Bryan on 
Melody on 
Deanne on 
Paul Dicken on 
Madeleine Boivin on 
Brian on 
Naomi Wilton on 
Michael on 
UPDATE – August 2010: The Altadore Dining Lounge is closed and for sale.
Picture yourself at Cowboys or the former Tantra around 1 a.m. Look around. Take in the groups of young people, what they’re wearing and what they’re saying. OK babe? Bro?
OK, now open your eyes and picture that same crowd on a patio for Sunday brunch in a quiet neighbourhood: servers dressed like shooter girls, and a group that raided Ed Hardy and stepped out of Jersey Shore. Sprinkle in a few tables of couples and families and your scene is set for brunch at the Altadore Dining Lounge. This is an important scene-setter for a few reasons.
The Jersey Shore bunch were all friends/acquaintances of people who own or work at the Altadore. How do we know this? One guy kept getting up from to the table to help serve the rest of the patio. As their group grew, it felt like we were intruding on their private weekend party.
Which brings me to my first impression of the Altadore last month. Is this a serious business trying to secure a loyal clientele as a neighbourhood bistro? Or is this simply a place for staff to hang out with their friends? Unfortunately it’s clear the answer is the latter.
Secondly, every patron (friends included) looked like they were starving because it took at least an hour for any kind of food to appear. The servers are friendly and they try hard, but unfortunately, their hardest is not good enough.
Brunch means coffee. When one waitress came over for refills, she finished two cups, realized the thermos was out and told us she would make a new pot. She never came back. The obligatory check of “how’s everything tasting?” happened as the last person in our group was taking his last bite.
Also, the waitresses — who are no doubt pretty — were dressed like they came straight from the bar (think low, tight, and short). It’s an inappropriate contrast to Altadore’s location in the middle of a residential area, and their walk-in traffic of locals (couples, families). Plus it was a Sunday morning.
The lovely dishes turned out by the great kitchen could not erase the bad taste left by the service and the atmosphere. It’s a huge shame because the Altadore’s brunch is one of the best in the city — both in price and taste. All entrees include fruit salad and coffee.
The Maverick breakfast calzone ($12) is stuffed with chorizo, shrimp, ham, egg and spicy tomato sauce. There’s a section for French toast which includes the impressive Macintosh French toast ($8) sprinkled with apple, cheddar and bacon bits.
My sumptuous Beverly Hills benedict ($15) was worth waking up for, topped with meaty pieces of lobster poached in shallot and wine, as well as spinach, onions and orange hollandaise!
If you have a higher threshold for distracted service and cliquey ambiance, then you will be rewarded with some fantastic cooking. However, I’ve run out of patience for this exclusive clubby project.
Altadore Dining Lounge, 4824-16th St. S.W., Calgary, (403) 457-4457. Weekend brunch 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
UPDATE – August 2010: The Altadore Dining Lounge is closed and for sale.
That’s too bad your experience was bad, but I can agree with you how that can be so uncomfortable. It ruins the atmosphere and the meal when you’re in a restaurant like that.
It seems to me like you are being a little judgemental. I am a regular to the altadore and have had a few years experience working in the industry. Like yourself I once was unsure about the girls working there but after going there a few times and getting to know the girls they arent just pretty faces, and dont deserve to be judged on the way they are dressed. If you do have a problem with appearances dont go to the same place.
As for the food taking a while, I am not too sure how that indicates bad service, possibly the kitchen was abit behind? Any one who has ever worked in a restaurant know that servers cannot control how fast food come out. I do agree that you should have had more coffee refills, but like I said anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows they can be be hectic and all you need is to be short staffed one person and everything can start to fall apart. I agree with Anna, its unfortunate you had a bad experience. I also know that these girl’s work really hard at minimum wage and don’t need to be criticized for working hard like you yourself even said they were.
Mark: My point was I’m not sure why the servers need to be dressed that way for a Sunday morning brunch, which makes it difficult for diners *not* to judge them. As for bad service, I didn’t want to get into all the little things, but they also forgot our requests for water, condiments, salt/pepper. There were two or three servers working, but we couldn’t flag them down when we needed something. Overall, my feedback was more for management than it was to criticize the servers. And you are absolutely right, if I have a problem with it, I won’t be going back.
I was there during this brunch and I reached the same conclusion about poor service, long wait times, and inappropriate dress, having a ridiculous number of years in the food/service industry myself. This was definitely not just a simple matter of the kitchen being a bit behind or the girls not being “just pretty faces”. It was a completely awful dining experience and sadly, mirrors previous visits.
So, sorry Mark, you may have had a different experience, but you have absolutely no basis for passing judgement yourself on this specific situation.
I don’t think the author is being judgemental. If you’re going to wear short and tight clothing while serving in a environment where families visit for brunch, then be prepared to be judged.
Also, I am sick of restaurants blaming being short staffed for bad service. I don’t care whether it’s poor management, lack of staff, or rude servers, at the end of the day it’s still a bad dining experience. As customers, we don’t know what is going on behind the scene and expecting decent service is not too unreasonable.
My partner and I had stopped in one evening many months ago for a quick bite @ The Alt and felt and recieved the same poor service as mentioned above. It wasn’t busy, we were one of two tables there but the level of service and the lack of genreal interest from our server / manager was sad. Made us wonder how they would manage if they got slammed with a huge group of people on a busy night.
Good friends of ours that are locals have had many bad events there and refuse to support them any longer, so the owners of The Alt are already loosing out and they probably either don’t get it, or don’t care to get it.
Dining out is totally subjective. If the consistant message here is poor service then fix the problem and or make the extra effort to not be in the weeds for poor service. If The Alt serves the public then they should be ready to be judged, front to back and top to bottom, dress attire included.
We live near this restaurant and we were so excited when it opened. I had high hopes for this restaurant to be a neighbourhood gem. Unfortunately, it was one of the most odd dining experiences I have had in recent. The owner or manager (not sure which) was on his laptop working or scanning the internet. A man at the table behind us (only other patron) had obviously been over served and was drunk. We had our 4 year old with us and we felt really uncomfortable as he was swearing and being inappropriate. At one point he fell into our table. The manager just watched the whole thing from his table. Bizarre. The server was talking to the manager is a very casual manner the whole time and hanging out at the bar area. Her vibe was very odd.
The food was good. Like you stated, it’s a real shame to have such great food and such bad service and set-up. I felt like we were dining in a bar after hours and we were intruding on some stale party.
First and last time we went there.
Hmmm, sounds like deja vu, manager sitting on his laptop at the bar, waitress sitting there hanging off his shoulder, we had the same thing except the drunk guy.
So it looks like The Alt’s poor / weird service has caught up with them as they have closed their doors sometime this month.
Original Joe’s and the Garrison seem to be hoppin’ with business, guess The Alt really didn’t get it. Shows that they just were not that passionate in seeing their customers happy or satisfied, enough for repeat business to make their income thrive.
APS
Wow! Thanks for the update, Andy. If you — or anyone else — knows where the Altadore chef ends up, please post a comment. Would love to follow him/her to the next venture.