Cafe Medina

Horrible customer service. Me and my friends went to have some food we ordered 3 waters, bruchettas, calamari and poutine appetizers. Half an hour later I had to go remind the server (who was actually the manager come to realize) who was sitting down that we ordered 3 appetizers and 3 waters. They completely forgot. He stood up with a confused look on his face did not apologize. Then once the waters were eventually dropped off, they brought our calamari and one napkin. Which I had to tear in 3 pieces because no side plates were brought (apparently they don’t do side plates?) I asked to talk to the manager because I was so displeased. I was told they would only void the CALAMARI and no the other two appetizers. And they’re reasoning was «we ate it». Damn right I ate it! I waited half an hour. Bullshit service. I have worked in the service industry 5 years and never have I seen such thing. No stars

This place is the only place that gives me a terrible headache, it’s expensive has hell and it’s all kirkland brand. They serve Cosco food.
Servers are all rude, lazy, unhappy all the time

Really not surprised for all the bad reviews. Came here for an after party for my friends birthday, was greeted by a rude server who told us as soon as we sat down that «if we all don’t order drinks, we all had to leave», it was such an interesting way to greet customers I must say. Following that, half way through ordering our drinks he walked away to chat with another table, 20 minutes later after he had himself a nice seesha sesh in the corner, he finally returned to get our order, he came back bringing a couple of them wrong, he disappeared before my friends were able to correct him. Lastly, the final strike for me was when we were paying our individual bills and it some how came out to be $ 6… when my drink was $ 4.75 when my friend and I asked where that number came from he said its including gst… which was interesting since gst is only 5% and he refused to show me the receipt, after bringing up this fact he finally admitted «he included the tip» that for me crossed the line considering the fact he was the worst server I ever had and decided to give himself a 26% tip on top of that, after arguing with him about it he threw a hissy fit and said «fine just give me 5 bucks then!» and slammed the card machine on the counter and sent us on our merry way. So as a warning to all that decide to visit café medina expect to get ripped off and receive the worst service you ever had.

This place was recommended to me by my friend who has tried every shisha place out there. I was worried to go there at first because of all the bad reviews about service, but I didn’t seem to get that problem. When I went, around 11:30 pm on a Wednesday night, with only a few people remained, which helped the service problem. I got the white grape shisha flavour, a classic which can’t be wronged. My shisha came out relatively fast. Even if this place has said to be bad, the shisha from here is good. It gave me a nice nicotine buzz almost right away. There was never a rough moment, went down my throat really smoothly.
The drinks here are really expensive, but I expect that much from a shisha bar.
I’m conflicted to come back, as I’ve heard so many bad things about its shisha, maybe I was the one in the million?

Do not support these people! I came here with a few friends, as Café Med was full. It was maybe ¼ full, and it still took 10 minutes before a server came over. They demand you order a drink (yep, you even have to pay for water), and for what you get, the drinks are incredibly overpriced. We all ordered iced teas, and they charged $ 5 for each one. Just a bit overpriced for iced tea that is probably just Nestea or Brisk. We ordered pomegranate sheesha, as we had never tried that flavor, and it took almost 25 minutes for it to arrive. We started smoking it, and it had this awful burnt taste. We couldn’t taste the pomegranate whatsoever. We try to find our server, and we did not see him anywhere. Finally, after 15 minutes, we manage to stop a staff member and tell her about the sheesha. Not even joking, she blankly stared at us and without saying a word, grabbed our sheesha and walked away. We sat there wondering if anything would be done for us. Finally, a very intimidating lady walks over to the table. She puts her hands on the table, leans in, and glares at us. She says, «What’s the problem?» We tell her about the sheesha, and she says, «That’s how we make the sheesha. I made your sheesha with my own hands. I make the best sheesha». We told her the sheesha was not good, and we just wanted to pay for our drinks and leave. She reluctantly agreed, and said, «Don’t you ever do this again». Just a way to end this terrible experience, being threatened. Well don’t worry, we won’t ever «do this again», and we will never again step foot in this establishment.

Service –10, no stars if it was a choice. Not recommended at all.
Went with a group of friends to medinas for my birthday. Service was so poor we left before out shisha came. We wanted 45 minutes for the mandatory drink they made all of us get. We were coming from a place where each of us had to already pay a shit ton of money for food and drinks and we just wanted shisha. Not to mention all the tables around us gets service… One of my friends went over to see why it was taking so long, and noticed that there was a shisha sitting in the counter just being burnt. And the waiter had pointed out that they forgot to bring our shisha, so they were bringing it now. Waited for another ten minutes watching the tables around us get served. I personally went over to the waiter to explain this situation. Yet they said that the printer broke so they could not input our information and saw the same hookah sitting on the counter just burning. This was pure bull shit because everyone around got their orders during the time when their printers were «broken». They did not say sorry once and continued to explain that it was not their fault the service sucked. This is not acceptable. We left but still paid for our mandatory drinks that were supposed to be 4.75 as stated, but we paid $ 7 for them. They personally added gratuity for a «larger» group when they barely serviced us. One of my close friends who couldn’t make it out tonight had warned me that they only serve properly to «regular» customers. My question is how do they even get regular customers with their service?
DONT GO TO MEDINAS. Their service sucks and they try to rip people off.

My review will be echoing my fellow Unilocalers below.
I went with a friend and we ordered the minimal amount to sit-​in: one hookah and one drink each (tea and orange juice). The total came out to $ 40. I love my sheesha, but not if it’s going to be at this price.
I’m not sure if it’s just me with a bad vibe, but they’re consistently busy. Or maybe it’s a combination of prime location and lack of quality competitors.
I’m torn because I love my sheesh, so I’ll likely stumble back into this joint, but the high price and insincere service will leave me perturbed every time.

I have been here a few times and do not know why I go back. Forced to order a drink, and the food is TERRIBLE, I once got sick from the cheesecake there, totally understandable. When ordered I had a bite and noticed that it was «off» so I asked the server when it was made, he would not give me an answer I probably should have stopped eating it then and there, but I paid for it and new I wouldn’t get a refund so I ate it anyways, After becoming sick shortly after getting home I called the place the next day and tried to politely tell the manager to maybe check to make sure that the food was okay. I did not ask for a refund or anything and was met by yelling and the manager denied that it could have been their cheesecake that made me sick. On my last trip I ordered a milkshake which contained some plastic pieces in it. After showing the server he took it away, never replaced it nor did he take it off the bill. Not so happy about that one.

I wish I could give this place 0 stars.
For starters, a friend and I used to love this place. We loved how big and spacious it was, and the décor but today just confirmed we will never go back. I’d like to say we’ve been regulars for quite a bit, however when my friend and I walked in tonight, one of the workers gave a waitress a look that made us both uncomfortable. (kind of like… «them again?»
ANYWAYS. So we order our shishas and as we’re smoking, we notice a pool of water around my friends pipe. Okay. thats fine. So I go and call the waitress and she takes the pipe and doesn’t even clean up the pool of water on our table until we ask. & when she brings back another pipe, she doesn’t even bring a plastic bit to smoke with.
Then they bring our food (Mogos which are salty) and didn’t even bring napkins. They rarely check up on you to see if you coal needs to be changed or to see how everything is doing. We were sitting for 30 minutes before we were able to get someone to change our charcoal.
Their customer service is terrible, and its not worth the money.

Wow so this place is shit. We ordered 2 teas and a hookah, we sat for 30 min (and several reminders to different staff members) waiting for it! Hot water, not hard but they seem to have problems with it. I have been to several hookah bars and have never been in a place with such shitty ventilation. We didn’t need to order a hookah because we were in a giant cloud of smoke which enveloped the whole restaurant. 2 teas (hot water and tea bags) no loose tea or anything plus one hookah worked out to $ 24.00… Turns out they own the hookah bar across the street from them as well so that will probably be just as shitty, not that we will find out.

I usually look past customer service and focus on just the food, unless its really good or really bad. In this case, it was pretty brutal.
You have to order a drink here. Scratch that, they insist that everyone MUST order a drink. If they kindly asked, I might have been okay with it. But their hostile approach really turned me off. In addition, if you forget to order a drink, even if you have ordered $ 3000 in baklava, they will add on the cost of a drink to your bill at the end. Wow. ($ 3000 of baklava is extremely hypothetical, but quite, possible)
These guys also own Brava across the street. Also pretty crappy service. They force you to have a shisha pipe for every 2 people. A drink per person every few hours.
I know that the whole point of going to a shisha bar is to usually smoke shisha, but being forced to order kind of grinds my gears. Maybe I want to go just to grab a plate of falafel?

Is it possible to give this place a –10? Yes, it’s that bad. I’d like to further expand on point number 5 as mentioned by Mike M., as I was part to the unfortunate day we learned about ‘prices may change without notice’.
Story goes a little like this; 7 or 8 of us used to frequent Café Medina when it first opened as a quieter alternative to Café Med, and when they couldn’t fit us in.
One day, we get the bill, and it’s about $ 10 more than what the menu had quoted. So we confornt our server, here is the conversation as I remember it;
Me: Excuse me, but the bill for ‘x’ item is a lot higher than what your menu says.
Waitress (flippant and defensive): I know, the menu says ‘prices may change without notice;
Me: Ok, I understand that, but we were not told there was a price change on our menu items when we ordered said items
Waitress: That’s why we put ‘prices may change without notice’
Me: Well, I understood that, but the purpose of stating that is to tell your clients of the price change prior to billing them, not after. We didn’t get a chance to decide whether we wanted to pay $ 3 extra dollars for these meals (and sheesha). (which by the way was way too expensive to begin with).
Waitress: **Blank look**, no response, leaves the table (uhhhm, what?)
So, my cousin goes to the owner and then the owner comes back to our table, and we start the conversation again, blah, blah, blah, we repeat a variation of the above with him.
My cousin: Why don’t you just change the menu then, if the prices are always changing AND you’re always out of half the items?
Owner: Menus are expensive to change — note* their menu is cheap looking, and I’m sure they could remove the pieces of paper from the plastic and type new ones on a computer.
Cousin: Use stickers on the menu then, or at least tell the waitress to INFORM us when the prices change. That’s only fair. (I pipe up and repeat the same thing to emphasize the point).
Owner: Next time, you don’t order and make the same problem, not again.
We all look at each other like, ‘whaaaat?’ Clearly they would rather alienate and frustrate their customers, than simply keep them informed or put some fricking stickers on their menu. And then tell us WE are the problem. Nice. –15 for customer service.
One of us: There won’t be a next time.
And that was the last time we went to Café Medina.
One person in our group, told them that she was a lawyer (not true) when trying to explain the issues with the ‘prices may change without notice’ was illegal the way they were applying it, Haha. Ok, a little far fetched, but these people do not care about customer service, and have never heard the term before.
Additionally, they own Brava across the street, and had equally poor service
One day for a friend’s bday party, we asked to bring in a cake, they said it’s fine. We got there, and they charged us a $ 40 DOLLAR PLATING FEE! Again, we were not told this when we called to ask about it.
Secondly, and correct me if I’m wrong, this applies to places that say, supplied cake on their menu (brava did not), or had something similar on the menu, therefore we would be taking revenue away and they could recoup it with a plating fee. That was not the case.
Every time I pass by, I wonder how they’re still open…

Come with me, on a journey, to the outer reaches of the «service» Universe… out here, some things may seem odd, or even completely backwards from the innerverse you are used too. You may not see tentacled beings wearing metallic space suits but I assure you, you are not at home. In fact, if you asked the owners of Medina, I bet that they might assure you that you are not at home either, if not through words, definitely through actions.
For some odd reason I have given this place about 5 chances, and every single time, without fail and without exaggeration, I have been anywhere from disappointed, all the way to straight up pissed off.
RULES OF SERVICE ON PLANET MEDINA:
1: Always, without question, leave a customer sitting at their table without a drink after being seated… it is best to leave them for a minimum of 10 minutes to allow them to work up a thirst for our sub par beverages.
2.Always, without question, be «out» of whatever the first three options they order are. Be it food or sheesha flavors.
sure that after sheesha is ordered, they wait another 15 minutes to receive said pipe. regardless of how few people are in the restaurant
4. When the useless scum patron receives pipe, pack it so horribly that it burns for only 20 minutes, this will teach the scum to not expect much.
5.Since, of course, all customers are inherently stupid, we will always raise the price of ANY item we want when it comes time to print the receipt… remember, most will be too stupid to question and those that do, we have a fail safe, point out on the menu, in the small print where it says «prices may change without notice»…this argument sounds legally binding enough. right SarahT?
*** I really wanted to like Medina but consistently they showed me I was unwelcome, they were disrespectful, the product was horrible and they are low grade con artists who will never get one penny from me.
DONT GO, and if you get an email from a nigerian prince looking for your bank transfer number… its probably gonna trace back to these no good hacks!