Rudy's Eat & Drink — Restaurant in Winnipeg

We had a 6pm reservation for 8 people this past Friday. Our server seemed rattled from the start. We sat for 45 mins before drinks came. When she finally came to take our orders, she completely skipped me, and we had to call her back to the table to take my order. When the food arrived, it came in spurts. One to two plates at a time, spread out over 5-20+ mins. She never brought one person's meal. We called her to the table and asked about our friends dish, and she apologized and said she'd go grab it. She never came back. My friend went to go find out the server, and when she did, the server actually stated that she FORGOT AGAIN. Our friend returned to our table and we all shared our food with her. It gets even worse. The restaurant cleared out and we were still waiting for our bills. We again had to track down our server. She came to our table and said she forgot what we all had and lost the paper she wrote our orders on and asked us to tell her again what we all ordered. She wrote down the meal that she never brought and we had to argue that she better not charge for it because it never came. As I stated before, there were 8 of us, 4 couples. We needed 4 bills and told her who was together. She disappeared AGAIN. We went to find her and she said she had to re-enter all the information into the system and would be there momentarily. She never came. When 4 members of our group went to find her to pay, she had ALL of the orders mixed up. One of our friend's paid for the entire meal and we all e-transfered him. This was the worst service experience any of us has ever experienced. One of the saddest parts of the evening was watching all the servers with stoic faces and no one bothering to help. The servers all kept to themselves and at no point did we see any of them interact with each other. We were late for our show, and it was part of our discussions for the remainder of the evening. Unfortunately for Rudy's, this will be a story our social circle tells about atrocious service moving forward. The only good thing to come out of this was that the food was pretty good. Well, the food that came, at least! I would...

Had one of our worst visits not only to Rudy's but to any restaurant in a very long time, and we go to a lot of restaurants! It was before a Jet's game, but we have been to Rudy's before a Jet's game many times, and we were watching around us getting a lot better service. Got there just after 5pm, server came over, my GF asked about a radler, she said she would check if they had it on tap, as some times they switch it around, I came in after parking the car at 5:10, server did not come back to take my drink order until 5:30, and by then we ordered food, as we had time. My drink came at 5:45, and server said she didn't have my gf's drink, and she didn't know where it was, server came back at 5:50 saying the bartender remembered pouring it, but didn't know where it went so poured a new one. Our food got there after 6pm, the food was tasty, the GF said they changed her regular menu item around so she didn't really enjoy it, like in the past. Took a while then to get a 2nd beer for me, but we saw others arrive after us get food and drinks a lot quicker. Will hope this is a one off with the server that we had as we don't want to change our regular Rudy's before Jet's Games routine to another place...

Ultimately, a disappointment.

Judging this restaurant by it's looks, I feel compelled to give them credit and assume that other dishes would have won me over. This place is funky as hell, with a large, unique retro-multimedia display covering one end of the restaurant, and clever use of recycled furnishings and materials throughout. The interior design here is impeccable, and goes nicely with the friendly (and attractive) service. Great soundtrack too. I could be lured back to give it another go.

But I won't order the Rudy's Special, a Ricotta Gnocchi topped with crispy onions (aren't crispy onions getting a tad bit old now?). It was certainly delicious, and if I had maybe twice as much I would have been content. This dish is a lunch-sized portion, at $16.95. Not even an interesting presentation to make you forget what it cost... far too minimal. What this dish could use (other than being larger) is some fresh baked bread. That would have been enough to save it. I found myself looking at the menu again after I had finished it, and I left basically still hungry.

I want to give Rudy's a higher rating, but I can't get over what I paid...