Smoke on the Water Co — Restaurant in Coleraine

The worst dining experience we’ve had in years.

We came to this restaurant at 7:30 on a Saturday evening. The lawn was packed with people enjoying live music—a regular Saturday summer event, we later learned. While the atmosphere was lively, it quickly became clear the restaurant was completely unprepared to handle both the crowd and regular diners.

We were seated for a party of three without any warning about delays or kitchen issues. Our “server” turned out to be a busser doing her best under impossible circumstances—she was kind, but clearly untrained for table service. She took our order (1 appetizer, 1 soup, a pizza, and 2 steak salads) and brought my wine, which would be the only properly timed item of the night.

After 45 minutes of waiting with no food, I had to flag her down. She told us the food was “coming” and to be patient. Thirty minutes later, she offered us a slice of cheesecake to tide us over, followed by what appeared to be her own bag of chips and onion dip, which felt bizarre and unprofessional.

Over 90 minutes in, we finally received the appetizer and soup, followed shortly by the pizza and one steak salad—the second hadn’t even been entered. By the time we paid, a real server appeared out of nowhere, asking how everything was with a smile, completely oblivious to what had just happened. There was no apology from management, no offer to comp even a glass of wine, and no sense of accountability at all.

We left deeply disappointed. The food, when it finally arrived, was average at best—and certainly not worth a two-hour ordeal. If the restaurant plans to continue hosting live music, it must be prepared to staff accordingly and communicate delays honestly. This was a total failure on every front. If we hadn’t been there before and had a good experience, we’d never return. Now, we’ll definitely...

This was my second time at this restaurant. The first time was when they had first opened. I’ll just bullet point it to make it short and sweet.

-paper plates on the tables very tacky. ordered drinks 1 person received their drinks the other two had to wait 25 min (wasn’t busy) the drinks were sitting on the bar waiting to be delivered. I asked if I could grab them from someone and she said idk and walked off. (The host or another server not sure) the team was “frazzled” because they had ran out of stuff in the morning and then ran out of pizza dough In the afternoon. server blamed the food not coming out on the chef or whomever controls what food goes where. -The table behind us didn’t receive any food, people who sat down 20 min after them got their food first. When he asked the server why they got their nachos before him the server replied the chef/whoever controls the food wouldn’t let her bring the nachos to him. we asked for our salad before the pizza (because of the wait) and the server told us no. It was going to come out with the pizza per the chef or person controlling the food. ordered the salad with chicken it came out with no chicken. -very expensive for the sub par food and terrible service. they are currently fighting legislation for liquor license so cannot brew any alcohol right now.

Will not be returning. very unfortunate because of the...

The atmosphere was good and the food was ok. It took a while for the server to come take our order and give us the complimentary waters and it also took a while to get the food. When it did come out one of our salads didn't have dressing and the server asked what kind we wanted and we told her it took over 30 minutes!! My boyfriend tried getting our servers attention she was busy and the greeters attention to and she completely ignored him and she definitelyseen him and heard him. He was frustrated got up to go get the dressing himself and got it within a couple of minutes. We started eating and noticed the salad that we were having troubles with had the white peaces in there and technically if you as a human eat to much of that it can be toxic to your body so we didn't eat it and at this point we were getting frustrated and the server came over and told us she'd take the drinks we ordered off for the inconvenience and also gave us a free slice of cheese cake and to be honest that was nice of her but we still weren't happy because of all the stuff we had to deal with we've seen good things about this restaurant but boy were we wrong to come here! I really hope they get better staff or try...