Skylarks Cafe — Restaurant in Bellingham

DOES NOT FOLLOW ADA LAW — Imposed illegal restrictions on my service animal. I entered with my service animal without his vest as a sit down dining environment doesn’t involve him being close to large quantities of people and he would likely attract more attention if he was wearing it. This is a common occurrence for me. I was asked if he was a service animal, to which I said yes. I was then guided to a table. Before long, I was informed by the hostess that the manager had informed her he had to be vested. I clarified that was not true and that the ADA dictates no service animal will be required to wear any identifying item. I soon entered a conversation with the manager, who despite being shown the ADA website saying as such, insisted that it was restaurant policy. When I mentioned that federal regulations overrule policies of business open to the public, she persisted that “an email went out to all the restaurants a year ago regarding the policy change.” I tried to ask what she was talking about because the state legislature has made no such change, but I was simply told that she was just following the rules. I conceded at this point but I could not move to the back patio or return to my car to fetch his vest due to my health condition being impacted by the frankly upsetting conversation combined with having walked from my car just a moment before. I asked for some time to get my condition back under control or risk fainting, and was allowed that much. It took me several minutes to get my heart rate back under control as it had reached dangerous heights. In the ten minutes or so it took, I was not once approached by anyone, let alone allowed to at least get my order put in before I went to my car. I eventually went and nearly fell on my return due to dizziness. I was finally served after ten more minutes and received decent coffee with bitter tasting French toast. I barely took two bites before stopping and just felt nauseated by the whole experience. It took another thirty minutes to actually get the waitress’ attention for the check, and she only asked if I wanted a box for the barely touched food, which I declined. Overall, I sincerely hope that the owners take a hard look at their policies regarding disabled patrons and service animals, seeing as it seems not a single person there was even familiar with the basics of the ADA.

Edit after owner response: Imagine your staff discriminating against a disabled person and telling that disabled person that their disability is the problem and make YOUR...

Very cool atmosphere and the food is okay. But, two stars because of the crummy service. We used to like coming here (it's been 6 years) but the past several times we've left unhappy with the service. However, today's experience really took the cake and I think we're done now.

Today, as we walked in at lunchtime, we saw that there were several tables open in the main, front room. We were offered a table there "or," the hostess said a little hesitantly, "I could wipe off a table downstairs for you." Though we didn't really care, the downstairs room in back has a somewhat different, sunnier, vibe which we've enjoyed before, and we chose that. We were told to wait in "the King and Queen chairs" (what? they're ordinary upholstered chairs) in the corner of the main room. After a few minutes the hostess came back and told us she couldn't seat us back there after all. She said she could seat us in the main room or upstairs in the (kind of empty, dim) loft but then she just made a beeline for the stairs. So much confusion, just to get a table! But we finally were seated, up in the loft.

It took a long time to take our order. Someone clearing a nearby table noticed us looking around for the waitress, came over and asked if we'd given our orders yet. When we said no, she asked if we'd been told the specials -- no again -- and listed them for us.

Then she went off to find our waitress, who eventually showed up but never bothered to bring up the specials or even to ask if we'd like beverages (we ended up with just water but we're never offered refills). She seemed kind of disengaged.

Not halfway through our meal (which was good, as always) the waitress came by and bizarrely asked us, "Is that going to be enough for you?" (It was lunchtime on Saturday. One of us had a 3-piece fish-and-chips; the other had a tuna sandwich with a heap of fries.)

A while later, we indicated we were finished and ready for the check. As she was about to take my empty plate, she looked down and said, "There are two fries left under the ketchup. Don't you want to eat them?"

Truly this bizarre experience​ has really put us off of Skylark. It's not the first poor customer service experience we've had there, but it was the worst, and we don't have plans to return any time soon. We don't feel valued and there are so many other restaurants nearby with really...

My family & I first tried Skylarks in May and we had nothing but good things to say about it. The food, service, drinks, & ambiance was AMAZING. It instantly became our favorite restaurant in Bellingham and we had told our friends who were moving there that we couldn’t wait to take them there. So Yesterday, we finally had the time to do so and it was a complete 360. We sat on the outside patio rather than inside due to our dogs which was probably the first mistake we made. There was only 1 waitress outside and it took us well over 15-20 minutes just to have our order taken. After placing our order, it then took around 30 minutes or more just to get our drinks. I can understand my friends’ alcohol taking some time to come but to wait that long for an iced tea and Diet Coke is pathetic. Not to mention, it was EXTREMELY hot outside and all we had was water that quickly turned warm due to the heat. The server tried to give us some sassy apology that she is the only server outside but even at that, it shouldn’t take you that long to bring out 2 non-alcoholic drinks. We also had asked for 2 water bowls for our dogs which was NEVER was brought out. When we finally received our check, we also saw that there was an 18% surcharge that was added on top of our bill and we were confused because we did not have a party that was 8 or more. My husband went inside to ask what the surcharge was for and the waitress proceeded to act like she thought there were 6 adults seated instead of 4 along with the 2 kids. If that’s true, that literally shows how little she had paid attention to us if she couldn’t even calculate how many of us there were. We honestly felt like at that point we were being scammed. She ended up taking off the surcharge and comping our drinks but regardless if the food was good, I’m unsure if we’ll ever go to Skylarks again. It’s sad too bc if the service was amazing, we wouldn’t have cared about the mistaken surcharge and we probably would’ve tipped on top of that. I genuinely think management needs to reconsider who they hire as their wait staff because the woman we had was nowhere up to par for the service required for a restaurant charging those prices. I’ve literally had better service at a fast food...