Mainstreet Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Trent Lakes

If there was a way to give this restaurant less stars I would. Showed up at the restaurant around 6 pm last night for dinner. The host let us know since they were too busy, despite having visibly empty tables, and would call us in an hour to give us one. We left our information and waited till 8 pm without any call or text from the restaurant because we had waited so long. When we got back we were told we would have to wait another hour and 45 minutes. That was when my husband spoke up and told the server that we had already waited 2 hours for a call back and have not heard from them. We spoke to three different servers before one would seat us. The other two servers seemed like we were bothering them and didn't want to believe what we said. We were sat and waited 20 minutes before someone even checked in to see if we had anyone ask for drink orders. We ordered a coca cola and a sprite along with a small ceasar salad ($9), fried mushrooms ($15) and a plate of nachoes ($19) as the kitchen would not allow us access to the full menu even though it was their miscommunication that caused us to miss out on it. The drinks arrived and tasted like it was the end of a syrup bag. It would have made sense if it was only one of our drinks but when its two different soda flavours, it's the management team skimping by watering it down or not properly training their staff to switch out the syrup dispensers. When we got our food, the salad was missing, the mushrooms were all of 8 pcs with a tiny drizzle of sauce on top and some lettuce as garnish, and our nachos were the most disappointing part of a meal we have ever had. All the nacho chips were completely smashed like they came from the very bottom of a bag and only a few were laid on top strategically to hide the crumbs they tried to pass off as a meal. I tried my best not say anything but that was not ok so i told our server. She just said ok I'll give you 50% off this plate since you have eaten some of it (we had about maybe a couple of chips because nothing else you can even grab at and we didn't see the issue until they were picked up) and said that we should just come back on the weekdays instead. I have worked in the restaurant industry for years and this made me feel like either the staff was not trained at all, could not care less about their jobs or were feeling vindictive because they thought we were trying to cause trouble. We own a vacation property nearby and were hoping to make this a weekly treat for ourselves since we make a point of coming up for a few nights every week. But after this no thank you and we will be sure to tell everyone in our vacation area...

Wow...I am not exactly sure where to start and not in a positive way.

We are typically very understanding as I was a server for approximately 10+years. I know it can be a difficult and thankless job. Initially, the host was kind. We started by sitting at the outside bar waiting for a table which was completely fine. Our soon to be server took our drink order while we waited and we were seated quickly. Our server brought us our drinks pretty quickly so it was a good start, however, it only went downhill from there. I will always understand when a server is possibly...I don't know... maybe seated too many tables at once or experiencing other extenuating circumstances. It is very hard to take orders, take payments and serve both drinks and place orders in a certain amount of time when you are over extended. I completely understand! However, an hour after ordering our food, and just to clarify there were only 2 of us, I ordered wings and my husband ordered a sandwich. Still not necessarily an issue as the weather was nice enough. Our server said that the kitchen was behind and our 2 meals will still be 45 mins-1 hour (2 hours after ordering) away as a 15 person table order had been placed first AND "SHE WOULD KEEP US POSTED" and if we wanted to NOT wait that we could just pay for our drinks and go somewhere else to eat, no apology, no owness taken upon herself because it was the kitchens fault. It may have been but actions need to be taken to rectify the situation, whether in the kitchen or with the server. What kind of server who cares about the business that employs her would say that and thinks that is ok?? Go somewhere not so busy to eat??? I am guessing she forgot to place our order and blamed the kitchen. I have, done it myself at certain times...blamed the kitchen for a HUGE delay(not 2 hours Huge but)....however, I also know that IF it was the kitchens "fault" then they need/should expedite the order and if it was her fault that they could do it for her/your business as well. Not only that, there were tables that we recognized came in after us and not only served their food but finished eating. We ended up leaving out of frustration My parents used to live in the area and we stopped going for breakfast or lunch exactly for this reason. It could take 2 or more hours to order and eat breakfast, fine if you are retired or not in a hurry but we always thought it was crazy, I really thought with the new ownership it had changed. I have a gift card that a friend purchased for me and thought they were doing me a favour, however, now we are not sure if we ever want to eat there again. Super...

We visited one Sunday evening in July because our power was out so we figured we’d try a local restaurant- we hadn’t eaten here before. The patio looks great and is in a prime location. We typically drive to Lakefield to eat. We were told that many of the staff had been cut because of the weather (storming out, so not many boaters) - so we expected service to be a bit slow, which was fine. The staff were apologetic about it. The service was fine given the scenario - we weren’t in a hurry and couldn’t cook at home. People were waiting a while to be seated, etc but again; we were told they were short staffed. Our waitress told us that next time we want to eat out, we should go to Belly’s - even their own staff doesn’t recommend dining here.

We decided to go back today and it was very disappointing. A Sunday night, beautiful weather - we expected it to be busy on the patio. The hostess was not at the station to greet us (or any guests after us) - so we waited for 5-10 mins until she came back. She was not friendly or welcoming, but we got a table. We recognized that it seemed like things were a little slow again while waiting for our waitress to greet us. It did seem like they had at least 3 more servers today than our last visit. We decided our food orders so that we could place them when we placed our drink order. She took our drink and food orders… she brought our drinks and then we didn’t see her again until our food was served. She didn’t come back to refill drinks or check in between placing and receiving our order. We saw that the hostess and our server were prepping cutlery - but I think the priority should be your paying customers who are waiting, not silverware. We had to chase our server down for our bill. Safe to say, them being short staffed on our first visit was not the issue, this is clearly the norm.

We saw other customers waiting for far too long to be acknowledged, seated and even served. The wait staff and hostess were not attentive - not checking on their guests at all. We...