PeakFine at Sparkling Hill Resort - Adult Only 16+ — Restaurant in Vernon

My husband and I ate dinner here to celebrate our 5th anniversary and babymoon. The menu looked inticing and we wanted to try multiple plates so we ordered 3 appetizers and a main to share.

The restaurant was decently busy so we settled in a looked forward to having a drink and some conversation before dinner arrived.

To start, the server seemed very warm, friendly and competent. The assistant staff were mostly very young, not very well groomed/dressed, not knowledgable on the menu or general dining etiquette (much less fine dining etiquette).

The complimentary bread was a bit stale as if it had been sliced several hours ago and left to sit out. The food came out very promptly, only around 10 minutes after it was ordered.

I have to say it was all pretty disappointing.

The salmon risotto was gummy, dry and lacking flavour. Except for the salmon, which was terribly over salted. There was no buttery, creamy flavour or texture to the risotto. It seemed as it had been made in a large batch earlier in the day, it was very bland a gluey. One might describe it as slop.

The Ceasar salad was fine. Didn't taste like house made dressing, the croutons were definitely store bought, and the parmesan cheese was reminiscent of the fake, dry shaker parm you see at pizza by the slice places. There was also a bacon crumble, which just didn't add much. It was kind of chewy, and again, didn't seem fresh. This extremely mediocre salad would be at home in a place like Denny's.

The seafood pasta (main) was the most palatable item we ordered. That's about all that can be said about it.

The best for last.... The lion's mane "crab cakes". These were a culinary nightmare. I genuinely have no idea how this made it on the menu. They are unappealing to the eye, just brown globs. The texture was mush. Literal mush. Like, think of bread that's been soaked in milk for a few hours. They hold together in that they are kind of gluey, so it sticks to itself and the plate. Again, I think they make a large batch of this mushroom mix early in the day and when a cake is ordered, they form a dollop into a round shape on the plate and send it out. Obviously what matters most is flavour, and this dish is nothing if not consistent. I have no idea what they were going for with the flavour, but it was absolutely the worst dish on the table. Horrible. Horrible. Mushrooms do not keep, they have to be made fresh. This dish was a joke. The arugula salad it game with was over dressed, but the dressing was nice.

Aside from the very disappointing meal, there are so many other small things that just miss the mark here and wouldn't go overlooked in a true fine dining restaurant. The table water is that kind of milky tasting tap water, it was room temperature with no ice. My drink (I just got a club soda with citrus, I'm not normally lame but I'm pregnant) was finished shortly after the meal started and I was never offered a refill. I eventually moved it over to the edge so someone would see it but no such luck. The hostess was coughing a lot, it was noticable all the way from our table. The girl who sat us had a lot of dirt under her nails. A busser girl approached our table twice while we were still eating and asked "all finished?" even though we both still had food and forks in hand.

How they get away with calling this fine dining is beyond me. To be able to charge what they do for this quality of food and service is mind boggling. The food is obviously all prepared ahead of time and just assembled when ordered. Nothing seems made fresh, evident by the fact that our 4 plates came out only 10 mins after ordering.

The views are gorgeous, but we heard several staff member refer to peakfine as fine dining and that is an insult to restaurants everywhere. My husband accurately described the whole experience as "elevated cafeteria". Will be cancelling our reservation for tomorrow night and trying predator ridge instead. This was a terrible...

I rarely leave reviews and the only reviews I've ever written are all 5-stars for stellar services.

However, this place is worthwhile (in a not-so-great way) for me to take my time and leave a review. I'd give it 0.5 stars if I could only because of the stunning view it offers (and the only thing it has to offer). Just as an FYI, I was in such a great mood as my fiancé proposed to me just before we headed to PeakFine for our dinner, so it's not like I was deliberately trying to find little flaws to complain about. My fiance and I both had a really low expectation to begin with as we saw all the horrible reviews on Google and TripAdvisor. But they managed to blow our minds (again, not in a good way).

As we approached the entrance, we were "greeted" by 3 hostesses who clearly didn't want to work that night. No smile, no greetings. While I specifically said it was a special occasion when I made the reservation, the hostesses started to look for an empty table on the screen. I politely asked if there was a table by the window, and all she said was "No". Again, no "Sorry" or a smile. I decided not to think about it much while we followed the other hostess who sat us at an awkwardly positioned table by the aisle next to a set of stairs.

After we were seated, I noticed that one of the water glasses had a lipstick stain on it. My napkin also had black stains all over it that looked like it was used to clean dirty window sills or something. We got a new water glass and a new napkin, but the new napkin had a very long hair inside (and I just didn't bother to ask for a new one because I felt bad to pester our server).

After ordering, we got 2 slices of COLD, flavorless bread. The server never asked if we wanted more. We ordered a risotto and scallops for our starters. My $12 risotto tasted like frozen food that was nuked in the microwave for too long. For $20, my fiance's got 3 tiny scallops that lacked any flavour. We were both quite hungry from the long ride from Vancouver so we quickly ate the appys hoping that our mains would be better.

Then came the black cod and prime rib. I was disappointed to see such tiny piece of cod and a humongous salad on my plate for $37. My cod was completely tasteless. The salad had too much slabs of salsa verde hiding under the bed of greens, it was WAY too spicy I started choking. My anger exacerbated when I had a bite of my fiancé's prime ribs ($39 as they were on specials that day), which was well-done despite our request to have it made medium-rare. It was so dry and tough that I had to chew it at least 20 times before I could swallow it.

My fiancé and I just started laughing - the dinner was an absolute joke. Our server came to check on us and it was the first time in my life that I've ever told a server that our food is inedible. We sent back our dishes and asked for the bill, as we didn't want to be there any minute longer. Although our server was kind enough to move us to a window table before we got our mains, and the Assistant Manager came to apologize and take the food off of our bill, everything from service to the quality of food was so poor that it totally ruined our special night. The whole experience was so bad that our excitement from the engagement wore off so quickly.

It's a pity that the only place to eat at such a gorgeous spa is so terrible that we had to order pizza delivery for dinner the next day. I was so upset I've been waiting to leave this review as soon as we check out from Sparkling Hill. It should be ashamed to call itself a "fine dining" restaurant. I wonder if the management is even bothered about all these poor reviews. To anyone going to Sparkling Hill Resort, you'll have to either drive out to Vernon or pay $17-20 delivery fee to get a decent meal.

PS. the servers during breakfast were VERY friendly and attentive. The food was also better than dinner, but still...

NOTE: This review ONLY covers the PeakFire restaurant and other food service at the SparklingHill Resort. A Review of the resort itself and KurSpa is covered in my review other the resort itself.

My wife and I came to SparklingHill to celebrate our mini-moon and did the ‘couples package’ which among other things, included a 3-course dinner each of our two nights at the PeakFine restaurant. I will say, for everything that the rooms and spa are, the restaurant did not really live up. The food was not the issue, that was great. Very tasty on all the dishes we got, and actually a decent serving size as well. The issue is the service. The service was very slow and sometimes the waitstaff is hard to get a hold of. They were busy both nights at the time we were there, but i would not say they were crazy busy, each server maybe had half a dozen table. We took a little bit of time to get greeted once we sat down, but we eventually were. In addition to our meals, we also order wine and coffee. It just seemed that though the wait staff did not have an absurd amount of tables, they were overwhelmed. So the long service was disappointing. A little quicker and more attentive would have been nice.

We also ate lunch at the barruqe and java lounge, and again, the food was good at a decent price, but service was lacking. So this seems to be common with their food service here. For instance, it was over 45min from sitting down to leaving and all we did was order two sandwiches and were basically the only people in the place.

Breakfast was pretty good. The spread was really nice including salads, yogurts, eggs, deli meats, sausage, bacon, potatoes, and lots of other stuff. Though even know it was a buffet they still required you to wait to be seated. Both mornings, it took a while for a front desk person to show up and seat us, which was a little annoying. It also does not make to much sense why that is required when you still get a bill at the end of breakfast, given its for $0, where you put your room number and any desired tip for your waitress, who only brings you coffee. However, the lacking service, can be overlooked as the breakfast is included for free with the room.

We did not order any room service, so i cannot speak to that.

Overall, the food quality and quantity was really good! The service was lacking for what i would have wanted. If I were to come back to Sparkling Hill, i would consider going out for dinner to nearby Vernon or Kelowna. Though that would be about 30min drive each direction. It was also recommended to us, though we did not listen, to just bring meat, cheese, and crackers from a grocery store for lunch, which would have been a great option.

PRO-TIP: they do not advertise this, but you can bring your own wine to dinner. It is just a $25 corkage fee. We found it to be cheaper bringing a bottle we bought from a nearby winery and paying the corkage fee than buying one of...