Chewies Oyster Bar Kitsilano — Restaurant in Vancouver

Chewie's changed their menu at the beginning of spring and unfortunately it has not been for the better.

After a day spent officially kicking off the arrival of summer, myself and two friends were starving and looking to open up our wallets -- to put the cherry on top of an incredible day, as it were. Two of us are locals and had been here many times, but our third is newly-arrived and had never heard of it. "Never heard of Chewies?! Oysters, boozy caesars, and delicious meat? Easy choice, you're in for a special treat."

Upon arrival, we managed to snag a patio table after a 5-minute wait. The evening was really getting dialed in and the good times seemed to be rolling, so we started off with drinks, a dozen-and-a-half oysters, the jar o' pickles, and the shrimp 'n' grits. At the same time, we asked to follow our starters with a 1/4 lb of the blackened catfish, 1/2 lb of cochon de lait, cornbread, and braised greens. Our server repeated the order to us from memory and off they went, leaving us impressed at that mental acuity.

Things quickly took a left turn. One of us was driving that night and asked for a single caesar instead of a double (the double is standard). When bringing our drinks, our waiter ended up forgetting which were the doubles and which was the single. Not a big deal and we figured it out, but it was but a hint of things to come.

Next, came our starters and, thankfully, it's pretty hard to screw up oysters because the jar o' pickles and shrimp 'n' grits were a joke. "Jar" is a very, very generous term being used here and, likewise, the portion size of the shrimp 'n' grits was underwhelming. Okay, fine, they're starters. We're in good spirits anyways and this is making good material for jokes.

Then our main share plates arrived. The cornbread, probably one of the cheapest things to make on the menu, also suffers from questionable portion sizes, presented as a semi-circle cut into four triangles (that's $1.25+tx per triangle). The "1/4 lb" of catfish was very obviously a fraction of the size of our 1/2 lb of pork, which was dry and lifeless. We never even receive our braised greens. Will say this, the single bite of blackened catfish we each received was delicious.

It breaks my heart to write this review. I love(d) Chewies and we were looking forward to sharing it with someone new to cap off an amazing afternoon. Although there was very little that could ruin the entire day, spending over $200 only to leave hungry, disappointed -- and frankly a little embarrassed -- definitely put a...

Extremely disappointed. I have never experienced such poor service at a 4 star rated restaurant. Our party ordered a total of 20 oysters. When received we proceeded to eat a total of 7 oysters. On the 8th oyster we found a hair and walked up to the bar and told the staff. The staff sent us another plate of fresh oysters but only provided a total of 9 as shown in the photo. 9 + 7 eaten is 16, so, we are missing a total of 4 oysters. Again, we walked up to our server and told them that we were missing 4 and he said “So you want us to give you 20 new oysters including the ones you guys ate?”. We said, “No, you guys owe us 4.” He said it would be only 3, so we told him that we did not eat the one with the hair and even pointed it out to him in the trash bowl. My boyfriend told him to count all the oysters in the trash and new ones that they gave and then he finally counted 17 plus the 1 with the hair. I was extremely frustrated already with his demeanour and attitude so I said, “It is not that confusing”. He proceeded to talk back and even swear at me, taking down his mask under his nose exposing his mouth during Covid… Super unsafe and not following restrictions. I asked the bartender for the servers name and was told, “You can ask him yourself, he is your server”. So, I waited for the server to return and asked for his name. He asked why so I proceeded to tell him that we will be writing a review on our experience. Our server told us “just write the reviews, we are just the 2 dudes.”

I know that the customer isn’t always right. But this is truly disappointing when even though the customer was right, they did proceeded to give us attitude and not even apologize. We lost our appetite and wrote this review instead of eating.

Follow up…when the dessert came out there was another hair.. We are never coming back to this place. Left without eating. The corn soup, the appetizer was the only thing that did not have a hair in it… Danny was the only staff who was able to listen and apologized. Thank you Danny, we appreciate your sincerity.

Last update, they finally came up to apologize after the owner of the restaurant called them. “You guys clearly don’t like us so you don’t have to come back”. Super...

I wouldn’t recommend this restaurant at all. The food was mediocre, the service was bad and the servers were rude. My friends and I waited for 30min outside the door because the front desk person told us it will be a 5min wait. She ended up saying she will call us when our table was ready but she didn’t. She ended up giving our table away in front of us, just to say there’s a better table which was another 10min wait. The table wasn’t better and frankly we were all very annoyed. When we sat down, we waited about 10 minutes to get greeted, we were ready to order our drinks and food but the servers were doing there own thing. That evening we had 3 different servers, the servers had no communication between each other and they kept asking if we ordered. It was very irritating explaining that we already ordered or that they missed an item because they had no clue what was happening. There should have only been one server serving us. The food we ordered took extremely long that my friends and I were ready to cancel our order and go somewhere else. 1 out of 3 servers who came to our table kept saying our food was coming up but it didn’t. When we finally got our food, it wasn’t that great at all. The Cajun fries in the poutine was overpowering and I got 3 cheese curds in my poutine. My friends got the Mac n cheese and it was bland noodles tossed in breadcrumbs. No flavour and not even a pinch of salt. When we got the bill, 3/5 of us tipped and tbh I didn’t want to tip them for there awful service but I did end up tipping them 15%. The two who didn't tip, the server noticed and gave them a glare, then he looked at my friends and I and said thanks for the tip. We all noticed he was passive aggressive for no reason because he was only one of the servers who served us and he shouldn’t have been upset about a tip when he was passive aggressive and getting annoyed with us when we asked him how long our food was going to be. Worst service, I’ve had in a long time. I wouldn’t recommend this place at all due to servers being uncoordinated and unprofessional. The food wasn’t great at all and for the food to take so long it should have...