When I heard about Roof Garten, I had to jot it down as a place to visit. Amongst the crummy streets of downtown Vancouver, there’s an oasis of green for me to dine at? This I had to see.

I visited Roof Garten during their happy hour, which happens daily from 5PM-7PM. We were promptly seated. As we walked to our seat, I marvelled at how pretty everything was. There were lots of white and green, and the ceiling was see-through so you could see the sky outside. Our table looked out into Granville Street, so it was definitely smack-dab in the heart of downtown Vancouver.

We were given their regular menu, as well as their happy hour one. Honestly, the prices during happy hour were really affordable. Quite a few of their plates were $7, and they had several $5 drinks. We ended up ordering four dishes to share, and I also got their daily cocktail.

It must’ve been about five minutes later that they brought us our food. I should’ve known this was a bad sign.

I was pretty excited to dig in. I tried one of everything as quickly as I could. I started with the pierogi.

It was way softer than I thought it would be, especially when the menu called them “pan-seared” pierogi. There were also hunks of thick cut bacon, but it was flavourless. It was as if it was sitting in liquid for too long. Overall, the pierogi were very bland.

Then I took a piece of the chicken. Honestly, they tasted like Costco chicken nuggets. It was also too salty.

I was hoping the salmon tartare would be good, but I couldn’t even taste the salmon. It was overly…oily? There wasn’t much salmon to begin with, but what little there were, I couldn’t taste. It came with taro crisps, but those are negligible.

Lastly was my favourite at the table: the mushroom bruschetta. That’s not saying a lot. If they didn’t salt it, it might have been a good dish. But it was also super salty. And here’s the thing: I don’t even like mushrooms. So the fact that my favourite thing (if I had to choose one) at the table was the mushroom dish, you can guess how much I enjoyed the rest.

It’s such a shame because the venue is so nice. The servers were also super friendly. It’s just the food that was really subpar, but being a food establishment, that’s a little worrying.