Prairie Ink Restaurant — Restaurant in Saskatoon

I had sent in a private email a month ago. I hate leaving public reviews without trying to reach out to the business first. I haven’t heard anything back. Not a peep. So here’s my review!

Tuesday April 9th. 6:30pm-8pm My Mom, Auntie (her birthday dinner) and myself attended dinner on Tuesday April 9th in your establishment. We had a lovely time. Food was great. Server was punctual. Until we ordered dessert and coffee, and I needed to use the restroom. I have never visited your establishment before, and was unaware of where the restrooms were. I made my way to the bookstore clerks, who at that time were eating cookies behind the desks. They pointed me in the right direction. Great. With less than 2 minutes of using the facilities, I heard a loud knock at the restroom doors. And in walks a gentleman, very hard to understand (as I saw after he was wearing a mask, and very muffled). He looked through the stall cracks and made direct eye contact with me!!! yelling at me! saying they were closed and I had to leave! Wow. Now. If the server who took our dessert and coffee order, 10 minutes prior to the closing time, would have let us know, or even the staff pointing me in the right direction to the restrooms, could have let me know that I had less than, literally, 2 minutes to use the facilities and leave, we would not have ordered dessert and coffee, and we would have planed to move our after dinner, dessert and treats to a different location. Once I came out of the bathroom, I asked to file a complaint with the gentleman that prior pointed me in the direction to the facilities, about the cleaner coming in and looking through the stall cracks. I was told I should have spoken up, that I was in the bathroom, and that it was my fault, they heard him from the desks. I said we are in a library, not a bar. You want me to yell through the door? “Yes” was the answer I received. There was one gent also accused me of making this scenario up. Wow. There was now the cleaner that had previously yelled at me, the gentleman who was munching on cookies and pointed me in the direction of the facilities, another gentleman, and a young lady, all siding and literally, yelling overtop of me, about how I should have known, they were closing at 8pm, and I that it was my problem, and I needed to leave. When I spoke about leaving a complaint with the company, they encouraged me to do so! After asking for names of the staff, I received names of Jeff, Curt, the cleaner who was not giving his name, and the young lady, who rolled her eyes and walked away from me. I was completely shocked and embarrassed. After this moment, I sat back down in the restaurant. My Mom and Auntie had just received coffee and dessert, everything had been paid for while I was gone. Please know that there were around 4 other tables with us in the restaurant at this time! We were not made aware of the closing times and the minimal time we had to scarf down our coffee and dessert! My Mom had gone up to the servers to discuss this matter with them. They smiled and said yes, he’s (the cleaner) has been here forever and he’s like that. Yikes. The communication between staff and guests were very poor. We found this act to be very inappropriate and unacceptable. Will not be back, and will spread the...

It was a decently busy night so there was a wait for our food but we didn’t mind since we were able to just catch up on each other’s day. Our server was super friendly (as they always are).

I got the bacon cheddar burger 🍔with Caesar salad 🥗as a side. Unfortunately I didn’t like the burger very much since it was driiiipping with oil. I mean it has bacon 🥓so it’s expected to be greasy but wayyyy too much for my liking. The taste is average; bacon made it good but the grease made it not so good 🤣 However, LOVED the salad 😍 it’s a basic Caesar salad but it was the perfect salad to dressing ratio!

Next, my boyfriend ordered a steak sandwich with tomato soup as a side 🍅. His was also a it’s good but not at the same time. The steak was more rare than medium rare (not sure if the picture reflects that well) but it was very bloody after one poke. He didn’t send it back since he can tolerate a bit more bloodyness but not me 🫣 flavour-wise he enjoyed it tho. As for the soup, he enjoyed it! He likes tomato-based soups so it’s a recommended for him (but would’ve been better if it came with crackers).

Prairie Ink has always been our IT spot to go for random date nights. Even tho each time has been a hit and miss, we love the atmosphere and enjoy walking around McNally Robinson’s right after dinner. Always such good...

Poor service yesterday evening 8pm. We were in for desserts and coffee. The last time we went to Prairie Ink 6 months ago service was slow as well, but not as bad as this time. Server did not come by the table for 10-15 minutes after we were sat, no acknowledgement at all from them during that time. The restaurant was about 2/3 full, not packed. About 10 minutes in we flagged down a different server to get our drink order taken. That server apologized for the wait, which was very nice of them considering it wasn’t their fault. We appreciated that they went out of their way to take our drink order. Hostess brought us waters a couple minutes after that point. Once our server finally did make her way over to drop off the drinks and take our dessert order, she did not mention anything about taking so long. As a server myself, the least one can do is apologize for the inconvenience especially if you’re going to take over 10 minutes to get to your table, regardless of whether or not a different server apologized previously. Desserts and drinks were tasty. But at $40 for three desserts, two beverages and a lack of timely service, we will be going elsewhere...