Araxi Restaurant & Oyster Bar — Restaurant in Whistler Resort Municipality

I’ll try and make this as detailed but simplified as possible. I don’t normally make reviews but I was really disappointed with a long time favourite restaurant of mine the past couples times and this was the tipping point. -Arrived at 6:15 for a reservation and wanted a patio table. Hosts were great, and said if we didn’t mind hanging out for 30min they could accommodate this. We were obviously happy to wait and chose to have drinks at the bar, as the weather was beautiful and we wanted the fresh air. -The bar service was 10/10. Checked on us promptly, friendly, gave good advice on cocktails. -When our table was ready they moved us outside to an end table on the patio bar side. Host that moved us was great and friendly.

-Everything for our evening changed here. The service was incredibly slow. Our server was never checking on us to see how our meals were and didn’t ask us if we’d like more drinks (we did but ended up not getting more because he was never around for us to ask him, although we shouldn’t have to ask and he should check in). -All 5 small plate/appetizers were great. -Main meals came and he forgot my meal completely. I ordered beef tartare and he knew I ordered it because I made a joke that I ‘knew it was weird to order as a main’. -I tried to get eye contact to tell him I was missing my meal when everyone ate but similarly to earlier he never came by to check how the food was. -i waited until everyone was just over half way done their meal but I ended up walking to the front and said kindly “sorry but I think you forgot my beef tartare main” he said “oh I will make sure that gets started right away for you”, with no apology which I thought was strange. -Waited obviously a long time for this to come after everybody else was long finished their meals. -When my tartare did come he hadn’t brought me cutlery so the server bringing the meal had to go get it. -I was still hopeful he would apologize or remedy the situation but when the bills came he still charged me for the beef tartare and again never apologized or brought up the confusion, just acted like nothing happened. Never once brought it up at the table after I approached him which seemed very unempathetic, as when I went up to him I did it incredibly politely as I’ve worked at high end restaurants downtown and understand mistakes happen. -My party had to have him correct the 2 bills as they were separated incorrectly, and when he came back they were still wrong. We didn’t say anything because it was all taking so long and we needed to get back to our dogs so we said we’d fix it ourselves later on. -I’ve lived in Vancouver and vacationed in Whistler twice a year (summer and winter) for about 20 years. Araxi has always been my #1 spot. However the past 3 years customer service has gone downhill so much. I don’t think I will return anymore. I’m hoping il caminetto, Elisa, cincin and other umbrella restaurants are still good, but think this might not be the...

Araxi has been on our list of places to visit in Whistler for a number of years but we’ve only just been able to drop by this past June. Located in the Village Square, it’s difficult to miss this restaurant whenever you walk through the heart of Whistler.

On the night that we visited, things seemed a bit slow – but that might have been because we arrived for dinner around 6pm (more of the tables did fill up as the night went on). We decided to go with their Three Course Menu which was priced at $49. Of course, that price was just a starting point and various add-on/substitutions bumped up the price.

We paired our complimentary bread and butter/olive oil with a Blood Orange Moscow Mule ($15.50) made with Stoli vodka, blood orange and lime juice, cloves, syrup, ginger beer, and mint as well as the Symphony ($7.50) made with elderflower, chamomile, ginger, lemon, and honey.

For our starters, we went with the Prawn Cocktail and the Tuna Tataki. The four large and plump black tiger prawns were accompanied with a spicy house-made cocktail sauce whereas the lightly seared tuna was served with shaved daikon radish, shiso leaves, ponzu sauce, and accompanied with spicy tuna and seaweed. The prawns were good but I wish there were more and the tender tuna tataki was equally impressive.

The Halibut (+$12 premium) was a super-sized portion of flaky halibut which had a bit of char on the exterior. Served with a roasted eggplant purée, Pemberton summer squash, North Arm Farm German butter potatoes, and a lemon and thyme butter sauce, I was a bit disappointed with this dish. The halibut was undeniably dry on the inside which I suspect was due to being overcooked given the thickness of this chunk of fish. It was a bit of a shame to ruin such a nice piece of fish by overcooking it.

We also ordered the Tenderloin (+15 premium) which was, as expected, super tender. Served with butter-glazed asparagus and cipollini onions with a ruby port sauce, I really enjoyed the thinly shaved potato gratin bar that accompanied this dish.

For dessert, we had the North Arm Farm Strawberries and Rhubarb prepared with vanilla poached rhubarb, a mixed berry sorbet, and a lemon sponge cake.

The Layered Valrhona Chocolate Marquise was a bit difficult to break through given the hard chocolate shell that encased the layers of dark chocolate mouse, crispy hazelnut, and dark chocolate glaze. I really enjoyed this decadent dessert – definitely order this if you’re a chocoholic.

Some pretty good food here but there were some major misses with the...

I’m not sure if we just dined here on an off night, but our experience was different from many others.

First off, the staff was incredible, very friendly and knowledgeable, absolutely no issues there. Our table was rocky upon sitting down and the hosted fixed it right away, the waiter we had was incredible! We showed up for our reservation and our table wasn’t ready, understandable, but when we were seated we got placed in one of those two person square tables - these should not even exist. At a fine dining restaurant once you have two different size glasses, plus an additional cocktail glass, all sizes of cutlery, multiple plates, and multiple menus there is just no room on the table, it’s frustrating.

The restaurant itself is very outdated, it felt like an old Italian restaurant, it’s not necessarily a bad thing but I do feel like it could use a renovation.

We ordered oysters and the raw trio for two to start, we kept a menu to order more afterwards. None of the oysters listed on the menu were available, luckily our waiter was very knowledgeable and suggested alternatives for the ones that we had picked, when they arrived they were delicious so his suggestions were great! The only problem with the oysters was that one selection was very very tiny - almost the size of a clam more than an oyster, and the horseradish was not very strong in flavor. The raw trio for two was just absolutely disappointing. The salmon was four tiny slices of salmon, the only good part of the salmon was the cheese on top but only two out of four slices included the cheese. The tuna was dry and lacked flavour besides the gel balls. The beef tartare was very good though, a good balance of herbs and garlic flavour, and it was very tender.

We decided not to order anything additional because only one out of our four dishes was impressive.

Something that I did like that was a very good choice on the business/service side was that once our plates were cleared our waiter placed dessert menus down infront of us instead of asking “do you want to see a desert menu?” We almost chose two deserts but decided against it based on the other food we received. I thought this was a smart choice as usually when asked if you want a dessert menu the answer would just be a straight “no”, but placing it down for us to read increased our chances of ordering. If the other food had been better we would have ordered dessert.

All in all, very disappointing for the hype that this...