LURE Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Victoria

A few weeks ago when @tastingsvictoria featured Lure restaurant on their Instagram page and mentioned their winter domes they have outside on their patio I thought it would be an amazing experience to take my husband for his birthday. When I called to make a reservation the girl was very friendly on the phone and asked if i wanted a lounge style or dinner table style dome, since I am half ways pregnant and we were eating dinner I requested the dinner table. I had 2 confirmations about my reservation leading up to it one by text one by phone call. Fast forward to yesterday January 31 /2021 we arrive for our reservation and when taken outside to the domes which were all empty by the way, the hostess leads us to a dome with lounge style chairs and a tiny table. I said oh I requested a dinner table she said oh they are all booked i said well i booked my reservation almost 3 weeks ago and specifically asked for a table as we are A) eating dinner and B) I'm pregnant I mean I don’t know about anyone else but being pregnant you don't want lean back and forth over your big belly to reach for food and drinks on a small table by your lower legs just not comfortable at all especially since we went for a full on dinner. She said she would see what she could do came back and said they have bigger parties coming so they cant so anything about the dome offered first round of drinks free ( again its noticeable I am pregnant and mention that she then says ok a free appetizer. No I'm sorry not good enough a free $10 appetizer when I booked this almost 3 weeks ago for a special occasion. Then I asked to speak to the manager who's name is Trevor, he asked me how I booked my reservation I said by phone then he proceeded to tell me they changed their system to online and it mixed things up etc etc and offered to seat us inside, I declined and said this is my husband’s birthday and I explained again how I booked this several weeks ago. He offered us to eat inside and have dessert outside and said they have bigger parties coming in ( max 6 people as of covid rules ). This tells me that they have a larger group coming in so it doesn't matter how special this evening is to me this is about money 2-4 more people coming in will spend more then 2 would. Money over customer service pretty sad especially for a night as special as a birthday. I said we are going somewhere else. Then Trevor offered his business card which he could not find then wrote down his email on a post it and said to email him next time we can come in and he will sort something out. Guess what Im not interested after being treated second best because they screwed up and wouldn’t honour our reservation because they want to make more money. Hugely disappointed by the lack of customer service. Lets also not forget Victoria is a small city and when you have a bad experience you of course share that with people and it gets around. Regardless of this super unfortunate event we called a beautiful local Italian restaurant who was full by the way because due to covid 95% of the time you need a reservation especially on weekends and they went above and beyond to squeeze us in and take care of us essentially after hearing about our unfortunate experience at Lure. And we had an amazing night after all. Long story short do not recommend and I hope they figure out true...

Monopoly of the best view of our harbour...and of rude patronizing servers!

Harbour Eggs Benedict at the Lure are perfectly made, but watch out. The coffee pot is charged by person. Use one cup from the table pay 4 dollars. Assume you paid for the pot and use another cup, pay 8 dollars...and so on. Buyers beware: the restaurant expects you to know this a priori because, as emphatically insisted upon by the server: "Nobody gives you free coffee anywhere" she claims, and "maybe where you come from (hmm I am a Victorian since the 80s and my husband's family since 1910)...they do things differently? Right, like the 3rd world village you came from is what she implies, patronizingly feeling sorry for me perhaps, and very confident that I look different so have to be a visitor. Interestingly, she is right: in many countries tea and coffee are offered as a mark of hospitality and welcome. But wait, in this increasinglt hip and pretentious concrete village of ours, free coffee? God forbid! I am not expecting free anything, but please at least let the customer know not to use the cups cleverly placed there with the full pot that you charge by the head=cup=4 dollars...or provide individual pots. And don't assume that because you flowed in with the flotsam in search of jobs and or a cannabis haven, or cheap real estate to spend the recently acquired millions from that E.Van house, that we are all outsiders like the uncouth, ill-mannered and borderline xeno server. Lest I forget, the same entitled millenial gave me a tirade on my last visit about "rights" because I had asked for a quiet space in the huge empty restaurant and she squeezed 3 very loud tourists at the tiny 2 people table in my corner. Conclusion? She is a full-time navel gazer and should find a job in a lab. This level of entitled hubris is not appropriate in a grown-up restaurant! Great eggs benedict, but will ask to sit in another section next time and visit only in the Fall and Winter to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee in what is left of our beautiful Victoria Harbour....or give up expecting the same standards we Victorians were used...

Our friend had her birthday party here on Sat May 4th. It was one of the most embarrassing displays of service that I’ve seen in a very long time. We were a mingling group of about 20 and we are all in the industry and so we know when service is inexcusably bad. We were trying desperately to get drinks and attention from our server (Louie I believe?) all night long. All of our glasses were empty for the majority of the night. We would walk up to him and ask for a drink and he would say “No I’m too busy right now. I’ll come back in a bit” and then would just never come back. When we tried to walk up to the bar for service, they said they couldn’t serve us and we had to get all drinks through Louie. Even when we spoke to the floor manager, they said they couldn’t help us and we had to wait for Louie. So we waited and waited, all night long. The manager literally stood there, eyes forward, as we all waited around for the Louie that never came. They set out a “buffet” that was $40 per person. My husband and I eat a plant based diet and there was not a single option for us, but they still charged us $40 each. If you are going to require that everyone in the group pays then provide options for dietary restrictions. They said they would “constantly replenish the buffet until we were done eating”, which never happened. We all left hungry. I kept ordering bottles of wine whenever I could so that we could at least get something into people’s glasses. Any time I got a bottle, it was gone immediately into all the empty glasses around me. Louie was impatient and disrespectful whenever we tried to order anything and the WORST part about the whole thing is that he did not tell any of us that there was an auto gratuity on the bill. So we all tipped (generously, because we are industry) on top of the auto gratuity. Not telling people that there is already a gratuity is downright stealing from...