Billys Taphouse — Restaurant in Town of Essex

This was on Friday night, October 18, 2024 at 6:30 PM. So I’m not sure where to start because this was absolutely the worst experience I’ve ever had at a restaurant in my entire life!! The waitlist is a joke. Checked online and it said no wait. Got there and they told my wife and I that it would be an hour wait for a table. Now they did have a table on the patio for us to sit at as an alternative, so with that being the only option we took it, even though it was 60° out. When seated we were told that by the hostess that she would try and find a waitress for us! What??? Was she missing? Was there an Amber alert out for her??!! That’s an absurd thing to say. The waitress finally showed up a half hour later and we were able to get water 10 minutes after that. She came back about 15 minutes later and took our order. I also ordered a beer which took about 10 minutes to get. During this entire time she never once apologized for the wait or communicated that the kitchen was way behind on getting food out. We later found that out only because another waitress told the couple that she seated next to us about the wait. Had we known this from the start, we would not have stayed. After an hour and a half of getting nothing but a beer and water, with no offer to get more water or another beer, as well as freezing our behinds off now that the sun had set, I decided to go inside and find our waitress to see how much longer our food would be. I asked another waitress to please get our waitresses attention so we could find out. Upon doing so she said the order hadn’t even been started!!!! Absolutely no “I’m sorry” or any type of apology. The other waitress said that there was a hockey tournament in town and that’s why they were slammed. While I can appreciate that, nothing was ever communicated to that effect to us at any point in time during this visit. I told her to cancel the order and I just paid for my beer and we left. Cold and hungry and thoroughly disgusted!!!! I don’t care if this is the best restaurant in the entirety of Canada, North America or the world. I would NEVER step foot in this place again and would highly recommend that anyone I know or any of you reading this review, don’t go there! Obviously management doesn’t care enough to take care of communicating to people what is going on in their establishment. A little communication would’ve gone a long way in this situation. I also highly doubt that I will hear from anybody at the restaurant because of the lack of communication at the restaurant, it’s doubtful they will communicate anything regarding this review. Could not rate food because we never got any. Can’t give zero stars or I...

This was by far the most disappointing experience I’ve had. My sister, who’s a vegetarian, specifically ordered vegetarian nachos, and the waitress (Macy) confirmed it. However, she came back with nachos that had bacon on them. When we pointed it out, she explained that their regular nachos come with bacon and offered to replace them without bacon. A couple of minutes later, she returned and said the manager insisted we had to pay for both servings. When we tried to explain, she insisted that since the menu listed bacon as an ingredient, we were still responsible for both orders, despite her initial agreement that we had ordered vegetarian nachos. Very frustrating. We won’t be coming back.

Other pointers: She forgot our waters twice, we waited 20 mins for water. She forgot our straws, we ended up grabbing on She also did not ever return to the table. She had another waitress cover. The food was otherwise good. The second waitress was extremely...

We decided to try this place for the first time.

We had calamari for appetizer. Calamari was rubbery and slimy. Not great. 5/10.

Burger with fries. Burger had bacon. Bland bacon. The burger was dripping liquid. I reckon it might have been from the lettuce and tomato.

The burger was hot but lacked flavour. It wasn't something I'd go order again or go back for. The fries were ok. Typical. Everything seemed under seasoned. 6/10

Also in our party someone had the grilled chicken sandwich and fries. Same thing. They thought it was underwhelming and bland. They asked for no cran orange Marmalade and it was still put on the burger. 6/10

Another in our party had the turkey club and fries. Again nothing to wrote home about and underwhelming unfortunately. 5/10

We probably won't be going back. Prices seem steep but expected in these inflationary times.

Service was good but the server never asked us if we wanted drink...