Westlake Grill — Restaurant in Red Deer

Saturday afternoon around 2 pm....not another group to be found in the restaurant. Was seated promptly, but I was able to hit the washroom and answer 3 emails before the waitress came to even introduce herself. Order just water and was ready to order food as well. Ordered a salad, and she said thats it?" Ummmm, yeah, was I supposed to be ordering more? Meal came quick enough, but she didn't refill my water and then disappeared for the next hour...not kidding. Parched from lack of water, looking around with our plates on the table wondering if anyone worked here anymore, she finally came. Took plates and asked if we wanted dessert. I said just the bills, please, and she was quick with them. Now, this is the weird part...I paid and left no tip, neither did my friend. She asked if I was ok, ahhh yeah, I just wanted to leave after being here for 2 hours to have no water and a salad!! Then I asked if she did something wrong, so I told her... we had no service, like none. She said she got busy, and I assumed the downstairs got busy, but nope. Not a single soul down there as we walked out. She 100% forgot about us. Will not return for that reason...and my friend had goodish meal but bad service trumped that. On top of that, they play horrendously loud country music, like obnoxious and hard to have conversations. Zero stars if I could for atmosphere, service, and 2 stars for the $17 salad made with 1% cranberries and 1% feta/pear and 98% lettuce. Bravo on the markup 👏

*edit for the response of Manager. Nice to be blaming bad service on a few places I have reviewed on my account on me, the customer, adding that I should seek out management on site with the problem? Im the trend? How about the trend is that some restaurants have bad service and high prices on low quality food!! I shouldn't have to go looking for management after being ignored by your staff. The gentleman working behind the bar and the lady at the front hostess desk were both miserable looking to us as we headed out. We just wanted to leave a bad place behind us and then a bad review because people deserve to know. That's why google reviews exist. Try to better next time, and not blame the customer. The trend according to some of your reviews is bad food and poor service... the good reviews are the lucky ones. Oh, and incredibly shamless advertising your change of decor on my review and that people should come in. I expect good service, quality food for the high price of food these days, and to not be forced to eat ice cubes because my friend and I were...

We've been here many times before but this experience was truly terrible. This restaurant is absolutely beautiful but the service, menus and food needs attention.

A friend and I booked a reservation for brunch. Our server was attentive at first however we took a while to order and the service went downhill from there.

At the beginning, we received the brunch menu. There is only 4 options available and none of them are allergen friendly.

We then asked the server for a lunch menu, which we had to request more than once to get. When it did finally come we found it totally overwhelming. The menu lists a bunch of ingredients for each item without clearly identifying what the item actually is (same for the brunch). One of the items was an omelette that didn't even mention eggs. We had to ask the server to clarify what it was. The menu would be much better if it was clearly defined.

I am not able to eat eggs so I asked if the pancakes had eggs or if I could get them made without. The server acted appalled that I would suggest they don't make the pancakes from scratch. They weren't able to accommodate me for the pancakes. Unfortunately all other items on the breakfast menu had eggs. I then asked about the burger and was told its made fresh and has eggs as a binder for the meat, they couldn't accommodate this either (or the server wasn't willing to try). I then asked about the French onion soup, which was listed on the menu but I was told this was a special and it wasn't available today. I pretty much gave up at this point. The server never tried to offer any sort of solution. It was truly disappointing.

I know allergens can be difficult and I try to be super flexible when I go out to eat but this was just terrible. I could have had a 40 or 50 dollar steak for brunch but that wasn't something I wanted at 11am. I have been here many times before and have never had a problem finding something to eat. So this place has changed and not for the better....

After all of this, we were asked to pay so the server could leave. I don't mind paying so a server can go off shift but it'd be nice if it was done in a friendly and professional manner. We were treated as of we had worn out our welcome.

It's too bad to see such a historical place go this way, especially when Red Deer has few high end dining experiences. Sadly, I don't see a situation in which I would...

Food is great. Service is pretty good if you can get in. I called on Mother's Day morning, to see if they were taking walk ins (because most places do, but with it being mother's day, and we were riding our bikes there, I wanted to be sure we'd get in.) They assured me on the phone that yes, they were taking walk ins, but were completely booked as far as reservations go, also that there might be a bit of a longer wait for a table if we walked in. Totally understandable.

So, we all jumped on our bikes and rode there for breakfast.

When we got there we locked our bikes up around back and saw that the patio was completely empty, of the 10 or so tables back there, there was one being used.

When we came inside to put our name down to wait for a table, the server or hostess or whomever it was, told us they were not taking walk ins and were completely booked. I said I called and confirmed that they were taking walk ins, otherwise we would not have ridden our bikes all the way there. They said "sorry, nothing we can do." I pointed out that the patio was completely empty and they said "we're not taking any walk ins. We're fully booked with reservations."

We had to bike somewhere else.

Absolute garbage customer service. They made the mistake, they should fix it. But they didn't even try. Just so disappointing, this place used to be great, but after this experience, I can't really justify coming back or recommending it. There's lots of other great dining options in Red Deer now, and more opening every day, I recommend taking your money somewhere that treats there customers with a little bit of respect and is willing to fix...