Author: Kimberly_7

This was the first time we had an extremely negative dine-in experience at Anatoli-Yaletown, which is such a shame because their food is good. The two of us went for an early, week-night dinner; within 10 min of being seated in a fairly empty restaurant,...a large crowd of revelers poured in and decided to hang out in the narrow walkway that exists between our table section and the bar. When I asked our server (who was professional, friendly, and attentive) what was going on, they said, that the group was the owner's friends, and that 50 of them were stopping by to have a drink. Considering this restaurant is about a 65-seater, you can imagine how tight it was in there with 50 extra people standing in the space meant as a walkway. Our server had to climb through the seats at the empty table next to us to get to our table. This group basically formed a wall around our entire section of tables adjacent to the bar (the other side of the section is a wall) and were standing right behind my partner and kept bumping/brushing into his back as he had the seat next to the aisle. After 15 min or so of being enclosed by this group, we wanted to leave, but we had already ordered our food, so we wanted to see if we could at least be seated elsewhere. When I tried to make my way to the host to see if they could seat us somewhere else, I literally had to use my hands to wade through the crowd as my "excuse mes" fell on deaf ears. The server/host/and who I assume was the FOH manager were nice and apologetic and were able to relocate our table, but what was really distasteful and unprofessional is that the owner thought that it was ok to overcrowd their restaurant and alienate their customers and their staff, and potentially contravene occupant capacity and safety codes, so that their friends could stop by for a drink.