The WORKS Craft Burgers & Beer

Unfriendly service, long wait for food, dirty tables, never again, not recommended, overpriced

A staple in the Ottawa area for over twenty years, the Works is a solid choice for an outing with friends and family. Can't go wrong with a tower of rings to share followed by a burger and milkshake. The Richmond location has a room called the Boiler room which you can rent for with events or parties. Comes complete with a projector and large table for eating.

Giving the food here a 4 as a recent visit every menu item being a bit too crispy and a little on the cool side by the time it got to us. While that may have spelled the end at another restaurant, the meal was still delicious which is a testament to how delicious the food is.

Ambiance and staff at the Richmond location are always on point.

My friend and I went today for lunch. Emma, our server, was excellent and provided suggestions for lunch. Very personable and made us feel very welcome. Food was very good (from lunch specials). Highly recommend! We sat by the window, middle row.

Welp.here i am to talk to yall about my experience here.

Firstly, I wanna just take a note as it was not the waitresses fault for the food being trash.

Wife and I wanted to experience The Works for the first time in 5 YEARS, and hoo boy did we ever. Milkshake made the Wife violently ill (she used the bathroom if you know what i mean by this), i myself had one and it made me nausiated after leaving the restaraunt, and my "Taste Of Heaven" was bland (thank fully there was salt and pepper which made it a little better).
Wife's "Knock Your Plants Off" patty was dry and little to no lettuce.

Ontop of hearing conversations from other tables that they've been waiting up to 45-50 minutes for their food was not helping the vibe of what we wanted to do for a date.
45 mins later after ordering our food arrives and when we started to have issues, the waitress who was helping us did a good job at resolving the problem and i do applaud her for her professionalism, but the wife and I agreed we will not come back to this location.

We ordered magic mushroom & plant based burger to my wife. She liked it.but for me meat was super dry and cold. It’s coming with caramelized onion but I couldn’t feel even taste.our two of friends had same issue with me.also fries was so oily and not crispy… onion rings was great! Nevertheless, staffs are so friendly and nice

Love the enormous gourmet burgers here! Lots of options for customizing your burger, including exotic japanese beef patties. The tower of (onion) rings is particularly tasty, plus their milk shakes are “muah! ” so good!

We use to frenquent The Works before the pandemic and how have the mighty have fallen. The one redeeming factor was that the waitress was pretty good. The food is sub-par, the atmosphere inexistant and i made the mistake of going there for my birthday. What a dissapointment. Seriously, the Works state that they now have 25 restaurants, i just hope that they are better than this. It used to be a fun place, alas, no more.

I want to start off by saying we are avid lovers of the WORKS and we've been to a couple of their other locations. I don't know if maybe we caught them at a bad time today, but the food and service was just NOT it. We went for lunch around 2: 45 pm, and there were maybe 6-8 other tables there as well.

They had one waitress working ALONE for the longest time, and the poor thing was running around like a chicken with her head cut off. She took our drink orders and food orders and then proceeded to not come back until about 1/2 hour later when the food was ready. We had to ask again for our drink orders. I think she could tell we were getting frustrated because she checked in on us again 5 mins after we got food, but then ignored us again for another 1/2 hour+ when we were done with our food in less than 20 minutes. The table of people who had come in after us ended up leaving before us when we had finished before them.

Our food was subpar- the whole edge of my burger was burnt and a sloppy mess, I could only stomach a little over half of it. The fries were great though!

I do not think this meal warranted the $60 we paid for it. Overall, we were very disappointed. I think they need more than one staff member for 6-8 tables and to double-check food before sending it out to customers. Not sure if we will be back.
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Update: They responded to my review almost immediately and told me to contact them via email. I did the same day. No response yet, and it has been 4 weeks!

Placed and was charged for an online order today (06-27-2023) and when I went to pick up they were closed for "plumbing repairs". They shouldn't have allowed orders to be placed. Extremely frustrating and inconvenient. I want a refund for the order I placed that I did not receive.

This place sends out rock solid fries and overcooked garbage for $150.00. Has gone so far downhill it's hard to believe. What a joke.

Kitchen and Front staff gave us their full attention and were very very kind and efficient with their service. Food came out Fast and Fresh and our server was very helpful with our needs. A great spot for a bite and they even let us decorate their sign out front! We’ll definitely be back again!

Used to love ordering from The Works Westboro, and used to go in often prior to the Pandemic. Lately however it’s consistently bad. Burnt dried out fries, burnt beef patty, soggy Ceasar salad with no croutons or anything. Been consistently disappointed. Never ordering from The Works again.

Great food and amazing options for dietary needs/ preferences. Staff was upbeat and on point.

Service and food was great, but bathroom.
I went in with my two kids, one of whom is 6 y o girl. They now have one unisex bathroom. Inside you will find two men peeing bowls and two cabins with normal toilettes. It is dirty and it stinks. I was not feeling safe to let my little girl use it as I didn’t know if at any moment a male will walk in.ridiculous. Will not come back

Went there for dinner last night. Location is good, atmosphere was amazing but that is where the positive experience stopped.

The waitress was not pleasant. Waited 1/2 hour for food which was cold by the time it got to us, then had to ask for cutlery. Another 10 minutes went by…. I ended up going to the kitchen window and asking for it.

Burger looked amazing but it was super dry. Had to get some mayo to moisten it up a bit (which I also had to get up and get) but it didn’t help.

Chicken breast was dry and burnt.

Waitress was really quick in bringing the bill and stood over me watching as I changed the preset tip to 15%. Not a great experience at all.

These meals were $25 each…. I get it that the hospitality industry has suffered extensively from the pandemic and the cost of everything has skyrocketed but I still believe in value for food and experience.

Neither were good at The Works on Richmond Rd.sadly….

We LOVE the Works. It is our favourite gourmet burger place. We frequent our local one.

This was visit was the exception to our usual experience. It was very busy and the kitchen was ridiculously slow. It took over 90 minutes to get our food. The server did her very best but it was not up to the normal standards. Plus the gluten free bun completely crumbled in our hands which is also not normal.

We did get an apology but nothing more. No accommodation. No discount. Nothing to make up for the situation.

We tried to order online Sunday at 8 pm as well and the site wouldn't allow it.

We are not impressed with this location.

The burger was okay. The fries were bland, The waitress was okay she just looked like she was annoyed when my mother would ask her questions about topping on your burger.
They only had one washroom for men and women. Gross and not clean

Yesterday, I had my first dining experience at The Works, a place I had been eagerly anticipating due to its reputation for serving the great hamburgers. However, it fell far short of my expectations. Despite the restaurant being nearly empty, my party of 9 encountered several issues. We endured an excessively long wait of over an hour, only to be served cold fries and burnt food. Considering the hefty price of $22 per meal, I had anticipated a premium burger experience, but sadly, that was not the case. I am deeply disappointed and have no intention of returning to The Works in the future.

Not busy when we walked in, clean original decor. Food was good and price was too. Nice ambiance!

Food is tasty.when it arrives fresh and on time.
Location is nice and clean, staff was very friendly.

A little background: I was there with a friend and used a coupon for a free burger. However, I got this coupon because the previous time, the service was very slow, and the burgers were very overcooked. I felt bad complaining twice in a row, but the second time, the service was also extremely slow, and the food came out at room temperature as if it had been sitting around.
I don't understand why, twice in a row, a burger place can take an hour to make a burger. I have had better experiences in the past and at different locations.

Arrived 6: 30 Thursday evening, it is now 7: 30 and still no food. The restaurant is only half full. I was not warned when seated about any time restrictions. We only have two people here so I don’t see what could be happening apart from some serious mismanagement behind the scenes.

Now 7: 43 and glorious food arrives! The serving staff was very apologetic and did cover the meal in the end. Food is delicious, please do better guys! We used to love coming here!

My wife and I are fans of the works and have been to the other locations in Ottawa many times. I have never had a bad experience until visiting this location. To start our table had 2 out of 3 lightbulbs dead. Also it was very cold in the restaurant. We got there at 1: 00 in the afternoon and didn’t get our food till after 2: 00 PM. It was very slow in the restaurant. Our waitress did not check in on us while waiting. The burgers and fries at this location were not up to the standards of the others. I would recommend going to any of the other Works locations besides this one. This location is not managed well.

Good food. Day we were there kitchen backed up but very good at communicating this so knew what to expect.

The last time I was here was maybe 3 years ago and it was awesome.
Today I went there with a lot of hope. It's not the same anymore.
The burgers were almost burnt and the fries were cold.

In short, we waited 1.5hrs for cold below average food.
During our experience we were told the dishwasher was working on our food due to low staff.this didn't get us too excited.
Our server mentioned they were understaffed and she just wanted to go home.: (
It was wasnt at all what we have experienced at other locations. I think it should have been closed if they couldn't keep up the standards.
We reached out to the email attached yo responses from the store before writing this but didn't hear back.