Shift Kitchen & Bar — Restaurant in Sechelt

The food is great, but that's about where it ends.

This experience was enough motivation to write our first online review. My boyfriend and I decided to try Shift for dinner and when asking for a table for two, we were told they were currently full and asked if we would like to be placed on the waitlist. She said there were three groups ahead of us, and takeout would take 50min+, so we decided to go on the waitlist. We waited for literally over an hour before they called us, right as we sat down at a different restaurant.

Ok, ok. Maybe they were super busy (even though we saw many people come and go, and empty tables.) We still wanted to give the food a try. The next night, we decided to place an order for takeout. We ordered the lasagna and chipotle chicken bowl, with a side of fries. We picked up the food an hour later and it was great! We were super excited. My boyfriend saw on the menu that they offer medium done burgers, so we thought we would come back.

We thought maybe we could eat in if we came in between lunch and dinner service (4:30pm). We asked for a table for two again, and once again we were told we would have to be put on the waitlist. But, that is time, we are first in line and someone is about to pay. So we thought no problem, we can wait again. We sat again in our car as we watched people come and go. Frustrated, my boyfriend went up to see if perhaps they had missed us. Nope - after waiting another hour, we were still on the waitlist. She explained that they had reservations, and that's why people were coming and going. However, on their website it says reservations are only for parties over 5 people. When he brought that up, she said that the website was wrong and that they take all reservations. Ugh!

Finally we were seated and were able to see the problem up close. There were empty tables all around us, with staff running around and talking to each other while at the same time seemingly getting nothing done. It seems like the whole service team is not on the same page. Right after we put in our drink order, our actual server came up and asked us if we wanted any drinks. A mistake, no problem. We ordered the yam fries and onion rings. Again - the food was super good! The only saving grace.

The whole reason we were excited to order the burgers was because you have the option of how well done the patty is cooked. We ordered our burgers with no mention of this - we only had the opportunity to ask about it approx 20 min later which we assumed would have been too late, but she said "nope not too late!". Odd.. we ordered 20 min ago, we thought it would be cooking by now.

After what seemed like forever, we got our burgers. The kitchen staff are on point, because we loved everything. The fries are excellent. More poor service, though. We were asked if we wanted more water, and we declined. 2 minutes later, more water was given to us. A different server laughed to us and said our server (the manager Emily) said to give us water even though we didn't want it and to lie and say she didn't hear us if we asked why. The servers continued to talk to each other about their own lives, very well within range of us hearing. The vibe was overall chaotic, filled with miscommunication between staff. We felt very uncomfortable the entire time. We were so surprised how many staff were working for the amount of time we waited for everything.

Long story short: order take out in advance, do not...

What a disappointment. My girlfriend and I waited for a table to free up for 15-20 minutes. Not that big a deal, especially with restaurants dealing with Covid measures etc. But once seated, we were ignored for another full 30 minutes. The waitress began serving parties that came in after we did. Moreover, there was a group of people who were friends with the waitress that came after we did and were given service, drinks, food, before us and anyone else. Seriously? I’m not sure if the staff here are unprofessional or just incompetent. We decided to leave and give our table to someone else waiting. Hopefully they had better luck. In this day and age where restaurants and local businesses are struggling, you’d think the staff here would do better. We won’t be coming back.

Edited in response to owner:

Thanks for the reply. I truly would have appreciated an apology and left it at that, with the intention of coming back for another try in the future. But instead you’re condoning your poor service. So let’s break it down...

If it’s a miscommunication with your servers. By definition, that’s incompetence. And judging by some of your other reviews, this is not the first time this has happened.

It’s great you have locals who are regulars and are happy with “ok” service. My bar is set higher. And if they arrived after us and were served before us, what difference does that make? That’s still terrible service regardless if they’re friends or not.

30 minutes, 25 minutes, 15 minutes... Who cares? What level of wait time does your management consider acceptable? The bottom line is you had customers waiting, ignored them, served others, and then did not take ownership of it when you were called out. Moreover, if you noticed us leaving, why didn’t you say anything and attempt to correct the situation? Seems like you had all the opportunities in the world to provide outstanding service but didn’t.

All I had to do was get help? It’s not my job to do that. I don’t go to a restaurant to seek out help from the staff. It’s YOUR job to provide that.

Of course I went online to share my experience. No one there would even talk to us LOL.

As for the free meal, I could care less about that. I’d rather pay a premium for good service... The first time.

Best of luck with your...

We came here for dinner early Friday evening. They advertise themselves as serving global, fusion cuisine so I was excited to try some Asian inspired food, since it's hard to find Asian flavours on the coast.

I was wildly disappointed.

The "Chashu Rice Bowl" was advertised as chashu style pork belly with kimchi and marinated egg. The "chashu" was unseasoned skin-on pork belly that was charred to death. Every bite was fatty and bitter. Even after cutting off the blackened edges, I couldn't taste any seasoning and it doesn't matter whether you're making Japanese style chashu or HK style char siu or any other Asian style of pork - it always has seasoning. But not here. It was bland and bitter. It was served with vinegar coleslaw that they were calling "kimchi". It did not taste fermented or spicy. And finally, one uncooked piece of wilted bok choy. I tried one piece of meat and left the rest. It felt like the chefs knew about things like chashu and kimchi but had no idea how to actually use the flavours or cook the ingredients.

We also had the meatball appetizer. It was fine, but took a long time to show up. There was a white sauce on top of the marinara, which was unnecessary.

My partner ordered the Classic burger with cheese. The fries were greasy and tasted of old oil the burger was "okay".

I am not sure how this place has such a high rating but I did notice that most of the older clientele seemed to be there for the happy hour booze. So maybe grab a few drinks first and everything will...