Columbia Icefields Restaurant - Banff

We arrived at the Columbia Icefield Centre at about 8.30am which was two hours before our booked tour. We thought we'd have a nice relaxing breakfast before we had a wander around the shop and just enjoy the view. We were seated and chose our breakfast, the French toast and eggs benedict. I asked for a hot chocolate as it was a chilly morning, and was advised they didn't have any, I would have to wait until the Chalet opened at 9. We thought well that's ok, we'll enjoy hot chocolate out on the balcony after breakfast. The waitress didn't know what a regular cup of black tea was and had to go and ask. We waited almost an hour for our food to arrive. The restaurant was not packed only 12 tables or so seated. We were the lucky ones, and actually got to eat before our tour, the family that were sat behind us had to wait longer than us and their food had not arrived when we left and they had to go on their tour hungry. The food when it did arrive was ok, but as we then did not have time to enjoy a drink on the balcony, we left extremely disappointed. This is the first terrible rating I have given anyone on TripAdvisor out of over 50 reviews, so take my advice and do not eat here. Brewster - please do something to improve your dining options, this is really letting the whole experience of the Glacier down.

On our trip from Banff to Jasper we arrived at the visitor center around lunch time so we decided to give it a try.We went for the burger/pizza station as we didn't fancy the buffet option.We actually got two slices of Meat Lover Pizza and some fries, which were both more than ok although as expected terribly overpriced. Pizza was tasty and well cooked, altough far from our standards (being from Italy and all) we definitely enjoyed it.Place can get extremely crowded if you are unlucky enough to get there at the same time of multiple tour buses.

Is it so difficult for whoever runs this place to have at least one decent place to eat? Its not like they can't get ingredients for a limited menu.We knew it was bad before we got there and cut our stay in half, enough to quickly sight see and off we went. But the reality of the food that was served brought me back to some of the worst cafeteria food I had in my student days. Same reason for the similarities, no one cares. Service throughout the place get's the same rating. One of those places where you know every employee hates their job and the management.

I visited the cafe and ordered a Mixed Fresh Fruit Cup. When I opened the cup, the fruits tasted alcoholic, so I checked the date label and saw it was a week old. I spoke to the restaurant supervisor, who initially asked me to choose another cup but refused to refund me. I explained that all the cups were expired, but the supervisor insisted they were still good before the expiration date. I argued that a Fruit Cup shouldn't be sold a week past its best before date in a restaurant. After some back and forth, they finally refunded me $6.99 for the cup. This restaurant should be closed down.

Options for meals are extremely limited and after our glacier tour we were hungry for lunch. There is a very pretty looking restaurant that was closed to everyone except those in tour groups..the setting looked lovely but it was closed to us leaving us with the choice: skip lunch or go to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was chaotic at best; the organization was a problem physically (like having a main food line and then a separate off to the side drink area separated with a divider was not good for traffic flow). The staff behind the counter were confused and the first two items that we asked for were not offered any more..yet it is a digital menu screen...cannot be that hard to fix. It seemed like we were the first people to ever order a pizza and they had absolutely no system. Anyway, there were throngs of tourists all carrying trays so one drink near us went flying. The food was actually not bad and the absolute highlight is the modern and spacious seating area. Overall, poorly laid out and service needs development but nice dining space for a cafeteria.