The Thirsty Scholar — Restaurant in Saskatoon

I tend to frequent this place with different groups. I have been here with coworkers, groups of friends and my wife and I had a 30+ person post-wedding celebration upstairs in the private room.

The drinks are priced on par with most other pubs in the city and the food tends to be fresh and as expected for pub style offerings. The service is usually fairly good other than the odd few that seem to have a bad day every time they've served us. However, that hasn't deterred us from returning.

For smaller groups, this place is a good spot. Even when it's loud during busy times, you can still converse and have a good time.

For larger groups, it's a bit more tricky due to being spread out, but the place has enough room around the tables to wander a bit to connect with others sitting further away.

For events, the upstairs area is fairly dated. It could definitely use a solid cleaning (especially behind the very dirty bar), a floor refinish, a paint job, etc. It took some extra decorating finesse to make it look good but it was still a well-chosen spot for our event. The manager we dealt with for our event (Mark), was very accommodating and made sure we had everything we needed. This included specially ordering the type of alcohol we wanted served. We also had a private bartender who was fantastic! They followed our instructions on how to mix our signature cocktails and our guests said they really liked their happy and friendly nature. Our bartender felt more like a family member than staff.

We will continue to be...

I have always enjoyed going to The Thirsty Scholar for food and drinks, however yesterday was not a great experience. I will not be going back nor recommending The Thirsty Scholar to anyone.

When we first got there, the server took over 15 minutes to even bring us some menus and take our drink order. She served people that arrived after us first. When she eventually came to take our food order, she forgot her pen so she left to go get it, but then started serving other customers leaving us waiting for another 10 minutes.

After we had eaten I asked for the bill. She never came back so I went up to the bar to pay bill. However after reviewing my bill I noticed the prices are $3-$4 more than what is listed on the menu. For example the menu lists the steak sandwich for $19.99 but the price on my bill was $23.99. I asked the server to check this. She looks at the menu then asks another server about it. Both of them no clue, doesn't even go ask the manager about it. I was in a rush so I didn't have time to talk to the manager. I just paid the bill and left.

So my advice to the management is please train your servers better and update the prices on the menu. It is false advertising otherwise.

In terms of the food, it was just ok. The quality and quantity have gone down. The steak sandwich was a bit under cooked and did not have very much flavor. The amount of fries was very small too. All this for $23.99?

I really hope they improve their quality...

We usually enjoy eating here but over the last while the service has really dropped. Every time we have come in the last year there has been a mix up with our order. There are currently 12 people including us sitting in the back area so I can’t even say the mix ups are due to it being busy. Today’s experience has included: scholar chips ordered and then after 30min we asked for them again, “oops sorry, I forgot” was our response. Then we ordered and didn’t ask for complicated items, no onions on my burger and a BBQ chicken burger for my companion....well onion on my burger and the completely wrong burger for him. So we sent them back and as the table finishes eating we are still without food. So far there has been no offer of compensation and our drink glasses sit empty while we wait for the return of our server. Alas I fear that I will go hungry and thirsty as we wait for her to reappear. Next time our group, who has been loyaly coming here every Saturday for a few years, will be finding somewhere else to become loyal to. This is really as disappointment as the food is really good.

Update: received our bill no compensation offered. Asked why there was no compensation. Got 50% off the wrong burger for the delay in it getting to us “since you ate the whole burger that was remade for you” also got dinged $0.75 for extra dill dip (not asked for) but included with the Scholars Chips. Though our water glasses...