Lil Chef Bistro — Restaurant in Squamish

This was a frustrating experience from start to finish. I grew up in restaurants—my family owned them—so I know what proper service looks like, and this was far from it.

It took too long just to be acknowledged. The waitress asked if we wanted a kids menu, then came back saying she couldn’t find it, so we had to use the regular menu for my son. She was clearly overwhelmed and couldn’t answer basic questions. She took our food order and i had to remind her to take our drink order. I ordered a vanilla latte, which she said they didn’t have—even though it was on the menu. We showed her, and she took the order.

When the latte arrived, it was awful—one of the worst coffees I’ve had. Off-tasting, possibly a dirty machine or bad ingredients. I couldn’t even finish it. Not sure what makes a latte bad.

Bruschetta came with no side plates. I asked for some and one of the 3npates were very dirty. She didn't leave it, that's not her fault. Stating so kitchen can inspect dishes better. My son’s cup also had grime inside it, that was noticed after the drink was finished.

We got our soup, but nothing else came. The soup was clearly from a powder mix—artificial-tasting, definitely not made fresh.

My son’s food never came. The waitress didn’t mention it, even gave the special menu he ordered from to another table. I had to find her to ask, and she said, “I don’t know. I just put the order in. The kitchen makes it.” No ownership, no follow-up.

I asked for a manager. She eventually brought the food out herself and claimed it had just been sitting there. The waitress later told us no one told her it was ready and they blamed her.

They said they wouldn’t charge us for the dessert, but when we got the payment machine (with no actual bill to review), the dessert was still on it. My friend unknowingly paid. I had to request the bill to see. The waitress did refund the the desser and ended up refunding the coffee too.

My friend tipped out of kindness, but she shouldn’t have. The issues weren’t just mistakes—they were signs of a poorly run front of house, lack of communication, and no accountability.

Managers are responsible for the overall experience. Servers need to follow basic service steps: greet the table, take drink orders, bring side plates, serve all food in a timely way, especially kids’ meals, and present the bill. None of that happened here.

Soup and coffee were bad. Bruschetta was okay. My son liked the bread pudding. But the service and communication were a mess. Whether this was a one-off or not, it reflects badly on management and training.

I don’t care who made the mistake or even that mistakes got made, especially if the waitess is new—I care how it was handled. And it was handled poorly. Management blaming the waitress and the waitress blaming kitchen to the...

Was so looking forward to a good experience, but sadly this wasn’t the case.

Let’s start with a glass of tap water which was so warm It could have come from a bathtub. Noticed later that the water container sits in the sun at the entrance so kinda amazing that nobody who works there could fathom what effect this might have. No ice offered or could be seen.

Sat down at one of the log slab tables and noticed the sleeve on my shirt kept sticking, which I then realized was due to the table not being cleaned for who knows how long.

Started to look around and noticed crumbs on the chairs at not only my table but also the tables around me. As my eyes looked towards the dirty floor there was actually a fork with food smeared on it under my table. So appetizing!

At this point I thought the food must be so good that patrons overlook the obvious cleanliness issues, so I ordered the first thing on the menu - schnitzel with a side of home made potato salad.

Unfortunately the schnitzel was absolutely tasteless and the potato salad was an incarnation that did not suit my taste so I only had two bites of it. Shame on me for not carefully looking at the potato salad ingredients since there was no egg, mayo, you know the stuff you’d normally expect.

Anyways I worked my way through half the schnitzel and asked for the bill. The waitress asked if I wanted a to go box and I said no, thinking this would prompt her to ask if I enjoyed my meal - but she did not.

Anyways this will be my last visit to Lil Chef since it didn’t meet expectations on so many levels, despite being fully staffed and not busy at all.

Though I love supporting local business, this one simply does not deserve our patronage I’m...

Haven’t been out to breakfast for a while and decided to give this place a chance based on the reviews. We were sadly disappointed. The morning started off with my wife’s coffee. She thought it was weird that the sugar shaker had both brown and white sugar in it. The expression on my wife’s face after a taking her first big sip was priceless. It wasn’t sugar. Lol After the laughs were over, the waitress came by to take our order. Firstly my wife is vegetarian and ordered a couple benny’s. One was the portobello and the other option she asked about was the spinach with peameal as another vegetarian option, to which the waitress replied yes. Secondly, once we mention the sugar/ salt prank to the waitress, she told us that another server did mention that she may have accidentally put salt in the sugar shaker. You would figure if they knew about this before hand that you would try and avoid this situation from happening. I guess they just didn’t know which shaker it was. My wife got a new coffee and tested the new shaker before using it. Our food came super fast which was awesome, but we had no cutlery to dig right in. And this is when we both learned that peameal is actually bacon. Instead of making a fuss and wasting a Benny, my wife gave me the bacon and just got a side of avocado. The eggs themselves were fantastic, but the potatoes were dry and cold, definitely not freshly made. I’m not sure if we just came on a bad day, but I wouldn’t recommend this place for breakfast. Maybe their lunch and dinner might be...