St. James Gate has good food, a friendly atmosphere and I love the big peppermint Lifesavers they give out with the bill. That said service, which is the #2 element of a restaurant that makes it a place to come back to, is often bad. There's a server named Billie and if she's working (weekdays but not Tuesday) the service is second to none - she knows how to read a table and check people's faces to see if they're looking for something.
Yesterday (Dec. 10) we were there at lunch and were entertaining some friends - the service and the food were slow. Trying even to get the managers' eye was impossible -in fact he and other servers would walk by looking totally the other direction. Now I will say the Manager came over to ask if everything was okay at the end but with guests there we didn't want to get into it. AND it wasn't the first time we've had that kind of poor service there - it's only when Billie is working that we are truly happy - she should be training the others.
Again - the restaurant has good food, and it has entertainment many weekend nights so if they can pick up the service on a consistent basis they'll get more of our business.