Kelly O’Bryan’s – After 9 Good, Before 9 Bad

Their slogan is ‘Eat, Drink, and Be Irish’.  If being Irish means that you either don’t get what you ordered – 3 times – or what they bring you tastes sour, and that your drinks take 30 minutes to arrive, then you can totally ‘Be Irish’ at Kelly O’Bryans in Vernon.

I have been to Kelly O’Bryans many times throughout my youth and into adulthood.  I have never once in my entire life eaten a meal at Kelly O’Bryans, however.  We have only ever been to Kelly O’s after 9 pm, when their ‘Blarney Time’ starts.  Blarney Time used to be 2 for 1 Appies after 9pm every day.  Then recently they changed it to 2 for $10 Appies at 9pm.  Their appies are the standard pub food variety, with the addition of their famous Pachos – lattice cut fries topped with melted cheese and green onions, then served with their own special Emerald Isle dipping sauce.

Yesterday was a beautiful spring day.  We had plans to attend a local hockey playoff game and have dinner first.  I was going to cook dinner and have our friends over, and in fact did most of the prep work for my dinner when I realized this spring day could not be wasted sitting in our apartment.  I wanted to sit on a patio.  We tried to think of a patio nearby the hockey game so that if it was busy and ran late we wouldn’t be too late for the game.  Kelly O’Bryans was a natural choice being only 2 blocks from the arena and the right angle of sunlight on their patio.  Considering we had always enjoyed Blarney Time at Kelly O’s in the past, we were sure we would enjoy a meal there too.

Because we knew it was the first real ‘hot’ day of spring the patio was likely going to be full, we reserved a table for four.  When we arrived, there was no table reserved for us.  Only a large table for 10 for a birthday party.  Luckily they had just finished clearing another table for us so we could still sit on the patio.

Our waitress delivered menus and when we requested it, brought their allergen book listing off what dishes had what allergens, including gluten, in it.  Very handy.  We made our orders, she repeated them back to us, and we ordered our drinks.

I don’t want to solely blame our waitress for our poor experience at Kelly O’s last night.  She had quite a few tables of four or six, plus that large table for 10.  I know, from being a waitress in the past, that you try to ‘work’ the big tables because you are more likely to get a larger tip.  If that’s the case and she isn’t able to handle all of her smaller tables and the big one, she should have given up some of her smaller tables – like ours.

She was more concerned about taking drink orders and meal orders for that table than bringing us our beverages.  I mean all we ordered was pop.  Two of us received our drinks almost right away but for Levi and I, we didn’t get our drinks until our food arrived, 40 minutes later.

Our friend ordered one of the simplest meals on the menu – chicken fingers and fries.  If you can believe it, they still got the order wrong – three times!  First, they brought her the chicken fingers coated in hot sauce or “tossed in hell”, and no fries at all, just a plate of drenched-in-hot-sauce chicken fingers.  Then another waitress brought out her fries, but they were made into Pachos, so smothered in cheese and onions, which is not what she ordered.  So at this time, our friend said to the waitress ‘This isn’t what I ordered’ and she says ‘Well that’s what was written on your ticket’.

Excuse me?

Are you implying we are lying to you about what we KNOW we ordered?

I don’t care what is written on the ticket, clearly it’s written wrong if we are telling you it’s NOT what we ordered.  Her attitude was really rank – and judging by her outfit I suspect she may have been a shift manager or supervisor too.

So, the waitress took back all of our friend’s food and said she’d put a rush on it.  About 5 minutes later another waitress walks towards us with plain fries and chicken fingers … the same chicken fingers that were coated in hot sauce – again.  The supervisor waitress stopped her before she reached our table, grabbed the chicken fingers and took them back to the kitchen.  They delivered our friend’s fries without any chicken fingers.  Another 10 minutes goes by, and she’s eaten just fries at this point, and her chicken fingers arrive – dry, no hot sauce, yay, but without the correct side dipping sauce.  So the waitress goes back to get her the correct flavor of dipping sauce and it takes literally another 5 or 10 minutes to even get that.

Meanwhile, amidst that whole fiasco, the rest of us had already received our food and started eating.  I started on my side Caesar – which is like many restaurants – wilty and bland.  Fine, whatever.  The garlic toast was awesome – it was a huge slab of bread with this Irish Whisky garlic butter on it.  Then I sampled my pasta dish.  The pasta was fine – cooked just right.  The sauce was unique – not my favorite but definitely tasty.  Then I sampled the chunks of chicken nestled in the pasta.  It was the most rank flavor I have ever had on chicken.  It tasted … for lack of a better word … sour.  I thought maybe it was just a piece that had been over-seasoned so I tried another piece.  Still sour.  In total I had about 4 tiny bites (I mean 1 penne noodle at a time, and 1 piece of chicken at a time) and knew there was something completely off with my food.

Because of the whole chicken finger fiasco other tables around us were staring.  I was totally mortified to have to flag down our waitress and tell her to come closer so I could discreetly tell her that something was off with my food.  I am not a complainer, but I refuse to pay $18 for a pasta dish that tasted so terrible.  She was very understanding and said she’d take it off our bill right away, and would I like something else instead.  I was so done with Kelly O’s plus, we had to get to our game, so I said no.

After our friend finally was able to eat – a whole 20-30 minutes after the rest of us either had our food taken away or had cleaned our plates – we were ready to go.

Our waitress did discount our friend’s meal for the mistake she admitted she clearly made on her own.  She also expressed that she felt bad for our experience and would love to make it up to us by a dessert on her.  We all said no.  It was a nice gesture and it was appreciated, but we simply had no time now that our meal took close to 2 hours to just eat.

So here’s my impressions…if you want to go for some tasty snacky appetizers somewhere in Vernon, after 9 pm that is inexpensive, then go to Kelly O’Bryans.  If you want really good food, a meal, for a decent price ($14 for chicken fingers and fries is not a good price IMHO)…and great service, don’t go before 9 pm.

Kelly O’Bryan’s – Vernon location

Address: 4215 32nd St
Phone: (250) 549-2112

On a slightly more funny/lame note, I found this on their website…hope your ears don’t bleed too much.

April 8, 2009. Tags: 2 for $10 deal, after 9 pm, allergen list, appetizers, chicken fingers, irish, Kelly O'Bryan's, pasta, patio, poor service, Vernon BC. food, Restaurant Review. 1 comment.