Charqui — Restaurant in Vancouver

TL,DR: Easily the worst drinking/eating experience I've had in this city - avoid this place. Longer details: We were ignored upon entering the place.. First red flag. Tried to order a beer and a margarita with half-rim salt. The server did not know anything about the beers - they couldn't tell me what kind of beer it was from it's brand name, or whether they had what I wanted. Red flag number 2. They also didn't understand the idea of applying the salt to only half the rim on the margarita glass, despite multiple times explaining. Bartender came over to table after ordering to ask so he could understand. Despite these red flags (should have trusted the red flags and my intuition and left!), I also ordered a salmon burger and olives. When the olives and margarita came out, they were TERRIBLE. Olives tasted like they came out cheap grocery store jars - poor quality, poor flavour, worse texture. Margarita was unbelievably bad for $16. Bar lime + Jose Cuervo over chipped ice. Realizing this was a lost cause, we asked to cancel the burger, and for a refund on unconsumed and awful quality items. The bartender then didn't deal with it, brought the burger anyway, and tried to dodge the issue. I asked again, at which time it was clear he was checking with some management/owner guy in the corner. I offered to split the losses and take $20 bucks back after having spent $60 on this awful experience. No go - owner guy was an asshat about it, made no attempt to improve anything. Seriously - if you're thinking about checking this place out, save yourself your money and pain and go to one of the other excellent places within a 10 minute walk of here. Absolutely...

UPDATE: Faith in local karaoke restored! We went back because they brought the MC back and it feels like karaoke again! I've upped my score and recommendations to match.

Not deleting my old review for posterity, but if you want to read what happened a few months ago, read below. Please keep in mind: THIS IS NO LONGER THE CASE. If you're looking for cozy karaoke bar vibes in Kits, this is the place.

OLD REVIEW: Karaoke Chaos

This place used to be our favourite for karaoke: good atmosphere, decent service, great karaoke host.

No more. Apparently they let go of the host and decided to let karaoke run itself since it's "automatic" (bartender's words, not mine). It's very not. And it really showed last night.

The bartenders are now in control of karaoke, which is a terrible idea since they already have a job to do and you need someone to emcee, manage the singer queue, ANNOUNCE singers (everyone had to scramble to the stage once they realized their song had started without them), and manage the mixing board (it was a mess). Plus, the host has to manage the vibe in the room and protect the equipment: one of the staff grabbed the mic to chastise a table at one point, which was super awkward, and the equipment got put through the ringer last night with singers bringing the mic out onto the dance floor, dropping the mic, and one person even tripped getting back on stage. Managing these sorts of things is what a karaoke host is for and last night was brutal without one.

Worst karaoke experience ever; we're not...

Visiting Vancouver and have been looking for a place to sing karaoke. Decide to check this place out and arrived at 9 when it started. Not many people there (at first) so the podium was pretty much mine as I went through my warm up songs. Had a bite to eat and kept going. Then the doors opened and within minutes it filled up with young 20 somethings. It was such a great experience re how friendly everyone was and the glowing look of life from their beaming smiles. Some of the people had amazing voices but it didn’t matter, good, mediocre, 1st time or veteran, the place roared with approval. Didn’t know a soul but very friendly like family. The Karaoke captain did a great job using barcode scanning for songs to be loaded so the music kept flowing. Music was good, food was good, staff were good, atmosphere etc were all good. What a great place and thank you for the memory which will be shared many times when I go back to Toronto. Next time I visit Vancouver this will be...