Waterhouse Restaurant — Restaurant in Peterborough

My wife had dined at the Waterhouse before, but I had not. We made reservations for the absurdly early hour of 5 pm on a Saturday; the meal was a precursor to a concert we had tickets to attend.

There are three kinds of experiences one might have when dining somewhere for the first time. The best experience possible is to be blown away, by the service, the ambiance, and most importantly, the food. A step down from that is having your expectations met. Sure, you've never been to the place, but you've heard about it, and so you go, with your expectations in hand, and the restaurant ticks all the boxes. A good experience. You'll be back.

My experience at The Waterhouse was neither of those first two. The ambiance was nice; the service was fine, but both my wife and I were disappointed by the food. I had a special, Oxtail Stew, as the appetizer, and it was the winner of the evening. Tender, on the bone, well cooked, and flavorful. My wife's hummus plate did a poor job of being hummus, and the veggies on the plate, while raw as one might expect, were poorly prepared. The carrot spears were practically logs, sliced at least three times larger than they should have been.

There was an unforgivable passage of time between our appetizer and the main course. We were seated at about 5:05pm, ordered quickly, and had a nice conversation, but had somewhere to be at 6:30 pm. An hour after we ordered, we were still waiting and let our waitress know. When the main courses arrived, my wife's choice, I think a poké dish using perhaps Mahi Mahi, was meh, and came nowhere close to meeting the standards of Okipoké, a small chain of fast-casual restaurants we have been to in the past.

My beef tenderloin risotto? So there's no need here to review in detail the required steps for making a risotto, because that didn't happen. My take on the risotto at the Waterhouse? The rice was the right level of al dente. There was too much cheese. The vegetables were certainly not prepared with the risotto. The brightness of their color probably meant they were blanched and then stirred into the rice and cheese before being served, with a few chunks of beef tenderloin added in for good measure. Because of this, the rice picked up none of the flavor. If I had to guess, water was used for cooking the rice and not a vegetable stock. I say this because the rice itself was basically flavorless. Cheese can excuse a multitude of sins, so while there was clearly too much of it to be risotto, whatever my dish actually was, the cheese, which did have flavor, improved it. The chunks of beef tenderloin were okay, but basically were there to appease Americans with our incessant need for a bit of protein in every dish.

I don't want to judge The Waterhouse on timeliness, because on another evening, without time constraints, the opportunity to have good table conversation would have been welcome. But even so, our main courses arrived a bit over an hour after we ordered them, and at least 40 minutes after we had finished our appetizers. We ate them quickly. Very quickly. Perhaps 4-5 minutes was all the time we had. And that is sad, but my ratings in this review are not taking that into account.

Nevertheless, it certainly impacted our eating experience. It is simply not typical to see over an hour go by before having your dinner in front of you, at least not in the U.S.

The good. Our service was fine. Once the waitress was made aware of our time constraints, she became more attentive. She brought us our bill a minute or two after serving our mains, in order to minimize the time it would take to settle our bill and get out the door. The portable device the waitress had allowing us to pay at the table, something that has been common in Europe for well over a decade, was welcome. I hope it becomes more common in American...

This is my first ever 1 star review and it’s well deserved. My wife and made a 7:30 reservation for Sat evening (The reservation was made at 12:30 that same day).

When we arrived the hostess was very pleasant and seated us immediately.

Our server came over and gave us a very nice greeting and took our drink and appetizer orders. She let us know the kitchen was a little backed up so we might experience a little longer wait for our entrees. We agreed it wasn’t an issue, put in for another app just to hold us over.

We waited... and waited... and waited.. during this time our server was AMAZING. She was constantly checking in and offering apologizes for the delay.

We watched guests get increasingly frustrated and start to tare into the wait staff. The manager was 100% absent through all of this and allowed the staff to take abuse from customers. After an hour we finally spotted the manager come out of the kitchen and deal with two very unhappy tables.

After an hour and a half of us waiting for our entrees, our server came to us completely broken, she was in tears from being destroyed by angry customers but doing an amazing job holding it together for the sake of her polite tables. (It was very obvious the issue was with the reservations and the kitchen, not the wait staff). She again apologized for the issues and said that our food was still not on the grill. She offered for us to take it to go when it was ready and it would be comped.

At the two hour mark she came out with our meals in a bag, it’s now 9:30, they close at 9. I counted 7 other tables still seated with a majority not served.

We asked to speak with the manager and roughly 5 mins later she came to our table. I asked what happened? She said this was not the normal and the kitchen had just gotten behind. I would have believed her but while waiting we checked reviews and this had happened just last weekend. So not only was she not honest but this was a reoccurring issue. I called her out. And told her about the review. She then admitted that she lost a chef. I followed up by asking why on earth would you allow this many reservations when you know the kitchen is understaffed and put your amazing wait staff through for at least a week?? It was clear as day the staff had been broken down and she was not supporting them in the floor. Very disappointing to see a team tossed into the fire with no leader.

What kind of manager, knowing they are short staffed in the kitchen allows for full capacity reservations? What kind of a manager does that two weekends in a row? What kind of manager allows their team to be verbally assaulted by angry customers because of her poor decisions?

When we got home at 10:30 we reheated the food and it was great! We were also given a $50 gift card for the issues and asked to return. We will be waiting for some positive reviews before we make the 2 hour round trip again.

I hope the owners see this review and step in to make the needed changes before they have...

Never again! We have gone to Waterhouse several times & have always had great experiences. Didn't have a great experience today. We have been talking about trying the Sunday brunch for some time & today we got all dressed up, made the long drive to Peterborough. We tried calling to make a reservation but no one answered the phone. Frustrating. Arrived at Waterhouse only to stand there & have no one greet us for quite some time. Finally the hostess appeared, she didn't apologize.for keeping us waiting, she didn't tell us how long the wait would be, just told us if we wanted to sit at bar we could go straight in but other wise it would be a wait. When we pressed her how long she insisted she had no idea. We are so confused because there are empty tables every where. She left & then a whole group of people came in. One of the waitresses stepped in & began telling people it was a 15 min wait. We were confused again, why were we not told it was only a 15 min wait? When we saw the hostess again she told us the kitchen had told her not to seat anymore guests. This was a 1pm! We were so confused because if the kitchen wasn't allowing anyone to sit why was it acceptable to eat at the bar? Bottom line is this is not how you treat your guests. Not answering the phone, not greeting guests, letting guests stand around for over a half hour without any idea of the wait time is unwelcoming & unacceptable. Guests understand having to wait but give a time frame & make your guests feel welcome. Once you stop valuing your guests & you become so arrogant, time for us to take our business elsewhere permanently. In the end we wasted our Sunday afternoon, drove all the way to wait 45 mins, never sat down, never understanding what was going on. Never got to eat or try brunch. Felt like absolute chaos. So...