Raina’s Bistro in Vernon, BC
OK I must eat out far too often. All it ever seems like I post here are restaurant reviews lately. Sometimes it’s a pain to think of what to make for lunch right? Anyways, don’t judge me.
Today I was going to reheat some leftover tasty ribby goodness but instead decided to get out of the house for a bit. Not sure what I wanted I thought of a new place in town … where one of my old favorites used to live – Bagel Lane. This new place is called Raina’s Bistro.
But, this isn’t meant to be a reminiscent journey of delicious bagels and good memories. My brother was one of the bakers at Bagel Lane, back when it was opened by the Lane’s. Ahh the good old days. Bagels and scones.
I went to Raina’s Bistro to see what was new, to see if they kept some of the old stuff, and just to give it a good old-fashioned try.
I was happy to see the place had been spruced up, including the addition of brighter mood lights and a fresher color on the walls. They also sported a new counter top and display case set up. New professionally printed menus hung on the walls. First impressions walking in – Raina’s Bistro is a fresh clean and healthy cafe.
I have to be honest though I wasn’t too impressed with the selection of food available. The sign indicates it’s a bistro – and also a coffee and tea house. But there were far more tea and coffee selections on the menu rather than any food items.
More disappointingly, it was evident that most of the baked goodies that were in the display case were not fresh-baked at Raina’s Bistro, but were of the M&M Meat Shop variety. Not that those types of squares and desserts aren’t tasty…they just aren’t really home made, which is what you’d expect in a bistro. (I do realize that Bagel Lane also sold these goodies but … somehow I didn’t expect Bagel Lane to bake fresh bagels PLUS a whole host of sweets.)
The selection for lunch items was truly so limited I almost contemplated walking out. The girl behind the counter told me that if I was looking for lunch they had a tuna panini or a turkey panini on special for $4.75. Sure, why not?
I never got a look at the panini before it went in the panini press, but had I seen it I would probably have passed up on it and went with one of the pre-made wraps instead. It wasn’t until I arrived home with my food that I realized that the only thing that my turkey panini contained was bread, turkey, mushy tomato, cheese, and overkill on mayo. No real veggies, no real flavor. One bonus to my panini? The ciabatta bread was nice and crunchy and tasty. Would have made an awesome garlic bread type panini base.
I don’t want to write Raina’s Bistro off completely yet. I see that they have a few bagels that resemble the Bagel Lane bagels (assume they got those recipes when they bought the business), and they do have the raspberry white chocolate scones. I also noticed that ‘by popular demand’ they brought back the Eggers (bagel sandwich with egg – like an omelet inside a bagel).
It’s not fair for me (and likely countless other loyal patrons of Bagel Lane) to compare Raina’s Bistro to the old standard. It’s probably also not really fair to Raina or whoever the owners are to feel pressured to measure up and keep the old Bagel Lane traditions and specials alive. I really hope that they are able to set themselves apart and create their own identity. I imagine it can be hard when you have such big shoes to fill and the business you bought had such a loyal following before.
I will go back to Raina’s Bistro. I will try other things there. I am especially interested in their wide variety of loose leaf teas. I guess what myself and others need to get through our heads is that Raina’s Bistro is more of a coffee/tea shop, not a sandwich/lunch shop. It’s hard to do that with ‘Bistro’ in the name, but eventually people will catch on and maybe won’t expect quality food so much as a quality beverage.
I wish Raina’s Bistro success in their first year of business in Vernon.
107 – 5301 25th Ave., Vernon, BC V1T 9R1
(couldn’t find a phone number, sorry)
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.
New Delhi Indian Restaurant – Vernon, BC
This is kind of a last-minute review because I didn’t really go out for dinner tonight with the plan to blog about it later. We were just out for dinner with Levi’s parents who are in town visiting.
New Delhi Indian Restaurant is located at 3315 30 Avenue in Downtown Vernon, BC. This is a fairly recent location change for this restaurant as they were located in a smaller space further downtown.
First I have to be fair and say that I’ve eaten at this restaurant in their old location. The food was great. I already knew this going in the second time.
When I heard on the radio quite a few months ago that they had reopened in a larger location I was eager to visit them again. The experience we had was disappointing as they were so busy with next to no wait staff that we never ever had our order taken – after about 1 hour of waiting and visiting. We chose to leave but I did say to myself I’d return after they are more established in their new location, have their waitstaff shortage fixed and not everyone is clamoring to eat there.
So, fast forward about 4 months and I was craving Indian food so when we made plans to go out for dinner with the in-laws I picked New Delhi. We walked in at around 5 or 5:30 and the place was empty. At first I was worried that maybe it wasn’t a good sign. It’s hard to find good ethnic restaurants in Vernon and I am always disappointed when we find one with great food that closes out less than a year later because there are not a lot of adventurous diners here. I don’t think that will be the case with New Delhi.
The owners are so incredibly friendly and polite. They joked with us and were very courteous.
Within a few minutes the restaurant started filling up with some larger parties and other groups and couples. I was really relieved because it was a sure sign that they would be around for quite a while.
Our food was amazing – as I expected it to be. Since I wasn’t planning to do a review tonight I didn’t bring my camera or video camera. I also don’t remember the full names of all the dishes we ordered so I don’t want to try to repeat and botch the names.
Also the wait time to receive our food was not too long at all, considering all the dishes are prepared when they are ordered. I think in total between our appetizers and the main courses it was about 20 minutes of waiting. Of course, we were visiting and the time passed quickly.
The prices may seem kind of high for the size of dishes you get but let me tell you, what looks like a small amount of food actually is quite filling. Add naan and rice to the mix and you are more than satisfied. For four adults who ate until well satiated, with soft drinks and coffee, our bill came to $77. This was for our pakora appetizer, 2 orders of rice pilao, 2 different chicken dishes (a tandoori dish and a madras curry dish), 2 vegetable dishes, naan bread, and a side of mixed pickle. This is A TON of food!
Since this is my first real restaurant review for this specific blog I haven’t quite determined a rating system that makes sense to me yet. Let me just say I highly recommend New Delhi Indian Restaurant in Vernon, BC and when I am ready to do a for-real restaurant review I will go back and eat again just to post even more details, pictures and maybe even video…and give it a proper rating.
If you like Indian food New Delhi is the best place to go in Vernon (if not one of the only ones!). Their food is on par with some of the authentic food I have had in the homes of my Indian friends.
New Delhi Indian Restaurant
3315 30 Avenue
Vernon, BC V1T 2C9
(250) 545-6558
The Tasty Food Blog 