Category: Restaurant Reviews

The last day of 2015, a year of great change for us.  An RV, with a beautiful spot to place it on Kootenay Lake, a sailboat, and continued contact with many, many great friends.  We continue to focus on the short and medium term goals and made some decent progress to those ends.  The new year will be spent enjoying what we have, and putting more clarity into our time frames.

But first, we have to close out the old year with an evening out.  We have a tradition on New Years Eve, supper with Lori’s cousin Val and her husband Brian.  The plan this year was supper at The Keg, followed by a quiet evening at our place to ring in the new year,.  How did that work for us. let’s see.

We popped in on The Keg, packed to the rafters at 5:00.  No room at the inn for us.  We decided on giving Montana’s a try, so we headed over there.  At this point, we will now consider this to be a review on Montana’s Cookhouse, 130th Ave in Calgary.

We knew we were going to have some issues as soon as we walked in.  The place was kind of full, but it was obvious that there was a staffing issue.  Lots of empty tables, not bused, and minimal staff visible for such a busy night of the year.  Put or name in and were told 30 to 40 minutes.  This was the last thing done right.

We were ushered to our table, so far so good.  We ordered drinks and appetizers, so far so good,.  Appetizers were good, the spinach dip especially so.  Then we hit the wall.  The wine arrived, a basic cab-malbec.  It was interesting that it came literally refrigerator cold.  Never had that before.  The server attempted to open it, but apparently had never used this type of corkscrew before.  I had to open it for her before she put her eye out.

Orders placed for dinner, 4 meals all pretty much the same, steak with Portobello sauce and a variety of sides.  Let’s slow forward to the service.  In fairness, the server was trapped in a bad situation.  Understaffed everywhere, she did manage to pop by and apologize for the delays on several occasions.  Finally, after 90 minutes, the dinner was served.  Unfortunately, all 4 of were missing something, the Portobello sauce to be specific.  In addition, all the steaks were the opposite of what we had ordered for cooking time, 2 were cold, and 2 baked potatoes were basically right out of the fridge.  Being as there was no point sending it back, we asked for a manager.  He came by and did the right thing, in that he removed the charges for 2 of the meals.  Not a good dining experience.

To be completely fair, the restaurant was poorly staffed, which had an impact on our service.  The server was great, although I was surprised at the lack of knowledge on the bottle opening.  The management should also learn that bottles of red wine should not be kept in refrigerator.  The manager was aware of the situation in the establishment and did the right thing by us, and likely others.  The big question, would we go back.  Not going to happen.  One bad experience is enough to turn one off.  Sorry Montans.

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