The Bayside Restaurant & Lounge — Restaurant in Parksville

TLDR; My salad was forgotten and arrived hobbled together and missing an ingredient without advance notice. Because of this, my husband’s beer was comped as a gesture of goodwill. Bit strange since I was the one whose meal was delayed. 🤔

Visited the restaurant on a Sunday night with a party of 6 including 2 children. I will speak to the experience of my own family - I ordered the seafood Cobb salad, my son had rigatoni and cheese, and my husband had the jambalaya.

Things were fine until the food arrived - our server came by to confirm that we all had our meals and we did not. My meal was missing and they said it was forgotten and that it would get made right away. OK, mistakes happen.

I told everyone to eat their food as their meals shouldn’t get cold because of this. The salad was prepared in about 5 minutes and looked that way too. During that time, the server brought my husband his beer that he had ordered and said it was on the house because of the mistake with the food. I thought this was weird that this was done for my husband, who got his meal on time, while I sat there with nothing in front of me.

When the food arrived, it was not as described. The “hand peeled shrimp” looked like the tiny shrimp in sunomono salad. There were way too many grape tomatoes and I felt something was missing so I checked the menu and confirmed that it was missing avocado. The server did not come around to see how the salad was so I just kept on eating it and resolved to make a comment when they cleared my plate.

When they came to take my plate, I said that the salad wasn’t great and that an avocado was missing. They said they would check and said that the runner confirms the food order before bringing to the table. They came back and said that the restaurant was out of avocado entirely so they added extra ingredients of other things to compensate. This was not told to me in advance and contributed to the salad being off balance due to extra grape tomatoes.

The server left and when he came back with the bills, it was clear that they forgot the kids meal comes with ice cream. So I had to ask about that and the whole party waited for about 10 minutes for this small bowl of ice cream. No one was asked if they wanted any thing else or a dessert menu.

The server came back with the bills. As noted, my husband’s beer was comped but, I felt this was a strange gesture given I was the one whose meal went awry - not my husband’s. Normally, I would think that any gesture of goodwill should be directed at the person involved.

While I was not expecting the whole salad to be comped, I thought that a) it being forgotten and b) it not being served as described would warrant some kind of monetary apology. At $28, one should expect a pretty good salad.

I understand that mistakes happen but restaurants that want to stay in business, should make efforts to deliver good food and good service at the very least. Unfortunately, this will be the last time I go to here and will advise others to avoid it as well. There were plenty of opportunities to bounce back from the initial mistake but all...

Extremely Disappointing Experience – Misleading “Pet Friendly” Policy

Booking online through a third party beware. Learn from our terrible experience. We booked this resort 5 months in advance through a third-party site that listed it as pet friendly. Before booking, we even called the hotel directly to confirm pets were welcome. There was no option during booking to indicate we were bringing a dog, nor were we told this was required. We are always careful to check ahead to avoid problems, especially when travelling with a 4-year-old, 1-year-old, newborn, and our dog.

After a full day of travel, including a ferry ride, we arrived and checked in without issue—no one at the front desk asked about a pet. We unpacked and settled in, only to receive a call from the front desk asking if we had a dog. When we said yes, they informed us someone in the room next door was severely allergic, and we would need to move.

They then admitted they had no alternative rooms available. The “solution” offered was that we could only stay if we remained extremely quiet and used a back staff entrance to come and go—completely unreasonable for a family with young children. Ultimately, we were told we could not stay.

To make matters worse, because we had been in the room for just over an hour, we were still charged for the night, despite being forced to leave. This left us scrambling late in the day to find last-minute accommodations with small children and a dog.

This was not just an inconvenience—it was poor planning, misleading advertising, and terrible customer service. We did everything possible to confirm the property was pet friendly ahead of time, only to be treated as unwelcome guests and left stranded.

We will never stay here again and cannot recommend it. It’s a shame, because it seemed like the kind of place we could have enjoyed...

I came to this restaurant to try to rectify a previously failed attempt at good authentic fish and chips, on my vacation. This restaurant was on the beach at a very nice hotel, so I thought it was a sure thing. I ordered a 2 piece fish and chips for myself at $31, and a pint of beer, my wife ordered the coconut prawns for $16, and my 3 year old son ordered the seafood chowder. We decided not to order from the children’s menu incase it was too small. So this soup was designed for an adult.

The pint of beer showed up after our food.. The fish and chips was small for the price, the fish was good, fries were all between 5mm and 20mm, except for 8 of them. Starchy and part inside. Basically hash browns. For $31, I expected Atleast McDonald’s quality fries and didn’t get it. The seafood chowder was shockingly small. It wouldn’t have filled a dessert bowl, let alone a soup bowl, or even a cereal bowl. At $13, I’d expect a side salad or a fancy crusty bun, or atleast crackers.. The prawn were very small, curled up, and breaded with a fine crumb breading, and all looked identical. Factory produced, and dumped into the fryer.. I’ve had very same shrimp from a run-down cafe in a 100 person village in Saskatchewan.. We expected those huge, long, straight prawns, that restaurants always make, but I got 6 of these tiny ones, at almost $3 each.. the plates weren’t heated, which is usually done after hours at outdoor restaurants, so our food got cold very quickly. We ended up paying $74, and tipped to make it $80. I wasn’t hungry, but my wife and child were still hungry and we decided to just go get...