anyways, we tried not to let this bother us, just thinking about the delicious usuals we were about to get. When we started to receive starters (one of which were wings), we were given no side plates, and right after the first one was placed on the table, they also put down one of our mains. We explained to our server that we would like to start with our starters, since our mains would get cold by the time we finished them. We had never had this happen before, thinking it was common sense to start with you starters and then - receive you mains afterward. Again, these could be very small things to brush off, so we kept a positive. They took our mains back temporarily, and finally brought side plates, but then forgot to bring the rest of our starters. This was frustrating, as some of us where watching each other eat without any of our own ordered food infront of us. None the less, we reminded our server she forgot our other starters and she brought them out immediately. Now this is what really made us upset, when we eventually ate our starters and all of our mains were brought out, all of the food was cold, certain pieces of food were burnt, and everything just did not have any flavour. Nothing tasted like our usual favourite meals, our fish was overcooked, potatoes and sides of garlic bread were burnt. Again, we love Symposium, and we order the same dishes all the time, so we were quite disappointed when they tasted nothing like we remembered. The dishes almost made us nauseous, we immediately lost all of our appetites. We first talked about getting dessert (because if you have been to symposium, you know they have amazing dessert) but we just couldn’t stay after the food we had just gotten. Leaving bad reviews would never normally be something we do as a family, but we just couldn’t not after having such a negative experience, not to mention on...