The Kilt and Clover

First I would like to say the theme in this restaurant is very interesting, it’s Irish or Scottish or whatever and then there’s a little hint of everything. Pirate ships, posters from the 1950’s, airplanes, and it’s also a distraction to keep hunger off your mind while waiting for your food! I also like it’s location, a little restaurant on the corner that brings life into port. The food is nice, not too exotic but not too generic either. Not much else to say except one thing. There’s only one dessert! (Though it is a good one).

Just a fun pub to stop in for a pint and some greasy pub style food. And lets face it, there’s a time and a place for that. The thing that attracted me at first glance was a sign right over the patio cheerfully declaring it «home of warm beer and lousy food» I love a place with a sense of humour.
We were in St. Catherine’s for the Pan Am games to see rowing at the Henley course just down the street from The Kilt and Clover. When the heats were over, we headed over to have a quick bite before heading back home. A lot of other people had the same plan. The place was jammed but we managed to get a patio table facing the street. While we sat there, we saw a ’72 442 W30 and a ’68 Mustang GT go by. No complaints about the view! I have a new respect for St. Cathriners; they have awesome taste in cars!
But back to the pub review… Considering the sudden onslaught of customers, I felt the service was very good. Our waitress aka «coffee girl» was great. We had a chicken pesto panini. The bread was fresh and crispy. The roasted red peppers and goats cheese in the sandwich added a lot of flavour. And the beer was cold!

Came here for a caesar from our bike ride down to port from our house.
Bartender was friendly and efficient.
The Caesar was tasty and spiced to perfection.
Bartender had great recommendations for drinks.
The bar is great for the patio feel.
We’ve had the food before where it’s not bad. Your typical bar food with a twist. I. e spuds, steaks, fries, wings, nachos, etc.
You can’t go wrong when heading to kilt as they have a variety beers on tap.
The service is fair with friendly wait staff.
Overall, a great local bar is St Catharines.

Hands down one of the worst restaurant experiences I’ve ever had. I came here with my mum and stepdad since we were hoping to find a decent place to have a drink on a patio and a casual dinner, and to be honest the pickings are really, really slim in Port Dalhousie. The Kilt always looks lively and fun, and their patio is in a prime spot near the marina. Seemed like a no-​brainer to come here on a beautiful spring evening.
However our experience was awful. While our server was prompt and friendly at first, as soon as we had our initial drinks in hand things started to go downhill fast. We all ordered the steak special and I ordered a Cesar salad to start – without bacon since I’m allergic to pork. The salad arrived fast enough but was obviously not without bacon. The waitress said, «Cesar salad without bacon,» as she set it down, so she obviously remembered my request, but I’m not sure how she failed to notice it was covered in the stuff. I apologized and sent it back, and she was great about replacing it with a new salad right away. However she blamed the mistake on «the new guy in the kitchen,» which I’m not sure I liked. Mistakes happen but it’s never a good thing to sell your staff down the river to save face. Especially when it’s the server’s job to make sure they’re taking out the right order from the kitchen as a last line of defence (though to be fair it’s also the fault of whomever didn’t expedite orders properly in the kitchen too).
And then we proceeded to wait for our mains. And wait. and wait. After an hour my stepdad asked when our food might be arriving, and our server just said she was staying on top of them in the kitchen. Which… if your customers are waiting over an hour for their orders, you obviously need to relearn the meaning of «staying on top of the kitchen,» or you’re flat-​out lying to your customers. Yes, the place was busy, but there didn’t seem to be any shortage of servers going around for them to be in the weeds, and most of the tables seemed to be drinking, not eating, for there to be a huge backlog of orders in the kitchen. Whatever the case someone was horribly failing to do their job.
After twenty minutes more, my stepdad got up *again* to go tell them we wanted to get the bill for our drinks and leave, since by now we were in no mood to actually enjoy the food if it ever came (to remotely make up for the wait, it would have had to be the best steak I’d ever eaten at that point, which I knew wasn’t going to happen for $ 9), our server said our food was miraculously ready to go right then! Like a miracle! Hot off the grill AND SO CONVENIENT TOO!!! We reluctantly sat back down, even though I said we should just leave – I found our server’s attitude had gotten progressively worse and more unapologetic, like she was annoyed we resented being treated like an afterthought – and then our steaks came out cold, though the plates were hot. Anyone who has worked in the food industry will know this is a dead giveaway that the plates have been sitting under a heat lamp and forgotten about. Certainly it doesn’t indicate steaks that have come straight off the grill, which would be sizzling hot if that were the case, not going grey and lukewarm.
Once again the server blamed it on the kitchen staff and brought us our bill, but she wasn’t even pretending to be nice to us now, and didn’t offer any kind of recompense or even to comp my $ 5 salad. Nor did she offer to get the manager, and had we not been exhausted and desperate to leave, I would have asked to speak to them myself. (Although it must be asked: what kind of a manager lets 3 main courses get sent back and refunded without coming to investigate the problem? I’ve never seen something like that happen in a restaurant without being addressed by the person in charge.)
It should go without saying I will never come here again. And neither will my parents, who actually live in Port Dalhousie and might have given them decent business over the summer, since they go out a lot. However the sad thing is I doubt this review or the loss of our business will matter at all to the owners, who clearly make a killing off the student population of St Kits and don’t care a whit for its other customers or its reputation. It’s a little more reassuring to see I’m not the only one complaining about the service here, but clearly it’s a symptom of a bigger problem the owners can’t be bothered to address or fix.
Gordon Ramsay would probably swear a lot and maybe throw something, but there’s no need. The Kilt isn’t even worth that reaction. It’s just sad.

Wednesday 3 $ lbs of wings and beers is awesome. The wings are good too! Patio is nice when it’s warm enough outside. Inside is pretty small but was still relaxing. Check this place out, it’s the only place alive in Port Dalhousie.

This is one of the few restaurants with any signs of life in Port Dalhousie — the lakefront entertainment district in Saint Catherines.
There is a huge army of young and not so young people here as there is at Scorecard Harry’s next door.
The rest of the restaurants are semi-​abandoned dismal looking affairs — so the Kilt and Clover seems to be the place to be.
This is a good news bad news not so terrible news kind of place.
The good news is the wit and wisdom of the owner. The long standing slogan of the place is «Warm Beer — Lousy Food». Inside the bar is a giant blackboard with the owner’s comments on two months worth of events. These are a riot — and I would have the owner to my party any time.
The bad news is the music. On Tuesday they run a Music Trivia quiz to see how much music from the different eras you can remember.
All the songs are the godawful ones I am trying to forget.
And they play all of them three times to help you remember who sang them.
Never have I prayed so hard for deafness. Beethoven had it good that way.
How is the bar and the food?
They have a nice line of beers (which is easier to do in Canada where even fair to middling beer is better than what you would get in the states.) So drinking is fine.
Food is not bad either. I had the SUICIDE HOT DEVASTATING EAT THESE ONLY AT YOUR RISK chicken wings.
In Texas, we would call those wings medium mild.
But they tasted good enough and I was not sad to eat them.
Fries were of the cooked until brown and intentionally limp to get the flavor of the oil variety. They went well with the wings and I was glad to have them.
So overall this is a good place.
And it is even better if you have absolutely no musical taste whatsoever.

Went here on a Saturday afternoon on my way back from niagara, the patio was packed so my family and I figured we’d give it a try.
The waitress was friendly and when asked for a recommendation on what to eat she said the tuna steak was her go to. So I ordered it… Probably the most disgusting meal I have ever been served. The rice was dry with a few sprinkles of soya sauce. The salad was made up of spring mix that should have been thrown out a few days prior as it was slimy and bad. Now the actual steak was an insult to the fish that was killed. By appearance it was grey, looked like something a dog might eat, it was NOT I repeat NOT seasoned at all. The ginger marinade or wasabi dressing was no where to be seen and I would be shocked to learn there was even salt or paper on it. I should have sent it back immediately but I didn’t want to be a complainer. It wasn’t until my mom and brother had a taste and spit it out that I knew my opinion was justified.
I give it 2 stars because I must have really ordered the wrong thing. My dad’s fries were good and he said the burger was decent. But that tuna NEEDS to be taken off the menu.

It’s always such a treat to sit on the patio and enjoy a pint at the Kilt. Server did a great job recommending beers from what was a scarce selection.

Went here last night for a drink and snack with my gal pal. Prices were pretty good — only $ 2 to upside my vodka 7 to a double, and $ 2.50 for a pound of wings on Wednesdays. We sat on the spacious patio, which was nice on a warm evening.
The wings were meh. A bit too saucy for me. I wish they had more flavours, but then again it’s a campus pub. I was surprised that they didn’t give us wet naps with the wings, and subsequently ignored our request when the waitress came over to take the baskets. Who doesn’t give you wet naps with sticky, saucy wings???
The drink was pretty strong, can’t complain about that. But I would have liked a lemon or lime with it, but again, not a huge deal.
The reason this place gets 2 stars is the service. We sat there for a while before anyone came over to us. A waitress walked past a few times. The table next to us (who came later) received drinks before anyone even came to the table to clear it off from the last patrons and ask for our drink order. When the server finally came over, while he apologized, he admitted that he saw us come in but needed a break. Fair enough, let’s move on.
The problem is that we didn’t move on b/​c it continued to happen. As my friend put it, we were an after thought. It took forever for our drinks to come. Forever for us to order wings, get the wings and have someone come over to ask if we wanted more drinks. The waiter told us that someone else was going to be helping us now b/​c his shift was over, but it sure didn’t seem like anyone else was helping us. Finally we flagged down the waitress so we could get our bill and she said «okay do you want me to get him?» We were surprised when the original waiter came back (I thought you were done?) and gave us the bill, and sometime after brought the debit machine.
I know it’s just a campus pub… but come on!

The food was excellent, Great sandwiches, best chili I’ve had in quite some time.
The downside, however was the service. When we arrived, it was off-​peak time and yet we still had a tough time getting good service. Hard to get anyone’s attention and our meals took nearly an hour to arrive. Take care of that issue and you’ll have a winner on your hands!

Excellent atmosphere, great menu (they even serve Haggis) and a wonderful selection of beers on tap.
Wait staff is top notch.
Their signature dessert is fried candy bars. I tried the fried Kit-​Kat and it was ulgy looking, but damn tasty!
Was worth the 3 hour drive from Cleveland Ohio and dealing with customs agents explaining why we only drove up for dinner… they fully understood.