Riverbank Bistro — Restaurant in St. Albert

Do yourself a favour and stay away from this “clown show” of a restaurant. It has the worst service I’ve ever experienced. We arrived at the restaurant at 7 pm, and were promptly seated. Unfortunately the service was all downhill from that point on. It took 17 minutes for the waiter to show up, and another 25 minutes for the pre-dinner drinks to arrive. Although the waiter wrote down everything our group ordered, somehow he totally forgot one of the appetizers until we told him, which we cancelled in the end because we feared it would take 30 minutes to bring to the table. Just as the last bite of the appys was eaten, dessert arrived. Of course it wasn’t our dessert (we were still waiting for our entrees), it was another table’s dessert. It took approximately 60 minutes for our entrees to arrive. We did complain to the waiter and he said he would pass on our complaint to the manager. In most professionally run restaurants, this would result in the Manager personally engaging with customers. Not here, it would seem the Manager was hidden away somewhere and left the dirty work to the waiter. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anyone in charge. The floor staff seemed to consist of mostly young, minimally trained people. It wasn’t like they were idly standing around, it was the opposite. It was unorganized chaos, in a half filled restaurant. For a meal that would normally take 1.5 hours, here it took over 2.5 hours. Although a few desserts were thrown in for free, it took over 20 minutes for them to arrive, now in a restaurant that only had customers at one remaining table. The food. Although the food was decent, it was way overpriced and the portions were minuscule as well. The cocktails tasted watered down.

In conclusion, the Edmonton area has so many great restaurants, that offer both fantastic food and service, so why waste your money and time...

I thought the food was wonderful, but the service could definitely use a matured touch.

We were the only table in at 4:30pm, and while half our party was still on the way, the waitress was not making any effort to gesture for a drink order while we waited. She sat us down at our table and walked behind the bar. We waited for some time before I finally asked to place a beverage order, and the response was almost had a tone that suggested 'oh ya, I guess I could'. Almost like it was a distant thought that hadn't entered their mind yet.

Then, the drinks took far too long to arrive at the table. There were only 2 other tables by this time, and we had placed our drink order before them, but it took about 15-17 minutes to get ALL of them. One was a simple Scotch with water on ice, and this came out (along with another) well-after the other drinks made it to the table, without reason as to why it took so long.

After they finally figured out which entrée belonged to what person, we did enjoy our meals. The food was amazing, and the atmosphere was alright, but the service is where our experience suffered the most. It feels like they had youthful staff on for their short Sunday shift, and they could use some more coaching on how to better tend to their patrons for higher satisfaction.

I would definitely return, but if my second visit had some of the same service experience as my first one tonight, then I would go elsewhere afterwards. Just for the satisfaction of feeling formally waited on, especially when the bill for just my own food and drinks was $160. I was paying decent money for a more robust experience,...

Came here for the first time to celebrate my birthday. If I could give half a star I'd give 3.5, but wouldn't round up to 4.

The service was friendly and prompt. The little things we take for granted were all there (water refilled, cutlery changed between courses, checked in on what we thought of the food).

The food was good but not great. We shared bites of each other's dishes but I'll focus this review on my own dishes and my wife's entree.

Started with the Beef Short Rib Gnocchi. The gnocchi is Parisien style which is why I ordered it. It was light and mostly fluffy. The short rib was super tender and the gorgonzola cream sauce tied the dish together well. It's a very rich dish and was wanting something acidic for relief. Overall a great dish.

For entrees we had the Citrus Glazed Duck and Bison Steak Frites. The duck was a disappointment. It had way too much cabbage which was put right on top of a tasty parsnip puree, which was a shame. The duck was slightly over cooked (still okay) but the signature crispy skin that you crave for with a duck dish was nowhere to be found.

I usually love bison. I didn't love this one. It was cooked to perfection (mid-rare), but the cut used left it a little too chewy for my liking. The fries and aioli were superb!

For dessert we had the key lime pie. The coconut crust sounded much better than it turned out to be. It left the crust a little too soft and I missed that crunchy texture to contrast the soft creaminess of the key lime filling (which was tasty).

Overall, an enjoyable but not...