Kooky Canuck — Restaurant in Memphis

Pathetic. I'll have to update my review. This place is slowly going to hell in a handbasket. Indifferent staff and poor kitchen quality. I'm not sure when or how or why, but the portions are dying, and the quality is worse. I've been in food service for over a decade, and rarely have I seen such indifference to customer care and presentation. When I worked here years ago back when it was Bigfoot Lodge, everything was top notch and deserving of its accolades. Now it's a joke. It took 10 minutes just to get a mixed drink on a dead Sunday, and the picture is what I got of the now pathetic and mangled cheese bites. This isn't an isolated incident. The time before I came to this location was just as bad. Go to the Cordova location if you want a true Kooky Canuck experience, because this place has died.

Update: After years, I decided to try again. I paid $20 for an appetizer plate to get 6 fried pickles that were horrendously oversized, overbattered, and borderline raw. The pickle juice likely soaked into the batter, but there's zero chance these were done properly since I've had them before, and the outsides were never soggy with no crunch. Trying to carefully cut one made it shoot off the plate to the floor because trying to take a bite out of it would've been impossible without unhinging my jaw. I get the "big" novelty, but come on.

2 of the toughest and driest chicken tenders I've had in a long LONG time. Shredding the chicken by hand, I swore I could braid it into a rope. The sauce couldn't help it as the dryness cut straight through.

Speaking of which, this is not the same dill ranch. It barely tasted of dill at all, which used to be one of the best ranch sauces downtown.

Finally, one sad BBQ eggroll cut diagonally lengthways, which had all the similar flavor and consistency of the BBQ chicken they slap onto a cheap Domino's pizza.

All this on an oversized platter on wilted lettuce to accentuate how absolutely insulting that this costs $20. I get it. Times are tough, but that's borderline insane.

This place used to be big food, big personality, big atmosphere, and big fun.

Now it's just a big disappointment feuled by big apathy with a staff that clearly stopped caring a long time ago. Everyone looked dead inside. If I had to serve this, I would be, too. Our server saw that half the plate was unfinished, and I asked for a check.

She didn't ask if I wanted a box or if everything was OK. If that was my table, it would raise concern. I guess I can assume she knew just as well as I did that this was simply bad and didn't push the issue.

Either clean your house or just tell us you gave up because there's no longer an excuse for this. This place used to be awesome and deserving of its accolades. Now it's just depressing.

Didn't even bother asking for a refund. I paid the tab out of sheer pity.

Shawn....

The Good: Food is tasty. Sweet honey fries were a nice splurge. Burger was good.

The Bad: Wife's southwest salad was an overflowing pile of iceberg lettuce and not much else. Server was very unprofessional and just....bad. I felt like I was being punked on a reality show.

When she dropped off my food she said that the kitchen didn't have fries for my burger and fries, but she would bring them when they had fresh fries. Okay cool, I like fresh fries.

15 minutes later I finished the whole burger....no fries. Asked for the fries...no fries...no explanation. Asked for the check and asked about the fries. She said she could have an order for me to go. I asked if she could just discount something since I never got part of the meal and was done eating. She said that she couldn't because the fries were included and then stared at me.

I explained that I understood that the fries were included in the meal...but I didn't get something that was part of the meal. I said, "It is like ordering a burger and not getting a bun; it's part of the meal". She said ,"Some people order it without the bun", and handed me the bill...

Whatever, I'm on family vacation so I just want to pay and move on with my night.

Check out the bill (since this interaction made me cautious) and she rang in a full priced drink with one of the two kids meals (btw, I only ordered one kids meal to split). I asked her about it and she argued with me again and said that she gave me the drink. I explained that the menu said that the drink was included so she snatched up a menu and looked it over to find...that kids meals included a drink.

She flagged down a manager, talked with her for a few moments, then brought back the check with the drink voided. Nothing about the fries.

I paid the $60 bill and left a $5 tip.

I'm on vacation with my family and this interaction irritated me enough to write a negative review.

It isn't that I didn't get what I ordered, it's that she wasted my time arguing with me about some fries and a drink. I want to be fooled. Blame it on the kitchen, apologize and say that you're new, or...SOMETHING. Don't turn it around on me like it's my fault for politely asking about something...

I tend to base my reviews on four things: food, atmosphere, server, and speed of service.

1- food. Very very good. I was a little hesitant as some of the most recent reviews were touting bad food. However we had piping hot food that was properly seasoned, not too greasy or too dry, and was overall very good.

2- atmosphere. When we first walked in it took a few minutes to be seated because there was no host/ess at the stand. A minor annoyance, but nothing that would stop me from staying. When someone did finally come over, we were pointed to our seats rather than taken to them. There were not a ton of people in the restaurant, so I'm not really sure what everyone was doing or if they just don't have a host/ess. This made it feel a little less than welcoming, but this could also be contributed to the fact that we went on a Thursday evening.

3- server. Our waitress was very pleasant and helpful, but overwhelmed. She wasn't able to refill our drinks for getting backed up at the line with food. She did her best, I will give her that. She was apologetic for the food taking longer than it should have, and kept asking if there was anything we needed. Refills would have been nice.

4- speed of service. Some of our food took longer than it probably should have, which is not the server's fault. This falls on the kitchen entirely. The sliders came out well after the poutine did, then mine and my husband's burgers came out well after our daughter's food as well.

Overall our dining experience was very good. I cannot promise we will be back as we are from out of the area and should we come through again there are other places we want to try. However we will definitely recommend the Kooky Canuck to anyone coming...