My partner and I decided to stay in Calgary over Xmas so we went to Thomsons for their Christmas dinner. We heard that they had an amazing Christmas buffet!
It was my first experience at Thomsons and I was very disappointed. I had one slice of turkey (which was cooked perfectly was so good!) but when I went for seconds they had actually run out of turkey and instead a turkey roll which was obviously highly processed and terribly disappointing. The stuffing they served was mediocre at best. Their gingerbread creme brulee was one of the items I had for desert which tasted OK but it was only cooked on top! The rest was liquid. It was clearly not cooked long enough.
On a positive note, they had a vast range of food to choose from (e.g., traditional Christmas entrees as well as a variety of seafood, etc) and was beautifully presented. The restaurant has a beautiful ambiance.
The worst part of my experience was the customer service. I cannot recall another time that I've had such blatantly dismissive customer service from a waiter. Our waiter was responsive to the couple sitting next to us (e.g., walking over to ask them how everything was, providing refills on their water, offering them coffee with their deserts). Other than initially coming over to us when we were seated to provide us drink menus and take our order for wine (and removing our plates when we went up for second helpings and desert) our waiter consistently avoided eye contact with us. We could not understand why we were ignored the whole evening when our waiter was clearly responsive to other guests in our section. We were dressed appropriately, we were not rude, we were not drunk, we did not behave inappropriately. We were not out of his view. We have no idea what it was the caused us to be so ignored.
Given this experience, I can't imagine attending Thomson's again.