19 Okanagan Grill + Bar

The staff and owner were wonderful. Our waitress was fantastic. I’d be okay without a couple of the other ones there but anyways, the meal was amazing. I mean flavour was incredible. A great balance of sweet and savoury and rich and aromatic. Every dish was perfection. Dessert was luscious and so bad for you but so good. I enjoyed my meal so much it was so memorable. I can’t wait to go back. Bang on 19. It’s so hard to find good workers, I understand. My only suggestion would be to filter out the good and the bad. Don’t let the bad affect how great your food and business is.

The food looked and smelled good. Unfortunately we didn’t get the opportunity to even order. Service was so bad we left.
We were seated and given menus by the hostess. After a few minutes the waitress came and took our simple drink order of two coffees. We were ready to order when she dropped off the coffees, but she didn’t want to take our food order.
We tried repeatedly to get her attention to order, but she would completely avoid eye contact as she walked by over and over less than one foot away from our table. We were sitting at a high table behind the POS terminal used by the staff to order.
As we sat drinking our coffees we watched our waitress walk past us more than a dozen times without getting any service or acknowledgement from her. As we watched her walk around the room empty handed we became more and more disgusted with her hygiene or lack there off. She had long blonde hair that was not tied back, she kept playing with her hair, then touching food plates. We even saw her loose hair fall into customers food plates as she was carrying it to a table. Instead of throwing out the contaminated plate and getting a new one for the customer. She used her hand to remove her hair, toss it over her shoulders, and served the food to the customer at the table. After she delivered the food she had to play with her hair to remove food particles that were trapped when her hair fell into the customers food. She somehow managed to find time to play on her cellphone, but remember she was too busy «working» to take our order.
The other problem with this particular server was her attire. She was wearing a sleeveless shirt. Every time she tried to place anything on a table she was sticking her stinky, sweaty armpit into the faces of the customers. People were actually forced to move away to avoid the close proximity of her bare pits. DISGUSTING!
After 35 minutes and empty coffee cups we where just about to walk out when she finally stopped and asked «Are you planning on ordering anything?» At that point after watching her unhygienic performance and terrible service, I told her that we had planned on eating but her lack of service made our decision to leave. She tried to say that she was busy, but counting our table she only had four tables… four tables is NOT busy!!! Especially when she wasn’t doing anything at our table. Not to mention she walked past us numerous times with nothing in her hands… she was more concerned with getting the food out of her hair after delivering each plate than she was in actually doing her job. She said that she would guarantee that the food could be out fast, but the kitchen wasn’t the problem, her attitude, hygiene and lack of service was the problem. Having been a server for decades and even a food and beverage manager at a PGA golf course, I know busy, and what proper food handling procedures are.
She then goes to the POS behind our table, and printed a bill for the coffees, slammed it on the table and started to walk away. As she was walking away I asked her to send the manager over. He was doing more work during our observation than our server. He was running food and clearing tables while our server ignored us to play with her loose hair. The manager also tried to say that she was busy, but he was too busy doing the servers jobs to notice that they were not serving customers. He fails to actually MANAGE his staff, he seems more intrested in being a busboy, than managing his staff. He only made excuses for the terrible service, I told him that because of the terrible lack of service I felt that we shouldn’t have to pay for the single cup of coffee that we received, drank and the cups were dry. He reluctantly agreed. During our time there we never once saw her wash her hands after playing with her dirty loose hair over and over. If your hair can touch the top of your shoulder, then it MUST be tied back in some manner to ensure that it will not make contact with food or plates.
Either management has failed to train their staff in proper food handling safety precautions and required personal grooming or they just don’t care. If they don’t care, it makes me wonder about the food handling procedures in the kitchen. If management can’t adress glaring problems in the front of house it makes me wonder how safe and clean the kitchen is.
From the time we parked to the time we got back into our vehicle after one cup of coffee it had been 55 minutes. That is unacceptable 55 minutes for one cup of coffee with no refills, and we were not given the opportunity to order food. The place was less than half full, there were empty tables everywhere.
I will stop back in for a coffee to just sit and observe if they decide to follow proper food handling procedures, and if their staff can give service to more than three tables at a time. I’ll let Unilocal know how that visit goes.

Ummm… best restaurant ever! Where to begin? Ok the food is outta this world. They put any golf course restaurant to shame. In fact it’s so good we had our wedding here! The service is top notch! You feel like family as soon as you walk in the door. Just go. Order the short ribs and the fish tacos or lobster tacos… You can thank me later. The fact that this place is packed for dinner when golf season is over is proof enough!

Fresh ingredients, paired with amazing chefs and a kickass view equals the best spot on the west side.

This was our second time eating here and it was even better then we remembered. We’ve been raving about this place from the first visit and now we remember why. The patio has an amazing view of the golf course and great for lunch or dinner.
The hostess and server were fantastic and very accommodating with our 11 month old. Food came out fast and tasted amazing. The fish tacos is a definite try again.
The prices are good… especially when you compare to other places with the same type of view like some of the wineries we recently visited.
The owners happened to be eating lunch next to us and they were extremely pleasant and super friendly. The entire staff was great, food was delicious, and the outdoor seating over looking the golf course makes for a perfect dining experience.

While I generally have had positive experiences at 19, given that it’s right across the street from where I live, my last time here was utterly disappointing. When we entered the restaurant shortly before 6 pm, it got busy, as usual during the dinner hour, but the server tried to take my husband’s plate three separate times before he was finished his meal. The general feeling was that our business was unwelcome and that we were being rushed out the door. Finally, my husband got so irritated by being rushed by the server to finish his meal, he let her take the plate and she promptly delivered the bill. The same issue with my 11 year old niece, she hadn’t quite finished her meal, but the server kept attempting to take her plate away before she could say anything. My tipping reflects your poor service and i will make sure to think twice about coming back to 19.

While the quality of the food here is as good as the service, this a restaurant with a bit of an identity crisis. The menu is a mix of typical aprés-​golf pub and casual fine dining. Maybe this is not a bad thing, particularly in a mixed group wanting different kinds of meals; particularly families with (nob-​annoying) kids. It does leave you with few choices, however, as an already small menu is essentially divided in half by food type.
The pub stuff is on a higher, more gourmet level, however and quite reasonably priced, particularly for the quality. The appies are excellent. The fine dine stuff is also very good. Wine selection is smallish by fine dine standards, but very good. Having more of the better wines by the glass would be nice — but we generally wish that everywhere. The beer selection has improved lately, and though small, is well varied, which makes it a cut above most of the competition. There is also a small but diverse single malt selection, decent cognac selection and (all things considered) a pretty darn good bourbon selection. Highly recommended is the Quails’ Gate Optima. A dessert wine in the sweet, dark port-​style. Not as cloying as an ice wine, it makes a nice dessert alternative, if you’re not too full and don’t have to drive.

I have mixed feelings about 19. We went there for the first time in the spring time on a weekend, and it was packed. There was a guy doing live music and we thought for sure we would have to go elsewhere. Then the manager came up front out of nowhere and told us to hold on a moment. He dashed outside and grabbed one of the tables on the unused patio and tossed it over his head and brought it in for us, and not only that but put it right up front and center. The live music was amazing. We sampled a few of their drinks and they all tasted great, we also shared what I remembered to be some type of flatbread. With that good memory we returned a few weeks ago with some friends who were visiting. Given it is summer we sat on the patio since no one was sitting inside, and all other customers were outside. Our server was polite, but every wine we ordered seemed to be out of stock and it took forever to finally get a bottle out to the table. The patio was adorned by heated lamps, which must be more for show than for actual heat. We were freezing and both lamps went out, both of which were replaced, but in lengthy time. The server brought us girls blankets which was nice. We just felt there was just too much action around the table at all times. Too many returns to tell us they were out of this or that. And too much hassle for the lamps being moved back and forth.
That being said, I would definitely like to return for another one of their live music events on the weekends.