the food was excellent, but the service was just god-awful. (actually, all the staffs were great, expect for one, according to the receipt, her name is elysse, she has blonde hair and works during lunch hours)
pourhouse was one of my favorite spot for lunch in the gastown neighborhood; they've got tasty cocktails and i've enjoyed many great meals prepared by their talented chefs.
however, the last two dining experience weren't so pleasant. i was served by a server called elysse, who gave us very lousy services.
the first time elysse served us, she forgot to type in our orders.
after an hour,(mind you, the restaurant wasn't very busy at all. there were 5 tables including us) when we asked her about our food, she impatiently said "your food is coming, or do you want me to just cancel your orders?"
elysse failed to apologize, not only did we not get our meal after waiting for an hour, but she had the nerve to ask if we wanted to cancel our meal?
two months later, i've decided to give pourhouse another chance because i love their duck confit pappardell and their drinks. (they took pappardell off their fall menu, which is fine, i like their other dishes as well)
this time, we got elysse as our server, again.
i got the pork belly po'boy special and it was delicious.
my coworker got a tuna sandwich, which (unfortunately) got not 1, but 3 pieces of gigantic fish bones left inside the fillet; they are not tiny fish bones, each of the bone is almost as long as a toothpick!
we told elysse about the fish bones situation, hoping she could at least speak to the kitchen staffs and let them know about it. (because of the bad experience that i had last time with her, i had a feeling that elysse would just take away the plate and not do anything about it, so i took some pictures of the bones, which have some blood (blood from my coworker's mouth) on it, i will post it on urbanspoon if anyone wants to see if i am exaggerating)
she told us that, "it 's albacore tuna fillet, okay? so like, there will be bones in it. the chef poached it with milk, maybe they missed one or two bones here and there, so yea. it happens." no apologies, nothing.
yes, maybe if the tuna sandwich didn't cost $15 dollars+hst, i would understand.
we still got charged for the full price for our meal and did not get an apology from elysse. it's hard to imagine anyone who works in the customer service sector can be so rude, especially at a place like pourhouse.
i certainly wasn't expecting a low-end burger joint service from pourhouse.
that's too bad. they have great food.
there are tons of outstanding new restaurants in downtown/gastown, with fantastic customer service.
i do not recommend anyone to have lunch at the pourhouse.
unless blonde server with poor attitude excites you.