Ric's Grill

Next is Ric's Grill on 910 Government st, and it has the dubious honour of being this blogs' first EPIC FAIL. How so? Read on.

So I arrive at the restaurant, eager for the burger I'd been dreaming about all day, and a lady coming out of the door stops to tell me how great the food is there. I can't wait! :-D

Then I notice that inside the main doors are many, many stairs. Drat. After looking around, I see a sign saying there's an accessible entrance off Broughton, so I head there.

The first sign of trouble came when I got to Broughton -- there was only a small sign for Ric's Grill, and it wasn't clear where I was supposed to enter the building. Eventually I found a dark, hidden, sunken door to a nondescript government building, and went in. Inside said building there were NO SIGNS WHATSOEVER to lead me to the restaurant, or even the elevators.

Meanwhile, well-meaning passersby kept stopping me and trying to redirect me to the restaurant's main entrance, which I had to repeatedly explain I could NOT enter, due to having a stroller. I would see the penny drop, and had to retain my patience despite having had this conversation half a dozen times within the space of 15 minutes. And of course no one had any idea about where to find the accessible entrance -- some didn't even know where to find the elevators! Sigh.

So eventually I find the elevators, fend off MORE would-be-redirectors, and finally arrive at a hidden, ill-marked door with a tiny sign, "Ric's Grill Accessible Entrance". Success!

And then I pull the handle. It's locked. It's business hours, and it's locked.

I bang on the door with my loudest, most police-like knock. No answer. I knock again, even louder. Nothing. Nor is there any doorbell to ring, or even the phone number for the restaurant posted, so that I may call them on my celphone.

No, instead I am left, alone and hungry, in the middle of some awful and confusing government building. Apparently Ric's Grill has no interest in spontaneous patronage from stroller-mums or even the disabled.

In the interests of fairness, however, I later phoned them to ask for an explanation. I spoke to a very kind lady named Liz, who is just taking over as a new manager. Apparently, the usual way it works is that customers requiring that entrance make arrangements in advance. I replied that with an unpredictable baby, keeping schedules is almost impossible. A mum herself, she apologized profusely for the inconvenience and assured me that she will talk to the building managers to install some sort of notification system (doorbell, buzzer) and/or just leave the door open.

So, we'll see whether that actually happens -- but until it does, Ric's Grill gets an EPIC FAIL for stroller access. And since access is key for me being able to rate the place, total inaccessibility is met with a TOTAL FAIL on all counts.

Overall Grade: F