Wyld Pines Bar & Restaurant — Restaurant in Vancouver

Dark Dining review only! Does not apply to the regular menu or table service, which has generally been decent in past visits to this restaurant.

• TL;DR - save your money and wait for Vegas to try this. They don't know what they're doing here and it was uncomfortable at best. Blackout goggles gave some of us a headache. Food was meh *

The entire premise of the dark dining experience is to celebrate taste, smell and texture. The 'chef' promises a food adventure of 7 courses all carefully designed to excite and delight your senses. However, most of the 7 small plates that were served to us could best be described as low quality cafeteria food in both taste and texture. There was no consideration for a diner's palate and no sensible flow from one dish to the next, no palate cleansers, etc. I can't imagine the 'chef' actually understands what a multi-course meal even looks like in fine dining: this is more like the random sampling of a child at an all you can eat buffet while visiting their granny at the old folks home.

The first course was a small savory crepe with melted cheese and a tangy tomato filling. It was flavorful if a little chewy, but overall decent. This was the only exception in what was otherwise a confusing and disappointing lineup of dishes, though I am fairly certain this was reheated and not made fresh.

The next course was a grilled asparagus soup that was essentially a pureed vegetable soup with a couple of bits of asparagus and a lot of hard fiber from the stalks that should have been removed. The asparagus bits that remained were interesting but we're not consistent between all diners at our table. I had two bits, one grilled and one that was crunchy like it had a bit of breading. Others at the table had only plain asparagus bits if any.

The third course was almost certainly a reheated-from-frozen pork Bao from Costco. The dumpling lacked the freshness or flavor one would expect from a common street food vendor, let alone at a 'fine dining' experience. Others at the table also recognized the Costco fare and were equally disappointed.

A dish that was later identified on the menu as drunken noodles actually tasted like canned vegetables poured over a mix of cold noodles. I have eaten drunken noodles many times elsewhere and nothing about the taste, texture or ingredients here suggested that dish. It was salty but otherwise bland with exceptionally chewy chunks of something that tasted like old stew meat and cumin. I'm pretty sure it was beef. If I could have seen it I wouldn't have put it in my mouth. If I could have seen the plate, I would have spit it out. This was the most disappointing dish of the night.

We were later served their version of chicken katsu that was more like popcorn chicken arranged around a pile of white rice with a small amount of seasoning. The crisp on the (deep fried) chicken was not panko and the oil used to fry it tasted old. I do not think the 'chef' knows what katsu is. It certainly isn't what was served to us.

One remaining dinner course was a thick sourdough toast with mushroom sauce, tomatoes and vinaigrette. It was unwieldy, sticky and messy. I picked off the vegetables and left the toast after one awkward bite.

The final course was a bit of cheesecake from their regular menu. Nothing special or different, not 'carefully designed for dark dining' which could really be said of the entire experience. This is your typical store-bought dessert, akin to something from Fred Meyers. Hard to say for sure if it was made or just bought in, but not remotely exciting.

All told, 3 diners spent around $250 (no add-ons, no cocktails) for food I would be embarrassed to serve in my home. This is not worth it. Save your money. Stick to the regular dining room and menu and you'll be better off.

So sad that yet another restaurateur in this area is taking advantage of the relative dearth of decent restaurants to foist mediocre food on the locals at these prices. We should all...

This is not a place to take your family with young kids, here’s why:

I’ve been to Wyld Pines two times before with a party of 5-7 people. In my previous experiences I’ve had tremendous service with an attentive wait staff that deserves praise.

However, I had a WYLDLY different experience tonight with my family. As my 3 kids and I sat in the car, and the grandparents in their respective car, my wife returned telling me the host gave a 10 minute wait. Furthermore, he explained they simply needed to clear a table.

The host checked with us multiple times and seemed not to have our name even on the hand written list. Patrons continued to pile in and families waited with assumed false promises.

I literally wouldn’t post a one star disappointed review if my only complaint was a bad estimate to get seated.

Finally, the host miraculously had a table for us if we were able to sit on the patio after 40 minutes. The patio? Yes please!

Upon being seated, we were told, as is accustom, your server will be right with you. As we scanned the menu, planned the kids meals (ready to put the kids orders in at the first sight of the server ((ifykyk)), looked at the draft beer menu, and excitedly looked forward to putting in some small plate dishes I began to wonder… do they know we are even out here?

As our party of 7 sat on the fantastic patio in solitude, with many other open tables and other families who had been waiting with us in the lobby, I came to terms that we mere vagrants on their property. 10 minutes passed and we had no service or the sight of an employee.

Boo-hoo, right? I’m with you if it’s two adults and time is a commodity. But, if you have kids and they’re hungry and you’ve entertained them for 50-60 minutes and dangled whatever carrot you can, it is a war zone.

As our party of 7 left the establishment I, who was excited to eat and drink here, had to CONTINUE to wait to even voice my disbelief to the level of service. Waiting to complain is too Karen for me but, I digress, I was too appalled to not voice my disdain.

Long story longer, this is not a family friendly establishment for young kids. False expectations, lack of service, and disorganization led me to write a review this long. I’m saddened given my prior experiences, but clearly the front end and management are operating in the dark, not serving in it.

I do want to say my servers in the past were awesome, but we weren’t even able to get to that...

We had a very disappointing experience here. We will not be back.

It was a Wednesday night, the place was busy but not packed. Everything took way longer than it should have for that time of night/week. We ordered the chevre sprouts to start, a burger and the fish tacos. All of it took a long time to come out. Our server was hustling, but it was more of a systemic failure of the whole place I think.

The sprouts were good when they came out for sure, so we had high hopes. We finished them all before our meal came out because it took so long. My burger was just okay. The bun was obviously old and dried out so much that it cracked as I held it. There was way too much BBQ sauce on it and that was the only flavor I could discern, despite being a lot of beef, cheese, bacon, etc. I didn't finish it, which marks probably the first time I've ever left a burger partially-eaten.

My wife said "how does someone screw up fish tacos?". She ended up eating most of the filling with a fork and leaving a bunch uneaten as well.

I got a salad with my burger instead of fries (for an extra $2!). It was fine, but the ranch was just watery from-a-bucket foodservice stuff like you'd expect from a cheap cafeteria.

Atmosphere-wise, it was worse than the food. Despite being "busy but not packed" it was incredibly loud inside. My wife and I were practically shouting at each other across our table. When we came in (and waited a long time for someone to show us to one of many open tables) I noticed the floor was very sticky. I should have known, but when I went to the bathroom before we left, it was way worse in there. The floor was sticky like someone had mopped with maple syrup. The counter by the sink was disgusting and the urinal looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a month. Nasty track lines of flush water running through dirt all down the front. I couldn't believe it. We bolted and bathed in hand sanitizer when we got to the car. I hope the kitchen was cleaner :(

This place apparently has some sort of "dark dining" gimmick that we didn't participate in, but based on the cleanliness problems, I don't think I'd want to lose my sense of "don't touch that." Regardless, we won't be...