Brie & Barrel — Restaurant in Port Alberni

I would like to preface my review by saying that I did reach out to the owner of the restaurant to let her know how we felt about our experience. We were at the restaurant on November 25th, I emailed them my concerns on November 30th to which they replied on November 30th, please leave this email with us for a day to allow us to review it and we will get back to you with a resolution. As I hadn't heard back I sent a follow up email on December 11th that has never been acknowledged.

The room that was supplied was not adequate for the number of people in our party. On your information sheet you indicate that there is dancing available. Where did you expect us to dance? We were packed in there like sardines. In reality I wish you had of refused our booking. Both rooms were uncomfortably cold. Our staff gets together once per year for a celebration and many of us like to dress up. I was unable to remove my heavy wool jacket the entire night, and my feet didn't warm up until the next day. When booking I specifically asked that no shots or doubles be poured. Looking over the bill I can clearly see there were many shots. It also appears to me that the Martinis and special cocktails were also a 2 oz pour. If the oz was adjust, it looks to me like the price wasn't adjusted. Cocktail HOUR was set for 5:30. We arrived at the restaurant shortly after 5:30 and your staff was not ready for us. We expected that you would have been ready to receive us and that appetizers would start flowing shortly after our arrival. As per your information sheet, it indicates that appetizers would be passed and their would also be stations around the floor. There were no appetizer stations that I could see anywhere in the restaurant. Personally I had to chase down a server to get an appetizer. Also when the appetizers were being served there was no side plates on the tables. If cocktail HOUR was at 5:30, I would have expected dinner to be served between 6:30 and 7:00. Dinner was not presented until 8:30. This was way to big of a gap for people to go with little food. Dinner was a complete disappointment, there were people in our party who didn't even get any dinner at all. I also do not think what you represent on your information sheet even comes close to what we received. Looking at your online take out menu, if I was to buy your most expensive appetizer at $22.00, your most expensive main at $42.00 and a dessert for $8.00 the total bill per person would have been $72.00, much less than the $150.00 per person you have charged us. The veggies on the buffet were cold (and I was one of the first ones in line) plus the yams in the tray were not even cooked, the first tray of scalloped potatoes were okay but the second tray was like soup and extremely salty, there wasn't even a chicken leg per person and this dish did not get refreshed, the short rib was okay. Some of the gentlemen in our party wished to go up for seconds but that wasn't an option for them. In total there was four chaffing dishes on the buffet for 42 people and only the potato and short rib dishes were replenished. In the fifteen years that I have been organizing our staff Christmas dinner, my boss has never questioned the cost, with this event he did question why we paid what we did for what we received. Although your staff were friendly, they clearly were overwhelmed with our group. Service was disorganized and...

We were so looking forward to having a dinner at Brie & Barrel after reading such great reviews and all that excitement turned into a rather huge disappointment for me and my family. I have had many discriminatory experiences in this country, however this experience tops it all.

We booked a reservation for 8 pm and arrived 10 min early. One of the waitresses said it would take 5 minutes to set up our table, once done to our disappointment it was a table right beside the washroom. My wife wanted to sit in the patio where individual tables had nice fires and the whole experience looked exciting. I decided to request a table change, that request set in motion a series of events that made our dinner rather dull.

Our request was accepted and we were seated on the patio at a table with 6 chairs, I told the server there is an empty table for four and we could take that table as this table could be better served for larger groups. She refused too accept my request. Once seated we wanted to get the fire going and I noticed there as no propane tank connected to the table like other tables on the patio.

I asked the server (Freya) if we could get a propane tank connected and then she threw the rule book at me stating, "for the propane tank on these tables a concrete floor is needed". I again asked to seated at a vacant table with a propane tank and my request was turned down saying the "tank was empty". She very coyly said, "we can seat you inside" if you are feeling cold. By then we understood that discriminatory (or racism) was being doled out.

Next comes the food, what was a really long wait. The sever (Freya) brought us a dish of Barell Fries that we did not order. When I checked our order and said we did not order this, she was rather magnanimous and said, "its on me".

Well, we finished our dinner and I insisted that the Fries be added to my tab, and I also tipped her 20% for her discriminatory behavior because I respect the servers. Fellow East Indians travelling to Port Alberni, please thinks twice before eating at Brie and Barrel, you never know what discrimination you may have to face.

@ Owners: Please train your staff to be more tolerant to different cultures. The last thing I want when having a premium dinner is be treated with this kind of calculated discrimination.

Updated comment on 07/20/2021 in response to the owners comment: The fries were not complimentary, it was wrongly ordered. You should ask your staff to watch and learn from Laura at the the Pescadores Bistro in Port Alberni, she is world class. On hindsight I should have had my...

I really want to like this restaurant. I come up a few times a year to visit my in-laws and both experiences at this restaurant haven’t been great. I will say the atmosphere is beautiful, the marketing enticed me to check it out and the menu does look great. However, both times we’ve been here for a visit we’ve been disappointed. The first time we dined here we were seated on the patio at the only table without a fire pit (not a huge deal but didn’t make for a great experience) and only a couple of us really enjoyed our meals. The second time we went to celebrate my birthday and sat inside. The service was less than up to standard. We ordered our drinks which were ok, it took about 20 minutes after ordering our drinks to order our food, and we had to wave down our waitress who rarely stopped by our table to order more drinks. The wait for food was about 40 minutes, when we did receive our meals we were extremely unimpressed with the quality. The sushi on the vegan menu isn’t served with chopsticks, two out of four of us we’re missing an ingredient from our dish and when we brought this concern forward to the waitress, she offered to send us home with a box of broccolini on it’s own which felt kind of disrespectful in its delivery. The vegan menu isn’t great, two of us ordered one of the linguines and it essentially tasted like bland noodles with a small amount of garlic seasoning, not worth the $18. My partner had the steak and prawns and genuinely enjoyed his dish which makes 1 out of 4 who enjoyed their food alone. Over all, due to port alberni’s limited dining options I had high expectations for my experiences here and they’ve been...