Birmingham's Vodka and Ale House Saskatoon — Restaurant in Saskatoon

Went Saturday evening around 6 with a group of 13-14 people and seated in the east semi private room. Acoustic’s we’re not very good for conversation and the music was too loud. We should’ve asked for it to be turned down but when you’re with a group you don’t want to be that guy and it wasn’t unbearable just made it harder to hear people. Not very many people in the restaurant or bar for a Saturday night. Waitress was attentive and drinks came out quickly. We ordered a bunch of appies for the table and then ordered dinner. Most people at our table appreciated the physical menu to the online menu due to it being hard to read online. I should mention our ages ranged from late 20’s to early 60’s. Appies were pretty good especially the baked chicken vodka cheese dip. Most people seemed to enjoy the mains. My wife had the chicken burger and said it was very good and I agreed as she shared some with me. I ordered the tuna poke salad which I was looking forward to as I have had poke bowls and other poke style dishes at other restaurants and really enjoyed them. The waitress said it was a new menu item also. I think it still needs work. The salad was a good size portion but was completely covered in deep fried wonton chips which were good but I found it made the salad taste too much like deep fry. I had to dig around to find the smaller amount of tuna that was buried under all the wonton. The tuna was supposed to be marinated according to the menu but I found it just tasted like regular tuna which I was ok with. The biggest disappointment with the salad was no dressing on the greens and other veg. There was a little aoli drizzle on top of the wontons but no soy vinaigrette as stated in the menu. The waitress came back at the start of the meal to ask how things were but then we hardly saw her again or I would likely have asked for some salad dressing. I didn’t end up finishing the salad and ate some of my wife’s fries which were very good. I think she may have been new and having a hard time by herself. As we were leaving around 9pm we noticed how much quieter the main restaurant was compared to the room we were in. I definitely wouldn’t book that room again with a bunch of people. And I would rename the salad the deep fried wonton and tuna salad lol,...

We were there for an education night about a month ago and were hosted in the back room. This had been planned for about a month or so prior. At the time there was maybe 4-5 tables in the restaurant and remind fairly quiet throughout the night while we were there.

Our education session started at 8pm I arrived shortly before 7pm. It took about 20 minutes to get a drink order in. And then when wanting to order food because people kept coming in for the presentation, the waiter (which there was only ONE for a group of 50 people, seems a bit ridiculous and actually felt bad for her) was wanting to get a round of drinks for everyone done before doing food, which ok fair. We could barely even get a second drink order in. However, with 5-10 people coming in every 10 min, meant no one was getting food orders in. One of our members approached the bar twice asking if we could place food orders and were told to wait.

Finally, approached the bar staff a third time (even asked if it would be quicker if we just ordered on skip the dishes to get our food) and finally 5 min before the presentation is set to start, the manager came out and started taking food orders. We then ended up getting our food fairly quick after (about 10-15 minutes or so) but of course it was quite disruptive to the presentation as there were some 40 odd meals to dish out.

Overall,

ONE waiter for a group of 50 people is unfair to the waiter herself, as well as the customers and made the service significantly slow. Many people only got 1 drink and a food order because the service was so slow (which many would have liked to have more).

The manager seemed fairly annoyed that we were frustrated with the slower service and only came to help her staff after she had been drowning / overwhelmed for almost an hour. She only took our food orders, refusing to take drink orders. NEVER apologized for the inconvenience or slow service.

I believe all bills were accurate tho for 50 people which was a plus.

Would probably not recommend hosting a larger party here unless it was more...

Booked a reservation and got told that we have to book a private room due them being booked with no room. I called and updated our numbers the night prior and we were half the amount of people (15). When we showed up majority of the place was empty. We didn't have any perks of a private room and service wasn't great. We ordered pizza to go ans it the box was completely covered in grease. We were just over $100 short of spending the $800. After inquiring why were told we HAD to book the private room at a $200 cost if $800 was not spent, when the place was empty all they had to say was "you should have asked". Sorry I should have asked if you still had half your restaurant booked still? Or as a restaurant you take responsibility and let your customer know that there are other options. Instead they put the blame on us for not asking... we asked so we were charged $200 for you to slide open doors and met with a simple yes.

Edit: To your respond of my review. I was NOT sent any contract with regards to the room so NO there was no contract that was signed. Maybe this is fault of the manager not following up. We were told that a group had a reservation of half the restaurant so if we would have to book the room. We were never informed that the other reservation cancelled. The fact that we were also told different amounts that we were off of the $800. First we were $120 off, and than it was $80 we were off by. And when I asked for the receipt I was told they would be sent but after another phone call to get the receipts was told that we had to come down to the restaurant to view them. The $200 was returned however you have lost my business as well as everyone that attended the function. And then the manager (cody) even said "why would you make a review, it will just get deleted, ypu won't get your money back" There was never any yelling done over the phone and it was 3 calls. One to ask if we were getting charged, one asking for the receipts and one following up with regards to...