Portland Craft — Restaurant in Vancouver

Surprised by how much I liked it. Busy place, but our server was great, very friendly, and helpful. I had the salmon burgers and it was one of the best salmon burgers I've ever had. Had the Porter beer, was excellent. Nice atmosphere.

I wrote this previous review some months earlier, and now I am editing it to share with everyone my massive disappointment in the Portland. I have been on several occasions, each time hoping for an improvement. Not sure what has happened, although there are a couple staff that are fantastic, who I recognized and they seem to recognize me when I go in, sadly though the food has dropped in quality, the service is abysmal. I'm not sure that I'll be going back. I have given them several chances because of the first couple of times I went in was first class. The service has become incredibly slow, the attention to the customers severely lacking. Wasn't even asked if my food was okay. Had to point out that they actually made me the wrong food. It wasn't even that busy in there when I made my order. My friends and I ordered a beer each, and it took 20 minutes for our beer to arrive. We were just about to get up and leave, when the one good server in that place saw that we were making motions and rushed up to see what was going on. He convinced us to stay, it took another five minutes for our beer to arrive. It took 45 minutes for our food to arrive. It still wasn't that busy. The place has great potential, if they can pick it up again, I'd be more than happy to give them my business.

I have for a while, been meaning to add to this post that I wrote a few months ago. The owner has since been in touch with me and I am yet to go back, but I have promised that I will. My friends have been back to the Portland since then, and they said they had a much better experience. So I'm looking forward to going again, and hoping that it is as good as it was the first few times that I went. Once I get back there I promise to let everyone know, that hopefully they are back on top of it. Although from what I hear, it's worth...

We came in yesterday as a party of 3 for dinner around 6pm. From the moment we walked in to leaving the whole experience was really disappointing, we had an evening event starting at 6.50 next door so had no choice but to ride the service out but would have left if we weren’t on a tight schedule. The server didn’t know if it was happy hour or not, even though there was a sign outside saying about the extended happy hour due to tennis. When asked what the daily specials were he went on to list the whole happy hour menu. When asked what the drink special cocktail was he also didn’t know and just said it was a double for $8 and did I want it. We asked him to find out what it was and ordered a round of 3 margaritas. The margaritas were terrible, the salt rim was so thick the salt went into the cocktail and flavored the drink to what tasted like saline solution. Whilst this whole thing was going on there was two staff sitting at the table next to us who heard us complaining to each other about our drinks, one looked over and chose to ignore us and go back to his phone. The food took so long to come out and was really disappointing, 2 burgers very dry and overcooked. I then ordered an aperol in hope that wouldn’t be difficult to make but again the ratio was totally off and when I sent it back the server through her hands in the air at the inconvenience. Finally when coming to pay for the bill, no surprise non of us were tipping I was the first to pay and when the server passed the card machine to my friend next to me he reached across my plate right in front of my face and when I said do you mind gave a smirk. Going back to the till and surprised he hadn’t received a tip he looked over and blew his...

We always get a bit nervous when trying a new burger. They can be great, but more often they’re a disappointment, and we end up wishing we’d gone to a place we know. We were in the area and hungry, and as we passed Portland Craft we figured we’d give it a shot.

That was a good call.

We got the Portland Burger due to the larger patty, since we always share a burger. It was a solid choice – the kitchen staff absolutely know what makes a good burger. The meat was juicy, plentiful, and perfectly cooked, the tomatoes fresh and colourful, the bacon crisp, and the garlic aioli gave the whole delicious mess a burst of flavour that ensured we’ll be stopping by again in the near future. Also, the fries were plentiful, perfectly salted, and yummy.

Bonus points for a nice clean bathroom, but two issues were disappointing – the service was non-existent, and the tip screen starts at 18%. The irony of that hopefully isn’t lost on the owners. Your lowest tip should be 15% – 18% is both presumptuous and greedy. If the service is really exceptional it’s nice to have 18% as an option to show our gratitude, but it's not the starting point for a burger/brewery spot. Especially as our server never stopped by even once to check on us, leaving us to bring our ketchup cup inside ourselves to find another staff member to refill it. What exactly am I leaving an 18% tip for? Or any tip for that matter?

That said, I’ll again praise the kitchen staff for being very good at what they do – if their other menu items are as good as the burger, Portland Craft is absolutely worth...