Steamworks Brewpub — Restaurant in Vancouver

We LOVE it love(d) this gastown location, always brought tons of friends and families and visitors here at their gastown location for decades. Sad this classic stable pub and restaurant has gone way down with their service, super slow wait on their late night food menu, after finally flagging down someone at the patio, ordered, drink came, then all the waiting. Disappointed that all the staff walked past us, ignored us for 25 minutes. We tried to flag someone down asking why our food has been taking so long. They ( could be manager) inquired what we ordered without apologizing at all. Attitude check. They said the bread takes a while to toast, but not almost half an hour. Right ? Does it take that long to toast a piece of focaccia .( spoiler alert, the bread wasn’t even warm just the edges, as if it was only toasted for 15 seconds) We ordered the beer soup, Tuscan pizza, bramble drink. Again, sad about this experience, writing this review right now as we were hungry sipping on the drink, the wait was so long the straw went soggy! and now just plain sad to look at the late food arriving…sad Tuesday night, Again, Very sad about this experience. At least a small apology was finally made by checking on us “ how does the food taste?”

Part II: even I can’t believe there is a part two. Sad. Not giving any names. While clearing our table, the knife fell off from their over filled plates in their arms and slipped and hit my leg. Is this sad or what. There was absolutely no apologetic gesture. Through out the following time, this person attended all the other tables and did not even check or glance over. My water was sitting empty until the last piece of pizza. Sad. :(

Part III: there really shouldn’t be a third part. After paying. The person walked back in without any more interactions. The person gestured to us to their manager and spoke something to each other. This gesture IS extremely rude. I now, really had to go back to explain to their manager that the person dropped the knife on my leg. Shockingly. The manager said “ Oh! Did they do this on purpose ? Did they drop the knife on you on purpose?” What an amazing response. Will just...

As far as Vancouver breweries go, Steamworks may not have the most inventive beer, but they do classic well. As a restaurant, it’s great: interesting building, classy food, and great beer. I visited the restaurant once in the distant past and don’t remember the details, but I remember that it left a good impression. Returned recently and had a great time again. Started off with drinks: I ordered a flight of Heroica Red Ale, Chuckanut Brown Ale, Umbrella Hazy Pale Ale, and Coconut Porter. They were apparently out of the Chuckanut, and without asking they replaced it with the Flagship IPA because it was “award-winning”. That is great but IPA’s are my least favourite beer. I can be coaxed into trying one if it’s got something unique going on but this beer is not trying to be anything except an IPA and while I can respect that, it was not for me. Luckily I was sharing with someone else and they took care of most of this one for me. The rest of the beers were what I hoped for, though. The food actually exceeded my expectations! I had the Tofu Goddess Bowl, and the tofu had this hot honey-esque sauce and a crispy coating that was delicious. I liked that this was a healthy option but was still very interesting and flavourful. We shared a Beeramisu at the table for dessert (shared between 3, but I can totally see it being manageable for one person if you’re hungry for dessert). As far as tiramisu goes it was average (I like mine pretty soaked in the espresso), but the inclusion of stout was great. It gave the tiramisu a smoky finish but it wasn’t too strong. The restaurant is huge (if you have the chance, walk around and check it all out) and they were busy, but they seem to have the appropriate volume of staff to handle the volume of customers. Our waitress was attentive and friendly despite having a lot of tables to keep track of. Other than the replacement beer in my flight, it was stellar service. I was also pleasantly surprised when we showed up at 6 on Saturday with no reservation and were seated...

DO NOT GO HERE, unless you wanna be treated like crap. The food and overall experience was mostly good but I had to write a review about the one bartender Tuesday evening. My husband and I are both big scotch drinkers, and I just could not believe that someone working as a bartender wouldn’t be able to understand that sort of thing. My husband goes to the bar to ask for a drink and says he wants a scotch. The bartender says they have Johnny Walker. My husband tells him that isn’t scotch, it’s a blended whiskey. He wants a scotch. The bartender rolled his eyes and just said “whatever.” Whatever?? What a rude response. My husband says he can see they have actual scotch, glenlivet and some others, so he orders a double, neat. At some point a female server came over, I think because she could see how angry and frustrated my husband was becoming with this very rude and unhelpful bartender. She ended up getting the drink for him. My husband gets his drink, and just as he taps his card, the bartender pours an entire scoop of ice into his glass. My husband goes, neat!! I asked for it neat! The bartender, again, says “whatever.” The server even said, yes he did order it neat, he said that. If someone is paying $20 for a drink, they should be able to have that how they like; without ice. To fill the entire glass with ice and dilute the drink is unacceptable. Johnny Walker isn’t a scotch and “whatever” is not an appropriate response to a simple customer request. I CANNOT believe that’s how the staff here have been trained to talk to customers and that bartenders aren’t even trained to know what scotch is!! I guess this place is only meant for people who wanna drink crappy beer and be treated...