Piper Arms Waterloo — Restaurant in Waterloo

*UPDATE: We emailed the email address Piper Arms provided in response to this review. Haven't heard back at all. They don't take their customer concerns seriously! Very disappointing!

Finally getting a chance to write this review. We frequent this place many late nights (x2 per week) but as of lately past couple months, the service and inconsistency in food has caused me to write this review.

It was myself and my husband. We went on a Friday night (around 9pm) and it was not busy. We were served by a small dark skinned girl (very short) and she was not attentive at all.

FIRST - we had to wait over 10 minutes standing at the entrance before anyone even seated us. We were looking around wondering where the servers were and we saw 2 walk past us and did not even acknowledge us. We were about to flag someone and someone finally came to seat us.

AFTER SEATING - it took another 15 minutes before someone came over. This was the smalll and short dark skinned girl. She did not introduce herself with her name at all. She seemed pleasant enough at first. She proceeded to take our order

DRINKS - Getting drinks was slow as well! We waited for another 10-12 minutes before our simple drinks of water and 1 beer arrived. We requested lemons in water. Server forgot the lemons. The server took our appetizer orders.

APPS - We did not get our apps until 15-20 minutes after ordering. They were not fancy apps and quite simple deep fried apps so there is no reason why on a slow night, apps took so long. A. Calamari was presented properly, poor portion size, and inconsistent with prior visits. There was a severe lack of jalapeños (seems they replaced it with a cheaper less spicy hot pepper mix with yellow and red peppers) and it was not on a bed of fresh lettuce which is what we had been used to in our many past visits. Some calamari was also burnt, chewy or undercooked. Poor portion size compared to what we were used to. We used to get a huge, heaping portion and they must have reduced the size to maybe 1/4 of that. Quite disappointed. B. Chili Chicken was completely oversaturated in an overly sweet sauce to the point where the bed of lattice fries underneath were soaked and soggy! So sweet we couldn't finish the dish. Basically 50% sauce. It was also served almost cold. C. Artichoke Dip was OK. But lack of the chips and pita, we ended up with a ton of leftover dip. The proportions were not good. We counted 8 tiny slices of pita and maybe a handful of corn chips for a decent sized bowl of artichoke dip. Need to add significantly more chips / pita! D. Sweet Potato Fries These were delicious. They don't salt them though. They also do not give enough Chipotle dipping sauce! Need to provide significantly more sauce for the fries. One tiny sauce does not work for the "large" sweet potato fries.

SERVICE - Server did not even check up on us a single time. We wanted more water, had to flag her after waiting 20 minutes. No apologies for the wait. We never complained about the food we got as we don't typically complain if it's still edible due to risk of food wastage. Took forever to get the bill. And by this time, server seemed miserable and we did not feel welcomed or appreciated by her.

SUMMARY Given the significant amount of waiting time, inconsistency of food and poor service from this server, we are considering choosing a new place to eat at regularly. We will give this place another...

Went to Piper Arms Waterloo yesterday for my anniversary. Didn't wait too long for a table, but longer than expected given how quiet it was in the restaurant. I think I counted 8 tables that were seated total, including us. The table we were put at was weird- the booths were angled and the width of the table made it very hard to get into. Both my boyfriend and I are pretty small so this was quite unusual. The waitress took a very long time to get to us for a drink order. When she put the drink order in, she waited probably another 15 minutes before coming back to the table. When she came back, she asked us if we wanted to order drinks- we had to remind her that we already did. Side note, during the 15 minutes that we waited for her to come back to the table, we could see our drinks sitting at the bar. The drink I ordered was a frozen cocktail and it was sitting for so long that I could see that the syrup in it began to sink. I was really tempted to just go to the bar and get the drinks myself. By the time the drinks finally arrived to us, she forgot the water that I ordered, and the straw in my frozen drink was too short and flimsy to stir it so I had to ask for a spoon. When we arrived at the restaurant, we weren't super hungry, but everything had already taken so long that we were starving. We ordered bruschetta, wings + fries, and potato skins. Wings were the only good thing, even though she did not bring the ranch for dipping- potato skins had absolutely no seasoning, and the bacon on them was burnt to a crisp. Bruschetta tasted fine but had a weird smell and the bread it came on was not typical of a bruschetta bread. The server had to be asked to take our plates. We were done our food and drinks at this point, but were not offered dessert, more drinks, or even the bill. I had to call her over to get the bill. Another note- there was no music in the restaurant, they were just playing a basketball game so all I could hear was shoes squeaking on a basketball court. Given that this was my anniversary dinner, I was very disappointed. Usually if the food is bad, the service makes up for it or vice-versa, but this was just a bad experience. I really wish we had picked somewhere...

We needed a place to celebrate my sons birthday in Waterloo late last Monday. Very few restaurants were open late on Monday, if at all. So we chose Piper Arms as we’ve been to the one in Burlington. And always liked it.

It was a great choice and the staff were very accommodating. They have a good beer selection as well as an extensive food menu. I had a nice Pilsener which was also on special at that late hour. And they have good food specials everyday. Monday is half price appetizers and $14 pastas (excluding pastas with seafood). The food was excellent. I had two appetizers. The sweet chili chicken and sweet potato fries. I also shared some garlic bread. All cooked well and generous portions. My son found the curry chicken dish extra spicy and didn’t care for the taste. I had some and the taste was ok and agree very spicy. My son was warned about this by the server when he ordered this dish as he has a high spice tolerance. He enjoyed my meal better so much so we traded at one point.

Also at our table someone ordered the Cappeliti pasta dish and it was exceptional and huge portion. Buffalo chicken poutine and chicken tacos were also excellent and generous portions.

Of note, a drink must be purchased to get the discount as opposed to the Burlington location which has no restrictions. I’m not sure how it works for the specials on other days of the week here. But our excellent server let us know about this in advance, which demonstrates excellent customer service.

We also brought our own birthday cake and the server took it to the kitchen and served it with the candles we brought, once we finished our meal. The servers presented it and sang happy birthday to my son. Our server also took some great photos for us. It was a really great experience, especially considering it was a last minute decision to choose this restaurant and we didn’t call in advance to make a reservation.

I would highly recommend this pub for the great food and specials, the beer selection and exceptional service. We will come back when we return to visit our son...