The Quay Restaurant and Bar

The views from the bar are great, but the beer battered onion rings are the BEST I have ever eaten.

When we arrived a couple was arguing at the hostess desk because they had waited an hour and not gotten their food. This Unilocal review in the making almost turned us around but we gave it a go because our friemd was pregnant and hungry.
We asked to seat outside and the view was great. We got the Manager on Duty as out waiter. He was friendly and brought us a wine menu and drinks fast. All four of us really loved our meal. My clam linguini with bacon was delicious, despite being very indulgent. It probably had a million calories. The half chicken was amazing and the fish was fresh and delicious.
The waiter was able to split the donners and drinks into four corectly in just minutes. Overall it was a great dinner with great service.

What a BUMMER. Not being from Portland, I grew up going to the Sunday brunches at the Inn at the Quay for special events when we were in the area, even as recently as a couple years ago. I remember those meals as near phenomenal: prime ribs and hams carved to order, fresh seafood options, crepes and blintzes, fresh fruit, and beautiful, delicious specialty desserts.
We were in town over the weekend and took some friends there for breakfast. How embarrassing it turned out to be… the place is a complete and utter dump. On the outside, it is dingy and neglected. On the inside, it is dark and smells like mildew. This alone should have been enough to warn us off, but sadly we persevered… even after seeing the ‘buffet’ (three hot pans of congealed potatoes, rubbery eggs, and a mix of breakfast meat, and cold cereal). I hoped ordering off the menu would be a smart move — however the only good choice at that point would have been retreat.
Seven different menu items for eight people; no one was impressed. As for myself — the pancetta, spinach, and Gruyère omelette was nearly too salty to eat. I managed to force about ¹⁄₃ down my gullet before having to focus on re-​hydrating to compensate for all the sodium intake.
While the food was poor, the service was impressively worse. Being busy was not an excuse, as there was only three or four other tables in the entire restaurant at the time. Our waitress strongly pushed the buffet and was cranky when we passed. She failed to take a drink order, so we had to help ourselves to the buffet coffee. She got one of the orders wrong, noticed our coffee but refused to refill it, mixed up the items on the bills, and was generally unpleasant and rude. A couple of us paid in cash, and it took over 15 minutes (NO JOKE) to get our change, of which she only supplied $ 20’s… hard to tip an appropriate $ 12 with a $ 20 bill, but I guess she had already secured a poor tip with her sad, grouchy, disappointing service.

I remember as a kid that this was kind of a fancy restaurant. Now, it’s just the place at a local hotel. Décor is outdated, but still kind of a cool nautical theme. This is a quiet restaurant that has been a pretty good spot for a business lunch when I’m in the Couv. There’s just not that many good places to eat across the river.
The food isn’t bad, but doesn’t wow you either; prices are a bit much for what you get. The service is decent. I had some fish & chips, which was pretty good. If you like a view of the river, and a little nostalgia, then you’ll be satisfied.

1-​star for food, 4-​stars for drinks and weekend entertainment. 2-​stars for ambiance, 4-​stars for the view. In other words, it is a mixed bag.
My advice is to eat before you go and then enjoy the music on either Friday or Saturday night.

Don’t go here for the drinks. We were staying at the hotel and decided to check out the live music. The music was great, the staff was nice, but the drinks were awful. We complained and guess what… they were short pouring drinks due to a malfuctioning liquor spout. They gave us new drinks which were equally as bad. As mentioned above though, they tried and were quite nice. However for the $ 50 we spent in drinks, we will not be back.

I would add a half star if I could. We got there just before 10pm and were lucky to find a table. The service was great, Stephanie took good care of us. The music was a bit too loud and mixed strangely but they sounded really good. The food was just okay and overpriced for what we got. The drink prices were average, maybe slightly higher. There was a nice mix of folks but most of them 40+ which is our age anyway. People filled the dance floor, everyone was having a great time.

I will never go back. We waited forever in line to get in. The hostess was taking one group at a time regardless of party size. We were a party of two behind two larger parties. When we finally made it to the front, we waited way too long for the hostess to return. There were tables available, but nobody to seat us. Eventually, after a waitress tracked down the hostess, we were seated. Oddly enough, the hostess made excuses on her way to seat us… while having us carry our own menus to the table. Weird.
Our convention group was supposed to have a chicken special. The hostess even gave us a copy of our special when we were seated. Then, the waitress tells us they’re out of chicken. Wow. The rest of the menu was overpriced. It really felt like a bait and switch. Come in for the $ 13 chicken special and settle for a $ 20-​$ 30 entrée instead. We decided to leave and will not return. Bad service, tiny overpriced menu… why would we go back?

This review is for the restaurant, I’ve never been in the bar. I haven’t been there since 2012, but I don’t think it’s changed much. I started going there @ 1993. I have always liked the restaurant. The view is awesome and I like the food. The prime Rib is great. They used to have smoked sturgeon and it was out of this world. I don’t understand all the negative reviews. If you look on trip advisor the reviews are more in line with reality. It’s amazing how Vancouverites will rate a total dive 4 or 5 stars and rate a good p-​lace 1 or 2. THAT’S PROBABLY WHY THERE AREN’T MANY GOOD RESTAURANTS IN Vancouver. BECAUSE PEOPLE HERE WOULDN’T KNOW A GOOD ONE WHEN THEY ATE AT IT.
Update: Went back a month ago. This place has gone down hill with a passion. What used to be a great dining experience is now horrible. The service was good but the food was not. My wife, who is usually happy with everything, was equally unimpressed. To be honest I can’t even remember what we had… that’s unimpressive. When we left we said, we will not go back. What a shame to let such a good restaurant become so lame.

Dinner was awesome, the Resturant manager served us. They were super busy so Nikki stepped up.
The food was great and the service was suburb!

This place is really best as an entertaining venue. I cannot vouch for the food, it’s over priced and not good quality for what you get in my opinion. This place however, rocks for watching live music. I love the talent that comes in and the cool dance floor they have in there.
Great for that kind of thing, even better if you are staying at the hotel, the entertainment is pretty solid. Just a word of advice, if you are going to be eating or drinking, do not get booths /​seating by the dance floor, well that is if you wanted to be waited on. They will not serve you there because once the dancing starts, it’s too hard to get to your table with all those people rocking and booty shakin it.
So if you want restaurant service with someone coming to your table, then don’t sit by the dance floor. I believe there is a song that says «no parking, no parking on the dance floor. That’s right! Have fun folks

A dive bar with better food. Overpriced drinks. Kind of a tired 70s motif that sets a culture all it’s own.
Meth can readily be purchased under the nearby bridge, and it’s close to downtown Vantuckey.
Credit to their cook, he actually made my hamburger red, as I ordered it, but their French fries suck. They are as limp as cooked noodles. There are better bars close by for drinking, and better restaurants as well (all walking distance).

W of the Interstate Bridge facing Portland (located inside the Red Lion)
I have not had the best luck up this direction lately.
This restaurant is like having a 1980s Ferrari with a Model T engine that’s been left next to a construction site after a heavy rain parked next to someone who waters their lawn every day (nice view, but that’s about it.)
This venue is pretty dated on the inside. It could definitely benefit from a reimagining inside as both the décor and the furniture is quite dated. The view is nice if the day is nice, but the outside of the windows could definitely use a cleaning (it was actually a non-​foodie that pointed that one out to me, but once he did I was blown away at how much debris had collected on the windows overlooking the mighty Columbian.)
So enough with the décor talk because obviously that’s not why most of us dine anyway…
We started off with their Salmon Quesadilla:
and honestly even spending the last 20+ years in SoCal was still the best Quesadilla I’ve ever had because of their cheese and Salmon selection. I believe it was a Pepperjack Cheese they used which had very robust and assertive flavors and the Salmon had a light Salmon taste about it probably due to the size of the cuts, but who cares as the balance was perfect… I thought «ok… we’re off to a great start. «Who cares what the venue looks like?» Unfortunately it was pretty downhill from there.
To pair with my entrée I ordered a cup of their House Chili:
again a very good representation of this American Classic, BUT part of their recipe called for something sweet for some reason that gave it a very assertive All Spice taste about it. I loved the other flavoring and especially that kick that it gave off, but that other flavor was seriously unforgiving!
For an entrée I ordered the Chipotle Chicken Sandwich:
now if I were rating this place on just the Quesadilla and the sandwich then this place would have passed with flying colors. Again the sandwich was one of the best representations of this sammie I’ve ever had, BUT the Fries were horrible. I’ll get to that in a moment. Yes the sandwich was great… the chicken especially had a nice seasoning, grilling, and light marinade about it and married well with the other full flavored ingredients and all were nestled ever so gently between a fluffy soft Brioche Roll. The Fries were actually an atrocity as they were grossly underfried. They weren’t to the point where they displayed any sort of flacidity, but were still inedible. Check out the leftovers:
yep… pretty much all of them. Which is truly sad because…
I had plenty of time to consume them as service was truly horrible by our server that day. We were a party of 5, but apparently could not compare for the attention of our server because seeing her was a rarity. Now I can empathize with her a little bit, but I was already a server at an extremely busy Italian Chain next to a mall and it wasn’t uncommon for us servers to have a whole side of a restaurant due to call outs and a lack of a staff from high roll over (mostly a college bound staff) and I guarantee you that nobody would complain about seeing a ghost of a young man. I was a champ at that and I was quite proud, but alas it became too much and deflected from my ability to properly educate. Refills were tough and so was getting the bill and change…
This place is definitely going on my Black List!

If you want to stay local in Vancouver and still go out and dance this place is ok.
live music and dancing. Reasonable priced drinks.
Olderish crowd. Still we had a blast dancing and turning heads lol.

Live music was very good, dance floor small but adequate. Bar was large with good seating. Food was terrible and expensive, drinks were over priced. Cover was $ 5, too much for this place…
If you still go, eat first, have a drink somewhere else and you’ll have fun!

Portland is an amazing city for food, happy hours, drinks… you name it!
I know this in Vancouver, but it’s simply not far enough away form Portland to be this miserable of a joint. It’s on the river and you can literally see the start of Portland on the other side of the river. You can’t be this close to greatness and be this miserable!
The happy hour was just the regular menu at half price… which would have been nice except the food was miserable. The hamburger was sandwiched between two of the $.99 special hamburger bag of buns and featured a patty that was equal in quality to the cheapest thing sale item you could find at Winco. The cesar salad was mediocre, and the pigs in a blanket read great and featured… less than a full sausages worth of serving.
I ordered a margarita. It was 9 parts Costco margarita mix with a splash of tequila. Easily the worst margarita I’ve ever had, which includes a margarita where some drink chick poured whatever was left on the camping table, threw it in a jug, shook said jug and then threw it at my head.
So I sent the drink back. Next drink, a simple vodka grapefruit. How you screw up a well drink is beyond me, but it also sucked. I wasn’t looking to beat the place up so I just gave up. You can have my $ 4.
Overall, I don’t know why people go here. I suppose if you’re afraid of driving over bridges you probably don’t know that a whole world of good food for less money with great drinks is just a short jaunt on I5 away. In the end this place is the second worst place I’ve ever been… and the worst place just crunched up Doritos and threw it on a cheese pizza and tried to sell it to me as a nacho pizza!
Quality: Worst I’ve had yet near Portland
Quantity: Not there.
Price: Just as lacking.
Fat kid doesn’t approve. Run away!

If I could own a restaurant in any location in Vancouver, WA, this would be the location. An amazingly large place with windows on the water, tons of parking and the place is EMPTY at 9PM on Saturday night.
One of the staff told me the place has been dead for a long while and clearly Red Lion is preparing for the demise of the entire location when the new bridge comes (well that could be ten years for god sake).
It makes me very sad to see such a majestic place sit empty! I can’t imagine working here or being the manager waiting for the random person to wander in.
Suggestions.
1) Revamp the menu to something like a mix between McMenamins and Beaches as they both pack them in.
2) Drop the prices. The Seafood Bolognese tasted great but $ 22 for a few spoons of mixed seafood and ground meat over pasta is insane.
3) Push the live band in the bar to 10PM as most folks don’t come out until after 10 or 11 for drinking and dancing anyway.
4) Advertise a come back to where eating on the Columbia all began and give us a try. Tie is some hotel deal for a dinner and dance till you drop package. Tell folks we are not your grandparents seafood restaurant anymore.
5) Hire me and give me $ 100K for promotions and $ 100K for renovations and I will make it back in a few months.
It just blows my mind to think about such a waste of a great venue. I guess the weekend bar makes enough to keep corporate happy, but can’t you guys spend some brain time and money on the restaurant?

Sunday Brunch
Love a great buffet brunch! Great to me=a large selection of quality food, prepared well, continually restocked so it’s fresh & appealing and some kick ass desserts.
Is this a great one? Well no, it isn’t but it’s a good one.
Hone in on the good stuff (if you can’t recognize what that is you don’t deserve to be eating it anyway)
A few highlights– Peel & eat shrimp, smoked salmon (if you’re really lucky– the smoked teriyaki salmon, antipasto kabobs, blueberry lemon dessert squares, and the chocolate cake with the 2″ of ganache on top).
Chad will make you a killer omlet!
The down side… no more 2 for 1’s from the Entertainment book. The price has been slowly creeping up to the point that if you order champagne it’s almost $ 30.
Go slow mon… it’s all you can eat… Not all you can put on a plate

The 4 of us had lunch at the Quay last week. My parents live in Vantucky and love the restaurant.
I do love the view and the food is consistent. Plate appearance is always good. They do charge all the money thou. I’m not sure why hotels can get away with what they charge for their restaurants food.
We had a good time but I will visit only at my parents suggestion.

Recently while serving on a jury I was able to take the bloated lunch times they give you and turn it into looking for new Unilocalable places to eat with The Wife, who works across from the courthouse. One such sojourn was down to the waterfront, to The Quay (pronounced «Key») to hit up the restaurant in the Red Lion.
I wanted to hate this place. It is decorated with the rigging from a schooner, it has nautical… everything. You know what? It works for this place. Floor to ceiling windows give great views of the river and the (obsolete, embattled) Interstate bridge. The service is spot on, friendly, but with no feelings of them playing you over the top for tips.
The food was top notch. The Beer Cheese Soup was amazing, the ham & pepperoni melt was very good and the potato wedges were perfectly cooked and seasoned. Refills of soda arrived on time and without asking.
It isn’t as popular as it once was, it is not easy to find, but it is so worth the effort. This place holds the quay to my heart.