Belly’s Lakeside Bar + Restaurant — Restaurant in Trent Lakes

If you're looking to waste your time, your money, and your appetite all in one go, this is the place for you. We waited 15 minutes just to order drinks. Fine, maybe they were busy. But then it took another 15 to actually get them. Then we made the mistake of ordering food and waited over two hours. Not an exaggeration. Two full hours of watching staff laugh, scroll on their phones, and eat food straight from the kitchen while we sat there starving. We thought maybe they forgot us turns out, they just operate in slow motion. When we finally asked what was going on, we were told the food was “being plated.” That magical process took another 15 minutes. Yes, we timed it unlike the staff, we had nothing else to do. When the food finally arrived, it was barely edible. The tenders were disgustingly salty and weirdly mushy, like they’d been microwaved and left out. I had to stop eating them. The fries were alright, but we found hairs in them. The smash burgers were missing ingredients that were clearly listed on the menu (where were the tomatoes?), and the whole thing was drowning in sauce with no flavor at all. The homemade tortilla chips? Uncooked, floppy, soaked in oil, and just gross. When I asked for a new batch, they came out suspiciously fast, faster than the first batch by about two hours and they even had random spices that weren’t on the original ones. Pretty sure they gave us someone else’s order. The only decent thing? The dip. Not great. Just. not horrible. And to top it off? We all felt sick afterward. So that was fun. We tried to pay, but that turned into a 40-minute game of “let’s pretend we don’t see them.” Servers looked directly at us, then walked away. Maybe they thought we wanted to stay longer? Hard to say. During all of this, staff were hanging out, laughing, and eating in plain view. Super professional. I even saw someone touching their phone and then food, no gloves, no hairnet. Disgusting. The bathroom was the cherry on top. It’s not even near the restaurant, it's a gross little shed a walk away. One toilet for each gender. No paper towels. Almost no toilet paper. It smelled like it hadn’t been cleaned in a week. The sink barely worked and sprayed water everywhere but your hands. The “cold” tap was boiling hot. At least there was soap. Yay? Oh, and if you value personal space, don’t bother. They crammed random people together like it was some kind of social experiment or a speed dating event. Cozy, if you enjoy eating shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers. I won’t be coming back. Ever. I’ve seen other reviews with the same complaints, so clearly this isn’t a one-time thing. I came to enjoy the night and music with my family but ended up leaving very disappointed and now have felt ill...

We love and try to support local frequently as we know the importance being local business owners ourselves. We’ve given Belly’s multiple tries last year and were disappointed each time- mainly by the poor service but also by the menu. This year we found out that the menu had changed so we thought we would give it another try as we do love the location and it’s close to home for us. We were seated at 6:30pm on a Saturday which we know is a busy time. It took 15 minutes to get a drink and we were told that the kitchen was very overwhelmed and that they were spacing orders out to try to help the kitchen. We asked how long it would be for some fries or tater tots and were told 15 mins. We thought that was actually very fast. Fast forward to 8:35pm and our food finally arrived after another server asked us how long we’d been waiting and we told her 2 hours. The staff are super friendly and definitely mean well, and mistakes happen but reading another recent review of the exact same experience, we can’t help but feel like the staff are not well equipped to handle the job. We did receive a free beer and dessert which was a nice gesture however we had already had a few beers in the 2 hours and were full. Comping the food would have definitely felt like a better choice. The table next to us arrived at 8:30pm and the server let them know they were basically out of everything on the menu at that point. The table next to us on the other side ordered chicken wings at the same time as we ordered our burgers and it still took 2 hours. We realize the server likely forgot to enter our order. We know that finding competent staff in the Kawarthas is very difficult and we were still understanding of the busy time of day however we hope that the owners can read these honest reviews and coach their staff into giving a far better customer experience. We will say that when the food did arrive, it was really good. We wish the owners success and want to continue...

We arrived at 3pm and were seated, given menus and no one returned, I had to flag down a server to take my order - lots of staff and not busy, no one paying attention to customers needs. We finally ordered and thank god we ordered some food they had available, they were explaining to the table next to us that they were out of most items on the menu. We waited and waited and I went to the bar to ask a wait staff to check our order, she said she would but never returned to us, but remained directly across from us at the bar where there were no customers. We waited 1 full hour for our food and then flagged down a wait staff to ask for the bill for our drinks, we were fed up! The manager came over and told us that much earlier another table accepted our food order that wasn’t theirs 🤣. This is the worst lie I have ever heard. I told the manager if he could get the food out in 5 minutes I would wait - he said he could get it out in 6 minutes 🤣 more lies. The place was filthy, no one was happy with the service or food, the table next to us said eww when they received their one dish that was available (overcooked chicken tenders covered in salsa) There was at least 8 staff that had no training/direction. I believe our order was not placed in the kitchen or they ran of food to make our order. Crazy how there was no care or awareness of our wait time - we were obviously upset but still no attention. The restaurant was not busy So after 65 minutes of waiting for our food we left hungry. This place has changed ownership multiple times over the last 5 years. Someone needs to take it over soon or it will be run...