I have been going to the Pickle Barrel restaurant on Leslie street in north Toronto since I was in my early teens. It was a gathering place where you could socialize, eat great food and get good value. pickle_barrel_leslie.html

Today I am forty one and have taken friends and family there on many occasions but I will not go back.

My brother and niece recently visited from Los Angeles and it coincided with my wedding anniversary. My parents insisted we go out for a nice dinner to celebrate the event, but I preferred a brunch at the Pickle Barrel.

The senior aged waitress really did try to do her best, but the experience went from bad to worse. Items ordered were forgotten. Some of us got our food while others waited over ten minutes for their orders. Those who tried to be polite let their eggs go cold while waiting.

We had a few specific requests for several of the orders but they were not met. When we asked the waitress to please correct the order we could hear her screaming at some chef in the kitchen. Other servers were also yelling so there must have been an issue on that particular Sunday.

Out of our eight orders, seven were off or completely wrong! That is a very high percentage!!

I am in the automotive industry and appreciate when a customer is unhappy and they give me the opportunity to correct any mistakes or misunderstandings. In fact I appreciate when unhappy customers come forward as this helps me learn about how my staff and business are servicing our clients.

I asked to see the manager prior to our departure. He listened patiently and then offered to remove the charge for four of our coffees. So little I thought to myself.

I told him I would not return to the Pickle Barrel restaurants.

Since then we have gone out for many lunches and dinners and a few times as the family was discussing where to go, the name Pickle Barrel came up. I refused to go their and we have given our business to other establishments.

Perhaps if the manager had done a little better than to offer to pay for "4 of our coffees" I might have reconsidered and give them another chance.

Oh well, Toronto has thousands of restaurants so it will be quite a while until I exhaust them and have to go back and suffer through another bad service and bad customer relations incident with the Pickle Barrel.

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