Cora — Restaurant in Sherwood Park

Will not be returning to dine here after a very poor experience. My son had poured 2 packets of sugar onto his paper kids menu. Upon seeing this my partner and I removed the sugar packets from his side of the table and isolated the mess to the menu to ensure it would not spill onto the floor or table. As the server, Sean approached he saw this and took it upon himself to try and scold our 3.5 year old child, approached his side of the table and tried to yank the menu from my child’s hands before my partner and I got involved and told him to back off. My son was startled and scared. We told him that we would ensure to discard the paper menu and sugar so that it would not create a mess. And he continued to complain about how he did not like it. He left and came back to the table to take our order. We were so uncomfortable and upset at this point that we considered leaving. He approached our table this time with a change of attitude telling us a story of how he’d make a mess of his water when he was younger at the table, laughing it off. He tried to approach my son again and was trying to be friendly - I asked that he not speak to our son. To which he said “why he doesn’t like me?”. I simply put my hand up requesting that he stop. We decided to stay and placed our order. However by the time our food arrived we had honestly just lost our appetite. We asked for the bill and left. My husband called into the manager who apologized and offered us a free meal. But this isn’t about a free meal and we will not be returning for a free or paid meal to this location again. This person needs to be removed from serving children or needs to be provided with additional training. It is not the fact that he had an issue with the sugar. I get it, it is not ideal obviously to have sugar spilled but there are countless ways to approach the situation. Accosting a young child as a grown adult is intolerable and inappropriate. In no situation should an adult ever approach a child in a manner that scared them. It is absolutely unacceptable. Eat at this “family friendly” establishment if you wish, but just know that your child will be shamed and berated for being a child. I really hope the management takes this feedback into consideration and makes it a priority to ensure this individual never does that to a child again.

RESPONSE TO OWNER:

“He did not intend to be aggressive” is really what you’re going to try and tell me?

He exclaimed “No! No! No!” as he whipped across my son’s side of the booth and began to rip the menu off the table and out of my son’s hands. Before I physically had to put my arm out between him and my son. My husband also had to put his arm around our son and pull him away from Sean. That’s how close in proximity he was to our child. His “intention” may not have been to be aggressive but his actions including his behavior and tone frightened a child. What would you call that? How can you possibly defend that as management?

I don’t believe that you are taking any of the feedback from previous reviews including my experience seriously as there are multiple reviews about this server and yet he continues to treat patrons poorly making them feel uncomfortable and upset.

I did not want him to manage the situation in a friendly manner after I requested he stop interacting with my son. I wanted him to respect my wishes and STOP taking to my son. PERIOD.

He can speak to the adults and guardians of the child. Not the child.

I do not care that Jack is a frequent visitor and has had “generally good experiences”. Those generally good visits which were mediocre at best were cancelled out by the extremely uncomfortable and upsetting visit we encountered yesterday as a family, with our child.

Your dismissive, management curated response and attempt to diminish the severity of our experience is highly upsetting.

Again, eat at this establishment at your own risk. There are a number of reviews about this server and to date he is continuing to aggravate patrons that are mainly women and children (read the...

My Mom and I went there for lunch on May 4th. As we were standing in the entrance to be seated we were greated by a young man with blonde curly hair, looking very unimpressed. We asked if we could have a booth, to which he replied "I guess I can go clean one"... and let out a long sighhh as he grabbed a cloth and walked to the table. While we were waiting and he was wiping the table, a friendly young lady proceeded to seat us. After some debate on the menu, I ordered a grilled pizza sandwich & my Mom a tuna melt. We asked for salads as sides and when we asked what dressings were available, we're told " only balsamic, that's it.. :(. Not everyone likes balsamic dressing, so don't understand why they don't have at least 2 options to choose from. Sandwiches came pretty quick...side salads had nice presentation with sliced strawberries and coconut sprinkles, however, the lettuce was terrible...definitely not fresh, dry and limp pieces throughout. My pizza grilled sandwich looked quite burnt, I decided to take a bite out of it and sure enough the whole sandwich was ruined and tasted bitter, as you can see in the picture it was VERY well done. The waitress never came by and asked us how everything was, so eventually I was able to track her down while she passed our table and mentioned that the sandwich tasted burnt, to which she replied " I guess it does look burnt doesn't it"?!! Personally, I don't even know why a waitress would serve this to someone. I decided to have a tuna melt as well, and that was brought out quickly. Extra napkins were scare, besides the one that wrapped the utensils, we asked for more but they never came, so we used the ones under the teapot. The waitress never asked if my mom wanted a water refill for her tea, at one point she actually walked by with a coffee pot and said "oh never mind you're drinking tea not coffee", and just proceeded to keep walking quickly, we didn't even get a chance to ask for more water..... I also did witness the boy, with the scraggly blonde curly hair, running his hands through his hair on several occasions while answering the phone and walking around and then bringing plates of food out to tables, which I found very unsanitary, as I'm sure he doesn't wash his hands every time he runs them through his hair and delivers food. All in all we were very disappointed for our lunch, especially for what we paid and will definitely NOT be RETURNING to this establishment. We actually came here when it first opened and it was fantastic, not sure what's going on now, but somebody needs to tighten up the reins. UNFORTUNATELY, we won't recommend this place, especially...

When your visit starts off with your server (Sean) offering to sit at your table if you give him bacon, you know your Sunday morning is bound to be a "treat".

Table of 3 and he made each one of us uniquely uncomfortable. From fixating on the rainbow text on my friends' chest to my jewelry (which, when not responded to positively, he then negged), to attempting to start political discussions on the renaming of Oliver, to odd and hard-to-stop (as in I had to get mean, literally tell him "I do not care" and that STILL didn't work) interrogations on the founder of a local campus, to assuming two friends of (assumed) opposite gender seated next to each other are a couple; each interaction with him made the experience worse.

Add to it overpriced eggs benedict with grainy hollandaise and half-cooked pancakes and you get a bad time.

Made even worse when the server was not tipped (honestly it takes a lot for any of us at that table not to tip), proceeds to loudly comment how "oh you didn't like my service?" and then attempt to press for answers.

No, Sean. None of us liked how you tried to shoulder your way into our table or conversation, tried to steer us into political discussions, would NOT shut up about irrelevant questions or moral judgements on the founder of a local institution, or kept fixating on the two femme-presenting people.

To the manager's credit, most of the other staff seemed reasonable and friendly, and my friend received 50% off the undercooked pancakes.

Won't be visiting Cora's Baseline again, unless after 11am and I get enough alcohol to not remember it. For a fraction of the price and twice as good service, I'll be frequenting Tutti Frutti. A shame, as I'd love to support a bilingual business, but I'm just not interested in an invasive food service experience.

EDIT: Disappointing to see the owners defending Sean. His behaviour was too insistent and consistent to be accidental and certainly was not a misunderstanding. ABSOLUTELY never returning given this new additional information and will be speaking to those I know in the Park to encourage them to also avoid. Also, if you don't pay your servers enough to not care if they're tipped or not, even more reason not to support...