Tavern United Downtown — Restaurant in Winnipeg

Disappointing Experience at Tavern United Downtown – Boneless Wings? More Like “Nugget Surprise”!

I came to Tavern United Downtown with a simple, heartfelt request: I asked my server to recommend something traditional and popular — real Canadian food and drinks only. I told her I love Canada and want to support it the same way it supports me. We laughed, joked, had a great vibe. She recommended chicken wings with a variety of sauces, and even mentioned they have boneless wings. I double-checked: “So they’re actual wings, just without bones — like, all the hard work done for me and I just get to enjoy?” — “Exactly,” she said.

So I placed my order. One dish. No complex requests, no gluten-free needs, no “extra dressing on the side,” just wings. Boneless wings.

And what did I get?

The first bite told me all I needed to know: these were not wings. Not in shape, not in texture, not in taste.

Another server (not the one who took my order) walked by, saw my glowing smile of disbelief, and asked if everything was okay. I explained the issue, and she just said: “I’m sorry…” and disappeared.

A few minutes later, my actual server came by. I told her the same thing — these weren’t wings. She responded, “Well, that’s how we do them here.” I reminded her I’ve eaten wings in Canada more than once and know what they’re supposed to be. That’s when the truth came out: “Actually, those are nuggets…”

Excuse me?

I didn’t order nuggets. I ordered boneless wings. And what I got was a fast-food-style Nugget Show at full wing price — no offer to fix it, no offer to swap, no compensation, not even a meaningful apology.

So here’s what my $25 got me: • 1 portion of overpriced nuggets, disguised as wings • 2 generic “I’m sorry” responses • 0 effort to resolve the issue • A long trip across town to relax on a rooftop and instead get… disappointed.

At Tavern United Downtown: “Boneless wings” = nuggets +...

Came in for a quick bite to eat with my partner as it was close by, and it didn’t seem to be a very busy night either. They ordered their food and had no complications. I ordered a regular quesadilla and asked our waitress if it would be okay to substitute the real chicken for the plant based chicken, we were told she would ask the kitchen first, which I thought was no big deal. Server never came back to clarify whether it was okay or not, so my partner and I assumed it was fine and that the substitution was approved.

Quesadilla came out with no plant based chicken in it, just sautéed veggies? made a comment to our server who told us it would be dealt with. The manager/team lead for the evening came over to apologize and said a portion of our bill would be discounted for the wait time. Before the second quesadilla came out, my partner stopped our server and asked to clarify, “it’s the regular quesadilla substituted with plant based chicken. Not the vegan quesadilla.” We were assured that it was punched in correctly. However, got my second quesadilla, and it had vegan cheese? :/

Our server came around to ask if everything was okay, I said yes because I didn’t want to cause a fuss. However paying $20 for something I won’t eat seemed ridiculous, so my partner told our server about the mistake again and simply asked to have it taken off of our bill. Unfortunately at the same time heard one of the other servers talking about our table :/ Not a place...

Will never go back to this location. We went there to celebrate my birthday. The waiter who brought our drinks didn’t even bother to go around the table and place down each person’s drink in front of them. He stated rudely “my arms are too short, can’t reach sorry”. My friend had to grab the drinks from the waiter’s hand and put it down on the table for each one of us. Then we waited till almost 1 hour before closing for our food to get to our table. Guess what? They didn’t even take our order right. We ordered Nachos to share and have with our drinks. The Nachos never came to our table. At 10:30pm one of the supervisors told us that “unfortunately the kitchen is closing now, sorry we can’t make the Nachos at this time anymore. We will make sure to take one of your meals out of your bill.” He then mentioned that “[he] will give us complimentary birthday shots to compensate.” Long story short, they charged us for the shots, but then realized and returned a lower amount than what we paid for the shots. There was a total discount of $15 on a bill that was above $250 plus none of the meals were taken off the bill. Short staffed, and lacked team work. Bartender spent time talking to her bestie (sitting at the bar) instead of making our drinks. In a business like this, manners of their staff and how they’ve been trained is what’s important. The supervisor was generally a nice guy, but wasn’t able to control the actions of the staff in this location...