Spencer's At The Waterfront

Bring your Coleman portable camp stove to warm your food up or better yet cook your food. Steak was cold and veggies raw. Caesar salad is better if you buy at a grocery store or make your own. If you are into Luke warm expensive steak and tasteless salad this is the right place for you.

Go for the ambiance and a drink only!

Heard a lot of good things about his place leading up to our visit on Wed Aug 14th 2013. It is true that it's located on a beautiful area of waterfront in Burlington, the views are tranquil and ethereal, and the restaurant is good-looking and impressive. However, none of this applies to the food. Our salad was way too oiled down with olive oil, our foie gras underdone and slimy, and our oxtail gnocchi absolutely tasteless. Our server was gracious in getting us another order of foie gras which was done correctly, even though we didn't request it. The house-made chocolate mousse cake with toffee ice cream was the only redeeming edible in this establishment. Spencer's was definitely NOT worth the drive from Toronto to Burlington for just the ambiance and dessert. We even told the manager who asked how our meal was about our unsatisfied palate's and he was non-plussed enough to offer no remedies. Talk about a lack of customer service! Kudo's to our server for his great attitude, but Spencer's is a place best left to the local's who want to waste their money on the fancy environment with cafeteria type food.

What a disappointment

This restaurant was recommended to us so we took our parents there for a special occasion - incredibly noisy and hard to have a conversation. Menu looked great online but the pizza was the worst I have ever had. Terrible presentation on plate and it was soggy right through to the crust with the eggpant and other vegetables piled on. Almost inedible. Our parents both had the cod and said it was very salty - hugely disappointing evening for a dinner that was overpriced. Prefer to go to Niagara and frequent the restaurants and wineries that are far superior to Spencer's. Will never return.

One disappointment after another

I've been to Spencers a few times over the past couple of years and for the most part enjoyed the food and experience. I'm not sure what's happened recently but the restaurant has definitely gone downhill. The service was abysmal. I met my guest and had just had a seat when the waitress comes over to ask for my drink order. I hadn't even had a chance to open the drinks menu. I told her I needed some time and she disappeared - for 25 minutes! I finally got my drink ordered and it took another 30 min before our food order was taken. We actually had to flag her down to ask her if we could order. The new fall/winter menu is entirely uninspiring and both myself and my guest found it very difficult to find anything that was appealing enough to order for our meal. We finally settled on pizza - which was a mistake. The thin crust was so thin on my Margarita pizza it was burned on the bottom and the edges were so tough you couldn't cut or bite through them. Reading other reviews it seems its the same complaints each time. Hopefully management reads these reviews and makes some changes. Its unfortunate as its a lovely restaurant and could be so much better! For the price of the place I expect better.

Great Beer on Tap

On the weekend I dropped by because I learned that they had Lugtread Lagered Ale on tap. The hostess said that they were serving Sunday brunch and that sitting at the bar was awkward. However, soon, a waiter brought in a bar stool and soon I was sipping my fave beer on tap. It was a sunny day so the view was great, bartender friendly and as a bonus there was a keyboard player singing a whole host of great songs. I will definitely go back for beer...only place in town that serves Lugtread Ale. (I did not eat, but I had to click a food rating to save my review !)

Not Worth It

Firstly the view and the building is awesome (it can get quite loud though so you have to shout if you want to hold a conversation), a great location for sure. However the food is not at all worth it, especially for the price. Basically you are (over) paying for the view so i would save some bucks and just go for a walk on the waterfront instead. The Roast beef sandwich was very bland and fatty, the pizza was decent but it is pretty hard to mess up pizza, the fries had way too much salt and pepper and even the dessert wasn't that good. Would be a nice place to go for a drink but i would eat somewhere else first.

Nice View.. Er did I mention Nice view?

I love the water and enjoy dining on a warm day outside by the water. For this purpose, Spencer's fits the bill nicely. My first visit was pretty good but I made the mistake of visiting Spencer's when I was very hungry. I was advised by my waiter that the slow cooked beef for two was very good and came highly recommended. The waiter advised me that it would take 45minutes to have the order come out but stated it was worth the wait. My date and I agreed to try the dish and my third party friend tried the stone baked pizza. 85 minutes later my slow cooked beef for two came out with the pizza. (Restaurant half empty) It definitely was very tasty, juicy and very tender. I don't think it was worth twice the estimated wait time for the order. The worst part was, the pizza was cool, and very dry. The GOOD: The food was alright but the view, atmosphere and a nice double of lagavulin neat saved the night. The BAD: Service was horrific, not only did the food take way to long to come out, but the staff seemed not to care and very disinterested. I did get two Wild Rocket & "MONFORTE" (don't want snipe to leave a nasty comments about my review! :p) Piacere salads for free. The UGLY: Although my third party Friend waited just as long as we did for his pizza, he was not offered any appetizers. Then when his pizza did arrive it was very dry and cool. It seems that it was prepared earlier and kept warm under a heating light until my entrée was ready. Management was non-existent and did not see me at all. If you like the water and want to enjoy a nice evening outside by the water then this is the place for you. The food is adequate a bit on the pricey side but the service is below standards at best. Psssstttt.. (The water view is really the view of a wadding pool the lake is a good 100 meters away)

What a horrible Sunday Brunch experience. Never have I witnessed rude and indifferent managers for a large( with reservations made months in advance group ),to find ourselves being seated one hour late and cramped into a space very obviously too small for us. The paying guest was helping to clean and clear the table so as to not waste any more time and get us seated. The food entries were meager. A Roast beef entree from the brunch was one thin piece sliced as thin as tracing paper with 3 pieces of carrots, Poor overall, would never recommend. Salmon portions were 2 x 2 inches. The waitresses did their best, but again, i was shocked at the managers or maitre'd attitude. Very Poor service.

Fabulous View

After reading the other reviews (fortunately after I had already eaten there) I must have been lucky. I went on a beautiful Saturday at about 5:45 got a table on the patio overlooking the lake with no reservation. The view is fabulous as was the weather. Bread came with some chickpea puree which I didn't care for. They brought butter later which was much better. The bread was nice 3/4. I had a salad my wife had soup which were both above average. For dinner Salmon and a strip steak which looked more like 4oz than the claimed 7oz. Never the less it was fine. Desert was disappointing too sweet and gooey. I thought the service was above average. The facility is beautiful and my primary reason for coming. I can't speak to the others service complaints since I had no problems and I would return.

Disappointing and Embarrassing

Having had 2 lovely experiences at Spencer's over the last number of months, I took my elderly parents there on a Wednesday night in early August. Both my husband and I had raved about Spencer's based on our previous experiences (one dinner, one lunch). However, this last experience was disappointing and embarrassing. I made a reservation over a week in advance and had asked for a table by the window so my visiting parents could enjoy the view. When we arrived (on time) for our 8 pm reservation, the hostess located our reservation in the computer (I could see the screen), yet we were told to wait at the bar until a table was ready. Meanwhile, the hostess proceeded to seat another party that had come in behind us, and she walked back and forth in front of us several times without acknowledging us. Finally, she stopped and said: "You wanted a table for 4 right?" and then took us to a table in the middle of the restaurant. Obviously, there was no point to me making a reservation if there was no table waiting and our request for a window wasn't accommodated. Further, we sat for quite some time before a server approached us, when she did she was curt and inattentive, and we waited an hour for our food. No apology, no reassurances that we hadn't been forgotten, no checking in on us to see if we needed anything. All the while, we watched in frustration as the party next to us was attended to by no less than 4 members of the wait staff, including a man in a suit who appeared to be the manager on duty that night. Our server ignored my husband on several occasions when he spoke to her, and to top it all off, she overcharged my credit card by $139.00 and I had to chase her down through the restaurant to get it corrected. We were made to feel as if we were bothering her. The food was excellent when it finally arrived but it did little to make up for the miserable service - I was embarrassed to have taken my parents there. We will no longer be recommending Spencer's to our friends and visitors as the place to go in Burlington and we will not be back.

Disappointed

Visitied, finally, after friends from out-of-town said it was great. Wanted to celebrate a happy event. Waited at the entrance for about 5 minutes before someone came to seat us, even though the restaurant was only about 50% full ( this was 7 PM on a Wednesday). Waited about 10 minutes before waitress took our cocktail order - two classic vodka martinis. We requested "Stoly" vodka, but, after ordering, were disappointed to learn that they had "run out of Stoly" - so we had Belvedere. Cocktails came about 10 minutes later and were watery. Sent them back and got better replacements. Server was very accommodating about this. Then ordered two appetizers - fois gras, and asparagus with panko-crusted egg. Both were satisfactory, but we had to wait 15-20 minutes for them to arrive. For the main, we ordered beef tenderloin, asking for potato gratin, and baked lobster. Beef tenderloin came with an order of asparagus - wish the waitress had told us that - we would have ordered a different appetizer, had we known. Beef was very salty, plus came with potato frites - potato gratin came as an extra. Ordered wine when we placed our food order - it arrived 5 to 10 minutes after the entrees were delivered - no time for the wine to adequately breathe - and this was a $50+ bottle of wine. Overall, a big diappointment, and we won't be back.