Saturday 29 July 2017

Barque Smokehouse, Toronto, ON

I went for a long walk this morning and part of my walk was north on Roncesvalles Avenue.  I passed by Barque Smokehouse (on Roncesvalles Avenue/Geoffrey Street) and was hungry so decided to stop in for brunch.  I'd never been there before.


I ordered Buttermilk Fried Chicken and Waffles.


My meal came out really quickly ... too quickly.  Not surprising, the waffles and the chicken were cold.  I've had chicken and waffles before elsewhere so knew they were supposed to be hot.  I was going to call over my server when I came across a substantial piece of wire from a scouring pad.  Ewwwww!  Needless to say, that was it for me!  Thankfully I'd only had a couple bites before I found it.


My server asked me if I'd like anything else.  No thanks!  She gave me a small bottle of meat rub as an apology.  She handled the situation professionally.

Not a great first impression!

Barque Smokehouse Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

2 comments:

Barque Smokehouse said...

Hi Teena,

I am so sorry to hear about your experience. This is far below the standards we measure ourselves against and is not acceptable.

Please let us know if you have recommendations on how we could have better handled this incident. When you brought this to our attention we promptly removed the dish, refunded your entire meal, offered you a replacement meal, and gave you some of our custom BBQ rub on the house. We have now looked at this incident at every stage of production and are taking every measure possible to ensure that this doesn't happen again in the future. That being said, mistakes do happen and we are very sorry that this happened to you. Despite everything that we did at the time of the incident to correct the situation, this still lead you to post on Yelp, Twitter, and your blog with very negative commentary. Given that this mistake did happen and we cannot erase that fact, what more could we have done to make this better?

We would like the opportunity to make this better for you. Would you willing to contact us at smoke@barque.ca so that we can continue this conversation? We take these matters very seriously and would like to get as much information about your experience as possible.

Thank you,
The Barque Team

Teena in Toronto said...

Thank you for your comment on my blog.

I do understand that mistakes happen and am glad you are taking steps so it doesn't happen again. With my meal, it wasn't just one thing. The waffles and chicken were cold when they should have been hot. Finding the wire scouring pad made the experience even worse. That scouring pad could have been in some gross places and I could/might have ingested some of it.

The server was nice about it. She did ask if I wanted to order something else ... I wasn't offered a complimentary replacement meal. Considering I'd only had four bites from my meal, it would have been inappropriate to have been charged for it. I did offered to pay for my pop.