Bavarian Inn - Bragg Creek Canada

Amazing, almost nothing more to say. Food was fantastic! Room was cozy and perfect. Service was amazing. Got to meet the owner and the chef. Can’t wait to go back. Great job Eric

Drove 40 minutes here away from Calgary and started with two glasses of beer in such a beautiful weather, holiday mood was switched on suddenly lol. It’s a German restaurant with nice decor. I would have rated 4.5 if I could, the smoked wild boar belly even deserves score of 5!! Crispy outside, tender inside, looks fatty but not greasy, perfectly balanced seasoning. Mamma Mia, such a joy! Knuckle was smoked before grilling so that the skin was very tough and couldn’t be eaten at all, but it doesn’t affect my good impression of the chef, sausages are delicious, too, it has 3 different sausages in it. All the side dishes, sauerkraut, pickled purple cabbage are well made. I highly recommend this restaurant! You can have a walk in the Bragg Creek provincial park after meal.

We drove out to Bragg Creek for dinner last night, and decided on German as our cuisine of choice. Overall, I would say that we enjoyed our experience. The staff was friendly and helpful. I was lucky enough to be able to taste everyone's dish, so I got a good overview of many dishes. The crab perogies were very good, and the carpaccio was good, but not that memorable. The rest of our meal was good. The spaetzle was the highlight of my meal. The gluten free veal cordon body was fantastic, and the sausage plate was tasty too. The only dish that disappointed me was the best rouladen. The flavours were not what I have come to expect from this dish

What a profoundly disappointing experience. I grew up in Bragg Creek, and have been going to the Bavarian Inn since before it was the Bavarian Inn. I expect the first time would have been around 1974 and the last time before this time was about five years ago, just before the change in ownership. Before the change in ownership the food was to die for, and the owners, managers and staff were all people who clearly cared about what they were doing. No so anymore. This time, we went with a large party. We were asked to preorder a week or so in advance, and given menus to order from. As it turns out, one of the menus had the words “served on platters to share” printed in small print, inconspicuous enough that every single member of our party missed it. Everyone submitted individual orders by email. Nobody at the restaurant objected, or advised us that there was anything wrong with our orders. So we showed up on the night of, blissfully unaware that there was a problem. The table wasn’t ready, so we had to wait an extra 20 minutes in a small waiting area without chairs. We were finally seated, already a bit miffed, and it was then that the fun with the menus started. Rather than filling the individual orders, or clarifying our orders, the restraint simply ignored our orders and picked one of its stock menus and served us what was on it. They also were serving us “family style” which is apparently code for “we don’t want to hire enough staff to actually plate your food”. There was much consternation at this point about what we were getting and how we were getting it You would think that, having decided we were all going to eat the same thing, and having advance notice of our party, and having seated us 20 minutes late, the food would have been served in a timely fashion. It wasn’t. When the appetizers finally came, they were a disappointment. “Family style” service had the dubious benefit that you could sample more than one dish, which I did to my regret more than once this evening. I used to love the maultaschen, wonderful delicate veal dumplings the construction of which confounded me. These have been replaced with what is essentially a veal potsticker, smothered in flavourless, barely caramelized onions. The beet salad was not good, and I really question their choice of dressing. The cucumber salad was dressed with sour cream and dill, and was nothing to write home about. There was a Caesar salad which I didn’t even bother to try. Of all of them, the mautaschen was the best, at about the level of good pork potstickers served without any sauce. There were plenty of leftovers: the new Bavarian is apparently going with quantity over quality. The entrees didn’t come until an hour and a half after we were supposed to have been seated; I can only imagine how long it would have taken if we hadn’t ordered in advance, or if it wasn’t all the same menu, or if, y’know, they had actually plated the food. By this time I was sufficiently fed up that I had pretty much lost my appetite. From the entrees all I could bring myself to eat was one small schnitzel. I am pleased to say they did not screw up breaded, fried, tenderized veal. I had a side of mushroom sauce for it (since they had omitted my order of jaeger schnitzel), which was decent. It came on a bed of “roasted” baby potatoes which appear to actually have been undercooked scalloped potatoes. Whatever. My 15 year old daughter had “house made sausages”, which she thinks were veal. They appear to have been boiled and then waved at a pan. My daughter’s verdict was that they were “meh”; few people tried them, and I don’t think any had more than one. They were served in a bed of dried out sauerkraut and shredded beets. I remembered what those beets used to taste like five years ago, and I made the mistake of having a taste of them. These were vile, bitter, dried out things, which I think must have been sitting on the plate at least a day waiting for someone to dump boiled sausages on them. I didn’t bother with the chicken, which looked overcooked. The salmon was at the other end of the table and I didn’t like my odds of it being worth the effort of trying it. Again, there were lots of leftovers. An apologetic waiter suggested that it was okay that everything was screwed up, because at least we got lots of food. Sorry, lots of food I am not interested in eating is not a selling point. Dealing with the leftovers was just plain weird. They didn’t whisk the platters away and make up to-go boxes. Instead, they gave us boxes and we were expected to scoop our own. Apparently this is what passes for fine dining in Bragg Creek these days. I ended up with piles of boiled sausages that no one wanted to eat, most of which I will probably end up throwing away. Although I bet I could make a pepper dish with them that would be 100% better than the original. There was another screwup over dessert. My daughter has a serious nut allergy, and we had been told sixteen ways to Sunday that all of the dishes had been prepared without nuts. After which they brought out brownies coated in walnuts – which were not advertised in the description of the dish, by the way. The strudel didn’t look appetizing, so I gave that and the walnut brownies a miss. I did try the chocolate mousse. I remember as a small child, that the mousse there was so good, I would order a tiny schnapps glass of it in preference to a healthy portion of apple strudel with two scoops of ice cream. This was not that mousse. It had obviously been made as a larger dish, and large irregular spoonfuls had been scooped out and plopped on a platter, along with sad-looking dried-up raspberries and the odd squirt of whip. My eldest daughter asked if it was meant to taste like cocoa powder. No, no, it is not, dear. Someday I will make a real mousse for you. This isn’t it. All in all, it was a really crappy evening. They tried to mollify us with a discount on the food. I have news for you; if you wreck someone’s special occasion, charging them less for their crappy evening doesn’t really help. Even if I pay nothing for a crappy evening, I still have a crappy evening, which I will never get back. Goodbye, Bavarian Inn. I will never see you again.

You have to wonder about the cleanliness of the restaurant when the wait-staff's aprons are disgustingly dirty. The menu items were good, and the service was pleasant and attentive but we were completely turned-off by the dirty aprons worn by both our waitress and the other waiter. The aprons looked like they hadn't been washed for a long time. WHY wouldn't you, as the server and the owner, not notice and if you did, why would you think it was OK??!!