I was at Northwood on Friday August 8, 2014 with some friends.
First the place has the worst menu...one of the dish is white beans blended in house with some dry bread! seriously!! you could at least use real beans. It tasted like water sewage. I am still washing my mouth from that.
Now I was Ok with that after all it is a drinking place so I did not go there for the food.
Now we were a big group. We asked them to split our bills since we were drinking and we were not attached by the hips! The answer was no we do not do that unless you wanna give us your credit card and we open a tap. My boyfriend and I said yes to this. We gave our visa and order drinks and some lame food as follows:
Ginger ale
3 beers
that awful white beans with the dry bread
some even more awful cheese (I really hate French wanna be restaurants)
one scotch
one cider
*extra side dish of bread.
Now, my b/f and I wanted to leave the party earlier so I approached the over worked bartender. I should mention now the place gets busy and they are very under staffed. I told him we had a tap and I would like to clear it. He gave me a bill and I noticed the scotch and three beers were missing...I told him about this omission....you see I could just not mention about this but I am a normal citizen not a thief!
He went back and added the drinks...here is my problem. He ADDED what I told him was missing but DID NOT TAKE IT OUT OF WHERE ELSE HE HAD IT! I mean yea busy but it is not my job to move drinks from one tap to another.
Now one of my friend called me the next day and told me they over charged her exactly those 4 drinks that I told him he was missing. I sent the receipt to my friend and told her that it was paid in full except that side bread.
I forgot to mention the extra sad bread order was not on my bill. I told my friend I am sorry I forgot the extra stupid bread...but I was pissed the restaurant charged my friends for something ALREADY PAID FOR!
Now this is my advise to Northwood or any other bar establishment serving groups that are not gonna all come together or leave together and not providing 5star menu:
If you are too cheap to have a system where you can put numbers so people can have different bills, perhaps you should not be in the bar business. No 10 people go to a place to have drinks and need to wait until the end of the night to pay all at the same time!!!!!! this is stupid!
You are Bloor and Ossington, a place to go before you go somewhere else...read your targets!!!
If you think your staff cannot keep track of who drinks what (assuming your staff is sober), funny you assumed your drinking patrons should do the calculations and the remembering!
It all boiled down to service. Your service sucks. You basically robbed my friend.
I will never be back at the Northwood and I hope you do not rip off others like you did to us. Also BTW, your staff was defensive...not sure if this was being overworked or underpaid or just cranky but guess what, I wished I did not tip you...
Have good short life.