Sonoma Grill & Lounge

Very old fashioned menu with equally geriatric crowd. Pasta dish my husband ordered had clearly been sitting under a heat lamp for some time. additionally ⁴⁄₅ mussels on the plate didn’t open yet they served them to him anyways and the scallops were actually imitation (you can easily tell the difference by texture, edges etc). My dish was undercooked chicken. One other thing to note; what waitress has never heard of a dirty Gin martini? Thank God we had a coupon otherwise I really would have been mad paying full price.

Jules LOVED the seafood pasta with cream sauce. Unfortunately, he’s our dog. Upon entry to this establishment the amount of white hair and walkers set the standard pretty low. This is probably great for the elderly… flavourless food without any seasoning. I’m ahead of myself now, though, so we’ll go step by step through the meal.
Appetizers were the spinach dip and crab cakes. The crab cakes can best be summarized by a comment at our table, «what’s that horrible smell?» The spinach dip had an solid layer of «cheese» on top of it. It looked like cheese, but we couldn’t break it apart with the over-​salted stale tortilla chips, so it may have been some kind of plastic.
The entrees were terrible. It’s really not even worth continuing the review they were so bad. If anybody reads this and still goes to eat at Sonoma Grill and Lounge they deserve a horrible meal, food poisoning, and to get mugged in the parking lot.
In closing, the food was terrible, the thermostat kept the room at a near freezing level (I guess old meat spoils slower in the cold), the waiter didn’t know how to work the credit card machine, and he stepped on my foot three times while taking orders and serving food.

I once knew a food writer, who got to eat at fancy restaurants for a living. She said it was unfair to write about somewhere under new management, as it takes a couple of months to get things together. I can only guess that’s why my experience of Sonoma Grill differes from what I’ve read here — teething troubles. (I did wonder if we are all talking about the same place.)
I visited with my wife in early April 2011. For me, atmosphere is everything. The staff were friendly, the service brisk (it’s fine dining, not fast food) and we were left alone to take our time over the meal and desert — and not hassled to pay up and go.
A couple more vegetarian options wouldn’t have gone amiss.

We had booked a reservation for 5 people on New Year’s eve 2010 and had specifically asked if the option to order off the menu would be available. We were told «yes». I was quite looking forward to trying the mussels for an appy and rack of lamb for my main. We purposely did not want dessert as we had ordered a large specialty pastry tray from a bakery for the after party to be enjoyed later that evening. When we arrived we were shown to our table and to our dismay there was a set «New Years Eve» menu with a very limited selection (no lamb). There was no choice for appys, other than soup or salad, and it included a choice of cheesecake or pumkin pie for dessert. The price for this set menu was $ 40 per person, which is more expensive than what you would pay for the same thing on the regular menu. The service was extremely slow, even though it was not very busy, and the food was mediocre at best. The worst part was when we received the bill we were not told that they had automatically added a 15% gratuity on top of the $ 40 per person, and we almost double tipped the server. It doesn’t make sense to me that there would be an automatic gratuity added for a table of 5, especially since they upped the price of the food to begin with.
I was very disappointed with the whole experience that we had there. I felt that we were taken advantage of and lied to by these folks. We did email them to let them know how we felt and we did not hear back from them. We did give them a chance to apologize but they chose not to bother.

I have an awesomely negative view of Sonoma, and for good reason. Customer satisfaction is so very important in the restaurant business and not only did my whole group feel like we got the service shaft, but the compromise at the end of the night was beyond pathetic.
First, it was a Friday night, the place is pretty large, just as Katie F described, but it wasn’t busy for them.
The night was for the 30^th of a friend of mine — his wife set up the small gathering — about 12 people. The appetizers were pre-​ordered before I got there at about 6:25 p.m. Five minutes after that they started coming out and it was good. Service in terms of bringing the food out, filling waters, taking dirty plates was pretty good all night.
This is where the BUT comes in. At about 6:40 p.m. we all ordered. 7 guys ordered the special of the night, which was all you can eat ribs.
7:00 …
7:20 …
7:38 …
7:46 …
7:58 …
Still no ribs, and no other dinners at the table. We were all pretty upset, and while our waters had been filled about 10 times during that hour, no one came to our table to apologize, give any updates, NOTHING. Finally one of the girls at our table had to corner our server — and she was told that the head chef had quit that day.
???
Who cares? They took our order and on all you can eat rib night, it takes them that long to bring them out? (They came out just after 8). Not only that — as soon as our ribs hit the table we ordered a second round. It took us a few mintues to eat the (relatively dry — we had to ask for BBQ sauce) ribs. Then we waited another 20 minutes or so. Then another 20 minutes after we ate those. It was ridiculous.
Add to that someone at our table ordered some sort of dish named the Burning Heart of Romaine (something or other). Not only did it look disgusting, it smelled horrible (like bad cheese). She ate a few bites and returned it.
Through all of this, we all got 10% off our bills and the birthday boy got a $ 25 gift cert, which was nice because he will never return to use it.
Throughout this no one came to our table to speak to the group. It was one of the girls at our table who always had to run to talk to someone.
While we were there (the three hours) we saw three tables come and go because it was just taking them so long to serve them.

Rounding out my tour of suburban GVR this week was a stop for dinner in Langley.
This restaurant is quite large with an upstairs room available for private functions… I’m guessing they don’t take off the wedding-​ish chair covers so it looks a bit silly for regular dinners. The main floor restaurant has décor that is pretty dated. Service is OK but not great.
There was a nice mix of appys before dinner that were pretty tasty — I really liked the fried shrimp and goat cheese one. Tortillas were good. Bacon wrapped scallops were a bit disappointing. For the main part of the meal, the house garden salad was nothing special. As an Alberta gal, I had to have the Alberta filet mignon — pretty average. The cheesecake for dessert was quite nice.
Overall it’s an older restaurant with a nice selection of food but it’s nothing special. Definitely not worth your time to come out from Vancouver unless you’re in the area already.