Lou C.
Yelp
Wildflower Grill management - Had a very frightening experience at a restaurant owned/operated by well-known restaurateurs in Edmonton, the Lims, and will post reviews of any establishment these people are involved with (she is involved with this restaurant, as was posted by the Edmonton Journal, one of the city's mainstream newspapers).
My experience was the closest I ever came to being assaulted in a public place where I should have felt safe, but did not. My colleague and I, visiting from out of town, went to the Lims' then-establishment after an office meeting. We asked to be seated, didn't say (nor were asked) if we were having dinner. We hoped for a seat in the front area where other customers were seated having drinks/appetizers, but that area was packed. However, the dining room was completely empty, so we were shown a table there. As we were looking at menus, my colleague said she wasn't quite ready to eat dinner, so I suggested we start with appetizers and go from there. The waiter had just walked over to our table and she overheard us. Until this point, the waiter had been on the cool side and, at best, wore a thin smile, but upon hearing we were going to order appetizers and not dinner just yet, she scowled and walked away - the atmosphere became noticeably chilly to the point where my colleague remarked about it.
Within a minute, the senior manager walked over (resembled Dave Thomas of Wendy Restaurants' fame), told us if we weren't eating dinner we would have to move. He barked at us, "What do you think this looks like - a coffee house!"
I am a 5'3" woman in my late 40s, dressed in business attire as was my colleague. This was in the late afternoon before the dinner crowd - the dining room was completely empty and we were the only ones sitting there. We stood up to move, and I was suddenly surrounded by this manager and 3 male staffers, as this manager continued to berate us while the female waiter glared at us. I truly believed if I had argued or remarked that they were being very rude and unprofessional that I would have been assaulted. Actually, I was terrified and we had been in the restaurant for, at most, 10 minutes. My colleague couldn't believe something like this would happen in a restaurant in downtown Edmonton.
Within a couple of years, my partner was involved in the closing of the Lims' then-restaurant where several employment violations were reported. Junior staff were not being paid their proper wages long before the restaurant closed (well before the pandemic), and some weren't paid at all when they first started working at the restaurant with the excuse given that they were being "trained." One new staff member was told his dress shoes weren't professional enough, so he was taken by the senior manager to a nearby shoe store and forced to pay for expensive shoes he couldn't afford (or else he would lose his job).
If my colleague and I had protested in any way against the mistreatment of the senior manager, I am certain that we would have been assaulted by him and at least 3 other men right there in the restaurant, given their aggressive behaviour and stance in surrounding us. This was the most terrifying experience I ever had in a public place in an upscale restaurant in any city, let alone downtown Edmonton.
The mistreatment of both junior staff and clientele was a top-down policy of the Lims, at least one of whom is involved with this and other Edmonton-area restaurants which have since closed down. Beware of any restaurant in which these people are involved especially if you are a lone female traveller in the Edmonton area (or a couple of females, as neither of us felt safe in what appeared to be an upscale restaurant).
