Earls Kitchen + Bar — Restaurant in Vancouver

Edit: update post redemption experience provided. The service was upto the standard we expected with an even a very touch of a nice Polaroid picture taken when my camera wasn't capturing our snaps well. Really friendly and attentive staff taking care of us. It's pet friendly, clean and holiday festive themed. The holiday cocktails were lovely; esp the winter cocktail - we also tried the zero proof margarita which was enjoyed! The menu is still limited for vegetarian both in terms of portion size and variety, but the mushroom pizza we had again was worth it as well as a nice bourbon pie. With this experience, we'll be sure to visit again but urge that the menu is further expanded for vegetarians atleast with customizable options.

Visited for my mother’s 70th birthday dinner. It was unfortunately a regrettable experience. The ambience is fantastic with the winter wonderland theme , the mushroom kale pizza was the only positive in the dining experience - flavorful, creamy, hot, cheesy, but outside of it left starving and a series of disappointing events. We were informed the table was ready but made us wait 15 mins in the rain trying to coordinate cutlery, which was strange. We also asked to be seated away from the main door since it was really cold and had folks on the table who were plus sized and didn’t want to block the door. But it’s a busy Saturday, so while not ideal to be seated where there is obstruction didn’t think too much of it since it was a busy Saturday and was flexible. The vegetarian burger new on the menu was dry and uncooked and was hard like a hockey puck, was unable to even bite into it or cut it with a fork. The sushi was 3 blocks of tofu in rice paper, not bad but average, and not even close to the standards of earls though. Definitely not worth 20 bucks, doesn’t fill you up at all, barely even appetizer size there wasn’t even non alcoholic hot cocoa - which is basics for a winterwonderland theme/this time of year. We asked for hot water for my senior parents and it took 20 mins to bring that in. We asked for napkins which also took another 10 mins. We thought we can still make up with a nice dessert but was informed there was only one dessert option, like who runs out of dessert options at 8pm on a Saturday? Also No birthday cheesecake was given, earls is our go to for several birthdays and we were always given one. Music was too loud that the server could barely hear me speak and I didn’t want to raise my voice especially when I was disappointed. We could barely keep up conversation in our table too.

The server tried to help by trying to keep up a positive attitude but seems like a chain of issue stemming across the kitchen, menu setting and general management. This is NOT how we wanted to celebrate a special birthday for folks travelling from overseas. We spent about 2 hours here for almost no food, no conversation, and problem solving back to back and sending our reminders of missing hot water, chilli flakes, this and that and 60 dollars for nothing. By the time we got back home in the rain most restaurants were already closed and had to manage on a granola bar on a special dinner day. It was embarrassing to have vouched for a great experience at earls previously and to end...

a debate remains between my friends on if being a hospitality worker makes us more understanding during busy nights, or more nit-picky during slow service. our experience at this earls was more of the latter.

hostess was fine, warm & friendly. we’re sat and we get watered by a server (that does not have our section) minutes later, letting us know the server will be by shortly. they looked a little confused on where she was. it took us 15 minutes since being seated to be greeted, and by that time we had decided on our mains as well. there was a half joking, half serious timer set by one of my mates, and we debated leaving the restaurant without ordering when it went off.

the waitress was blunt. the exchange was off putting. i’d understand more if she had an autograt table, or was a busy section, but at this point in the evening the restaurant was half sat, with most patrons being at the bar. she had a pattern of quality checking us right as the food was dropped off. perhaps this is my nit picky side, but that ticked me off after our slow start. i barely even registered what was infront of my face before she ran off again. food was fine. we grabbed desert and were once again quality checked when we haven’t even grabbed our spoons from the place setting yet. “does everything taste good?” yeah idfk. the plate is still warm from the heat lamps in the kitchen, there is not a dent made on this meal. figure it out!

at the end of the night, our plates were put to the side, stacked neatly, with our cutlery on top, typical “i’m finished” fashion. we didn’t recieve a check-in until last call, where we asked for our bill. i want to say 20 minutes transpired, and another 5-10 until the bill was presented, but this entire slow service was a wasted 2.5-3 hours total. we only had mains and desert, at a cactus or joey’s - or dare i say any other earls - this would be 90 minutes-2 hours. no restaurant i’ve ever worked at would let me get away with not greeting a guest for 7 minutes, let alone 15. my mate asked for a box to take their leftovers home, it never arrived. we didn’t bother following up and asking again, considering the speed of our server.

we tipped below 15, it’s nice we even decided to tip after all this, and were met with a poorly masked reaction. i understand 18-20 is the new standard in vancouver, but that’s for standard service. this wasn’t even near the bar. serving anywhere, especially a well known name restaurant requires servers that put in the work to at least give you a tolerable & efficient time. this was beyond ridiculous.

we won’t be back...

Writing this review as a formal complaint and announcement to never bother to dine into this Earls Restaurant / Bar.

Would like to start off with the atmosphere, the music is too loud to be able to have a proper conversation with the people around you, would not recommend to coming here if you are wanting to catch up with old friends or even have any sort of fun night out, it is a terrible place to socialize, which is the main part of the restaurant itself.

Not only is the atmosphere terrible, the lack of customer service that these servers are trained for is beyond me. I would like to formally write this the server who took over our table, Justine, who quiet frankly failed to deliver any sort of customer care or connections, but succeeded in making us feel unwelcome, unsafe, and not acknowledge.

The food itself took almost an hour to come, and throughout the whole night our waters were kept empty with no form of refills that was coming by our table.

To add cherry on top of the already bad experience, a glass cup broke on top of our table, leaving one of the people in our group hurt and left bleeding onto the seats, not only it being dangerous to our group and the guest surrounding, it was also a major bio hazard to leave fresh blood near a table that other people are eating on near by. Aware of this situation, there was no help or care that was being provided, not even a notion of concern was shown, in fact we left to get cleaned up by ourselves, and the glass was still on top of the table.

Tipping is a very kind gesture that should be shown and given when dining into restaurants, however during this awful experience we had, it was fair to assume that the tip we would be giving is fairly low compared to a tip that would be given when the customer service meets our satisfaction, however Justine so rudely and unprofessional proceed to ask us how much we would be tipping when our tab would be paid by card, making it a confidential transaction that shouldn’t be instigated by a server, not only did she invade that form of privacy, she then mocked us into why the tip was so low, she then ignored us when we asked for the receipt of the purchase; she was serving other tables and left us to grab the receipt by ourselves after 20 minutes.

I encourage you to look into your employees, to prevent servers like Justine that make you loose customers rather than gain, as they won’t do anything to improve customer service reviews in the future, as we will never be returning to this...