First time visit (breakfast). We arrived. We were quickly greeted and advised that there was about a ten to fifteen minute wait, which was accurate. We were seated. Menus were printed from a laser printer on a sheet of paper, which I don't mind. Four us were provided only one of these menus. We asked for more and provided only one additional sheet of paper. I have to admit, I thought that this was not a really good start. Our order was taken quickly. There was a little bit of a wait for the food to arrive , but nothing unreasonable. I ordered the special which was a omelette with cheese, ham and broccoli. I ordered a fruit cup instead of deep fried potatoes. The fruit cup was nice, all fresh fruit. I'm happy they had an alternative to deep fried potatoes. The omelette I thought the eggs were a little over done, but pretty good none the less. Everybody else's meals received no complaints except they thought the potatoes were greasy. I did taste one and it was like fries cooked in old oil. I'm glad I had the fruit cup. One person had an error that was immediately corrected when mentioned. He ordered a fruit cup as well instead of potatoes, but got the hash browns. Prices were not bad. The restaurant is nice looking, the washrooms were clean. If back in the area, I would try this place again. read more

The food is great, and the servers are lovely and attentive, the only drawback is that there is no greeter/hostess when you come in, one of the servers has to take time away from their duties to acknowledge and seat people. This morning (Father's Day) we had to wait in line for 25-30 minutes before being greeted and seated read more

DISRESPECTFUL!!!! We had been regular customers there for 10 YEARS! We recommended this restaurant to all our family and friends over the last 10 years as well... After our last experience the 6 of us and our families will NEVER go back again! We even tried to speak to the owner and he was just as disrespectful!!!! NEVER AGAIN! 6 of us went for dinner, the waiter was rude to several if us. Told us to "hurry up with our order because he had other things to do", our meals came out messed up, missing things and burnt, 2 peoples meal didn't even get cooked because they forgot about them, the waiter gave me my meal over cooked and missing onions, then after I stuck my used for on my plate, I asked if i could get my missing onions on the side and he said "no, give me your plate, that's someone else's order" I said, no this is my order its just missing onions, but he insisted I give it to him like really aggressively and took my plate PAST the kitchen and over to the bar side of the restaurant where he obviously served it to another customer! 3 out of 4 of us had burnt food on our plates and the other 2 never got their food. We left without eating or paying and came back the next day to talk to the owner and pay for the 6 drinks and one salad that we did have. The owner defended the waiter and was rude to us as well. He didn't care about our experience, only getting money for the burnt grose food we never touched. He forced us to pay a $143 bill which included the 6 drinks and 1 salad that we did eat/drink AS WELL AS the grose food that no one touched AND the meals for the 2 people that never came to the table because they didn't cook their food. Since the owner didn't care about anything but his money and causing a scene I'm the crowded restaurant, we paid the $143 bill and left. They lost loyal, 10 year, excellent tipping customers. None of us will ever go back as long as its owned by Victor. read more

The Shire has a decent menu and the prices are ok. The food was pub grub and mostly fried it seemed. Our server was really good. The ambience was a little off though. It looked like they had a good selection of taps. read more

My favourite breakfast in Simcoe! All other meals are delicious as well. Friendly attentive staff even when they are filled with people waiting for a table! Dinning room is comfortable and bar area is inviting with tables, booths and, some stools. Definitely recommend this restaurant. Also very reasonable prices and great value specials. A fantastic place for the whole family. read more

This is our go to restaurant in our area. Service is always friendly, it's always clean and the food is good and consistent. Parking is ample. Really, in a town that calls it's open hours on the fly, this is a good bet for dinner. read more

I was here a few years back and it was excellent, huge menu, great prices and booming. I come here for lunch in the middle of the summer and it's dead, first bad sign. They aren't offering there whole menu which sucks, the food sucked, the wait was long, and not worth it. Wont come back. read more

Good local breakfast for small or large groups. Nice service. A little pricey but very consistent meals

Extremely slow service even though the restaurant is far from full. After inquiring about our order nothing arrived foI will not return

A nice breakfast joint in town. Great omelettes and the Canadian Benny is very delicious. They advertise cottage cheese on their breakfast menu but I have been asking for 2 years and they never have it. Update the menus or order it would be my only complaint. Staff friendly and kind towards me every time I have been in. Some times to get a smile you have to give a smile, people forget that lesson. read more

I gave it a 4 out of 5. This is strictly based of the specific food item I ordered. I ordered chicken n waffle that's has a chipotle maple glaze sauce, I felt there was barely any chipotle and more maple glaze in the sauce. On a good side the chicken was great (not the southern style) but I was satisfied. Waffle was good as well. Now my colleagues order a salmon dish which he mentioned was little over cooked. My other colleague ordered beef dip which he was happy with but according to him mash potatoes were not tasty. Now let's get to service. This is where this place always have complaints based on other yelpers and it was true! Our food server didn't even tell us any daily specials although half way through - another component server was telling other customers. After over hearing the other server for daily specials we agreed that we could have ordered from the daily specials. Beside that the server has absolute no smile on her face, which I don't care about but when you are in service n hospitality industry it a nice to have some sort of reaction on your face. I do my best to write honest reviews. This is just a simple effort for restaurant owners to improve and modify their service and food quality structure in order to achieve success in a very competitive restaurant market. Good luck! read more

The food is good. Regular travel motel type food. Service is always good. The lights on the booths in the bar or cold colour. They are TERRIBLE. If those booths are the only seats we leave. Please change. read more

If the only thing you get for dinner is the Fisherman's Chowder, it will be enough. I promise. Made the mistake of ordering a SMALL Cobb salad with it and I'm taking 3/4 of it home. The chowder was incredible, service was great and the bill was very reasonable. read more

Went there Monday night for their wing night. Wings were shake n bake coating. Poor waitress had no training just thrown in there. Wings had sauce poured over them not tossed. Waited for service for 20 minutes. Terrible management, no systems. Restaurant won't last. read more

Friendly service and good food! The best place to get breakfast and fajitas in town! The Shire has that nice welcoming diner feel to it. Easily one of our favourite places to eat in town! read more

Horrible service, mediocre food, but great beer. The service was so bad that my server spaced out while I was giving her my order. The appetizer came out 45 minutes after the order and the entrees 15 minutes after that. The food is mediocre at best. Management was sitting in the dining room face timing relatives. Will never come back to this place. No one has that much time to waste waiting around. read more

Just opened but we thought we would give it a try. First things first, they have coyly avoided paying licensing fees to "Lord of the Rings" TM rights holders by avoiding any direct links in decor. It was the local Kelsey's for years so happy to see this location being used again. The menus are redoinkulous. Chunks of plywood hung with rope that clunk all over the place and make it impossible to put down anywhere so we hung ours on the coat hooks. The actual pages are laminated and the server had to spend most of the 1st minute telling us what was not yet available. Poor sod! But A+ to the front of house and service staff. They really shone bright, in both attentiveness and delivery. Food came quick and tasty but prices seemed a tad high for the locals we talked to. $18.00 for Fish & Chips. We can advise to avoid the home made coleslaw for dating as the cabbage is cut way too long and impossible to get in your mouth without dripping slaw sauce down your shirt. Drinks offered included local craft brews. Their own on site brewing facility "the O'Fresh Brewery" not finished, but should look great when done. It's a big empty space in the middle of the room now, so the sooner the better. Overall, my 3 stars can easily move up to 4 by adding the finishing touches and lowering prices. Get rid of the menu thing (they could be weapons). We will come again if only to see if they can conquer the 90 days of hell that opening a new restaurant brings. read more

It's better than it was. When the shire first opened I ordered a penne Alfredo with chicken. my meal was bland and the chicken I ordered was dry and chewy. I went back a few months later and it was a completely different story. I go there quite frequently and am always treated well. Food arrives pretty quickly and it tastes amazing. Recently I ordered the same pasta that I ordered on my first visit and it went from one star to four stars. It was well seasoned and cooked perfectly. Their burgers are always amazong and you get great food for a great price. Never had any problems with the wait staff and have always been treated with kindness and respect. The manager James was incredibly kind and was a great host for the evening. Definitely recommend read more

I've only ever been here for breakfast, but it's my favourite place to go! The service was prompt, and the pancakes and bacon were perfect and classic. I can't wait to go back! read more

Waited almost an hour for breakfast that tasted like it came right off the back of a Sysco truck. Very disappointing.

Good food, very poor service. The waitress was VERY rude. We waited more than 15mins for her to get our orders so we asked her if we can place our orders and got ticked off at us. Then she spilled coffee all over the table and the floor plus some on my dad's clothes when getting the menus back and didn't even apologize but instead made a face that looks like 'wtf'. A few minutes later She started complaining about us to the customer (that she probably knew) on the table behind ours about how rude we are. And both of them just kept talking shit about us. She kept on saying things for us to hear the entire time we were there. It is the first time that we got this kind of service in the Shire and we eat there all the time. Needless to say, if this is the kind of service we get from now on, we are not coming back. read more

May 12, 2019 Happy Mother's Day - NOT Our experience tonight was less then enjoyable. I have been to The Shire in Simcoe before and had a great experience, which is why I made the reservation for there, however tonight was a regrettable event. I called for a reservation 2 days prior and mentioned that I was bringing my 80 year old mother and 3 year old granddaughter for 4:30pm for a party of 8. I had requested a table in the restaurant section but was seated in the pub section, squeezing 8 people into a small space. After our drinks were served it was a half hour before our server "Melissa" returned to take our meal order. She NEVER came around to offer us a second drink. 2 people in our party wanted dessert when Melissa was bringing our bills to the table. When it was mentioned that she never asked us for dessert, her reply was "you said you were finished". This statement was untrue. When we tried to place our dessert order, Melissa was rude and short tempered. My 3 children were paying for mine and their grandmother's meal as part of our mother's day celebration, she messed up the receipt orders and was rude about correcting them. My granddaughter was starting to get fussy and impatient and Melissa clearly was hoping for us to leave, however had she not ignored us for the majority of our stay we would not have been there for 2 1/2 hours. During our meal I noticed that Melissa was more attentive to the other tables around us and frequenting their tables to check on their progress however she continued to side step our table which was in the middle of the room. I have never posted a review to a restaurant before but this experience was well worth noting. read more

We decided to try the shire tonight after Boston pizza was closed due to a water heater issue. When we arrived they seemed short staffed because two waitresses were running back and forth letting us know they just needed to clean tables. We were seated and our waitress promptly showed up for our drinks, it was at this point we realized they definitely were not under staffed. We ordered drinks then came to find out that they had run out of two of our drinks, no big deal, we are easy going people so we changed our drink order. Our drinks arrived and we proceeded to order food. This is when we stopped seeing our waitress. We did not see her until an hour later when our food finally arrived. My meal was cold and the beef was super fatty, my boyfriends wings were not sauced properly (he ordered Bundy and all they put on the wings was hot sauce) my sons eggs were cold and bacon was hard as a rock, my younger son was fine with what he got (he's only three so a pogo and fries pleased him) . We again did not see our waitress for another 45 minutes. There was no checking in what so ever. I had to go find waitresses to get wet naps and napkins and a refill on our drinks . And then . To top this horrible service a waitress speaking to our waitress complained about a bill equaling to $100 with no tip for her.. it made me want to leave without tipping. Obviously we were not the only ones there tonight that did not appreciate the lack of service. It really ate away at me that they would talk about customers the way they did right in the middle of the restaurant. Horrible . PS. We did leave a tip. A very generous one at that considering the lack of service we received . read more

We finally decided to stop in to The Shire for breakfast, especially after noticing they offer a $3.99 special. After sitting down and ordering a coffee and juice we took a look at the menu. Between us we ordered one breakfast special which included two eggs, choice of meat (bacon was chosen), two slices of toast and home fries and I decided to go for The Shire special which was $5.99 and included two eggs, choice of meat or grilled tomatoes (I chose tomatoes), two slices of toast, home fries and baked beans. While waiting for our food I noticed a server (or actually hostess/server) bring some food out to two people who then sat looking confused for a few minutes waiting for her to return with cutlery which never happened as she had retreated to the other side of the restaurant to sit down and talk to someone. They finally got up and grabbed cutlery from the next table over. Not a good sign. Finally our food arrived. Mine had no beans. Our plates were identical other than one having bacon and one having tomato. I decided not to say anything and assumed she had thought we wanted two breakfast specials and decided not getting the beans was no big deal. I will regret that decision later in this story. The food is nothing special. The "home fries" are quite obviously deep-fried and simply home fry cut french fries in my opinion. A good home fry should be seasoned, actually pan-fried and be a great combination of crispy exterior and fluffy, fresh potato interior. We had to retrieve jam from the next table for our toast as our server never returned to see if we needed anything else. Nothing special here. When the bill came, we saw that I was in fact, being charged for the $5.99 breakfast. When we questioned that because our plates were identical and I hadn't received the beans, the server became defensive and stated that the beans were "by request". What is that supposed to mean? When I see something listed as included on a menu, I assume I am receiving it; if that is not the case then it is the SERVER'S job to inform me or ask me if I want something that apparently I will be paying for anyway. She then tried to say that my meal was a bigger portion. What a crock. Two eggs are two eggs, we had the same number of toast slices and the same amount of home fries. If anything, mine should have been cheaper given that I had a couple of tomato slices instead of meat. She then just walked away so instead of arguing we just paid but left no tip. I feel like I was ripped off for $2 because she couldn't be bothered. I should have known things would go wrong when I had to repeat my order to her twice and she seemed relatively disinterested. I don't know where these people who say this is the best breakfast in Simcoe have been eating but it can't have been here. Mediocre food, mediocre service and not interested in the customer at all. Will not be going back and will not be recommending it to anyone. read more

I ordered breakfast at the shire, the service was quite slow and I was getting kind of ticked that I hadnt gotten even a drink after sitting for 10 minutes, but after a women who wasn't wearing the usual uniform came over, and asked if the original waitress had come over yet, we got our drinks. I ordered the three pancakes with fruit (which comes in a bowl on the side with a variety of fruits) and hash browns. The pancakes were delicious and the hash brown portions were huge! My boyfriend got the beligian waffle and was also satisfied with his choice. So for a total of $30 my boyfriend and I ate wonderfully. Of course it did take longer than it should have to get waited on, for drinks food and bill. The decour was also odd, there was just a big open space in the middle of the room with a door attached, it looked like a party room but it didn't look like it was finished. Overall 4.5 stars for food 3 for service I will be returning for more breakfast. read more

Best food and craft beer in Ontario. Service and price is excellent. Great friendly staff. Highly recommend.

Like Kaitlyn's review of Jan 4th, the service is something management should get a grip on. We were also there on Jan 4th and with about 10 people on the bar side we were seated at a table. The waitress said she would be with us as soon as she could and we could have the first available booth when she has a minute to clear one. The waitress handed us menus and left. After 15 minutes we asked if we could have a drink while we waited. As the waitress was shaking her four fingers in our face she said that "I told you when you came in I would be with you when I get a minute". We replied that all we were asking for was a drink while we were waiting. Her professional response was " I'm going to have to ask you to leave" which we did. When we got home we called the manager and explained our version of the incident and he said he would speak to her and call us back. When he returned out call the next day he said she felt bad and there would be a $50.00 gift certificate waiting for us. We went to pick it up after supper and guess who came to the counter to seat us. We said we were there to see the manager and she said "oh you are here for your gift certificate", turned on her heels and grabbed an envelope from behind the bar handed them to us and said "Have a nice night " and left us standing there. She is definitely in the wrong profession. If this is the way management handles customer complaints or unprofessional employees, I will definitely keep an eye on their reviews to see if they ever improve before returning. read more