Normally I wouldn't review a White Spot because they all feel the same these days (and BC Ferries has jaded me big time). But visited this Nanaimo White Spot after a trip on Mt Washington. We were starving and tired of driving around looking for a place to eat. Thought we'd give it a go, reluctantly. It was very busy so they seated us at the bar. I often get worried at White Spot when it's busy because sometimes servers are stretched thin, and quality of service and food suffers. This one gets particularly busy because of the mall and movie theatre close by. I ordered fish n chips and hubs got his legendary burger. My expectations were low and maybe that's what did it for me. Surprise. It was probably one of the best White Spot meals we've ever had (Courtenay is another one that stands out). It wasn't just because I was famished but the meal filled the plate and was presented with intention. Felt like the old days when food was consistent and full of quality and big generous servings. The cod piece was large and had an English-style crispy beer batter done to perfection, hot on the inside so you know it didn't sit under a heat lamp. A couple of lemon wedges, good fresh coleslaw and lots of perfectly fluffy-crisp fries. The Bigger Burger was big, thick and full of generous toppings including lots of triple O. Both of our meals were very good. Everything tasted fresh and of quality. This is how White Spot should be all the time, everywhere! I mentioned how good meal was to server and she said this is a good one... good kitchen team. We got attentive service because bartender was right there. I see from previous reviews that customer service can be a bit of an issue (a problem that can plague WS in general) but we had no complaints. Not all hope is lost with White Spot... 4/5 (for this experience) read more

very rude and we were poorly treated by our server. We will not be back again, what a shame.

Both myself and my dinner guest had hamburgers. Hamburger buns were dry. We both got stomach cramps and diarrhea after eating. Caesar salad taste like a bag salad, tasted off, The Caesar dressing was not very tasty and had no garlic taste to it. The service was good. That's about the only positive to say. And the restaurant appeared clean and the environment was okay. read more

Oct. 19 Even though it was busy (1pm) when we went in, we only waited a few minutes to be seated. Our server was very friendly and not too in your face. Everything was warm and good;however, it was not the best Club sandwich I have ever had. My friend devoured their double double burger. The restaurant is fairly large and plenty busy. I was happy to see that all their booths on the upper level had outlets so I could charge my phone while we ate. IDK if they have wi-fi though. Never even thought to ask. White Spot, just that comfortable family restaurant. read more

White Spot - Canadian (New) Near Me - Nanaimo, British Columbia

We are White Spot regulars at different locations up and down the island. My son is a picky eater, so he ordered some plain spaghetti with butter. It was $17.99!!! The server told us that because this location is a "test kitchen" she could not alter things. Not a good experience. EDIT: White Spot management reached out to me right away and they have refunded the meal price. It was an error they took responsibility for and made right. Faith restored. read more

Went out to dinner with my family over at the nanaimo whitespot on island highway, food was terrible, my mothers chicken from her salad was as dry as a bone. very dissatisfied with our server, overall terrible service. DIDNT EVEN CLEAR OUR DISHES?!! wouldn't recommend at all. B.C Ferries whitespot is better. read more

Very good burgers :) Got to taste someone else's spaghetti and also amazing! Nice selection of wines. Was an unexpected pleasure :) read more

Wonderful customer service!!! Main was ready before appies. Server came to apologize beforehand. We were totally fine with it. Manager came by after and offer us coupons for free appies next visit. And then later on found out they waived one of the appies for us. All this without even us making a chirp! Seriously from whitespot?! This is like a 5 star Restaurant service. Plz come here and support this wonderful team! Oh and did I mention the food was great also!! :) Happy hour was read more

Very yum!! Saved my feelings towards the restaurant.. thank you for great food and a great atmosphere!! We will definitely return. Rating went down... Turkey burger was bad.. read more

The service was impeccable my server was excellent. I ordered some sort of bacon cheeseburger with a side of zucchini sticks & Caesar salad. The salad was nice & down the middle. Coleslaw was good. Now the crap, the burger was dry with a rotten slice of tomato, and wilted lettuce. Fries were warm about 5c below room temp.( gross) The zucchini sticks over cooked and super greasy. I showed up before the dinner rush. I was appalled & really disappointed with the food people say is so good. I complained at the end of the meal. Outcome was ok, the manager wrote off the meal but not the beer. I write reviews all over Vancouver Island. I have eaten at white spot in Vancouver I am sorry to say Nate Balley would be angry about the out come. Best part was the beer, fantastic beautiful lager crisp clean taste excellent Brussels lace on the glass. KptCrunch read more

Stopped off for a quick brunch. Long, long wait for service. Eggs were undercooked but not slimy, hardly any potatoes. Wasn't prepared to wait longer so ate it. Wanted to order something more, but gave up. Long wait to pay. From being seated to paying, about one hour and fifteen minutes for substandard meal. read more

This might be the worset place to eat, the service was terrible, are order wasn't even entered the server did apologize for the mix up as we waited forever for food, burgers good like always, coleslaw was terrible, ceaser Salad side was a joke... Waitress even screwed up the order beside us read more

White Spot - Just terrible, waitress screwed up our order and the people beside us, food was mediocre at best - Canadian (New) Near Me - Nanaimo, British Columbia

Not great. Ordered the shrimp sandwich and clam chowder. The soup was cold and the lettuce on the sandwich was half rotten. My girlfriend ordered a burger and it was way undercooked. Will not be returning to this dump read more

The service was excellent. The food was disappointing. Went for brunch on Saturday morning. Ordered what sounded more appealing on the menu than what was presented. Had the chorizo bowl which I should of been served with a straw as you got through the meal there was a pile of water at the bottom of the bowl which turned everything soggy. Chorizo isnsuopose to be a bright red not a piece of boiled brown piece of poodle poop. Hash browns should be crisp not soggy and gross. The only good part of the meal was the toast. read more

Went for a late 'Thanksgiving dinner' with the parents last night. My mother and I specifically asked if it's real turkey or pressed turkey, and if it was cooked there in that restaurant. Why so picky? Well, for one thing I despise the texture and flavor of pressed meat and on top of that, don't feel particularly thrilled about paying $18 for a meal I could get from a store deli for $8. More importantly though, there's also the fact that occasionally I have suffered an upset stomach from pressed meat. Whether it's an additive or something they put in, I don't know, but I carefully avoid it. Or try. Our waitress assured us it was real turkey and we both ordered the turkey dinner, my mom with extra cranberry sauce, and I said to skip the sauce then said wait no, nevermind, I'll give mine to mom too. We waited quite some time for our food - the waitress did come over at some point and apologize and say we were next, then we waited again and eventually we got our food. The waitress who served us (not our waitress) disappeared before we could discover any of the following: 1. There was no salt and pepper on the table. Dad got up and found some on another table himself. 2. Nobody was given a knife. My dad got up and asked for some knives and we were given butter knives (he had actual, real chicken that could have used more than a butter knife to cut) 3. The potatoes were tepid. 4. And the turkey? The turkey WAS pressed turkey (and also bland, and also tepid). 5. No extra cranberry sauce for my mom. None at all for me. We grabbed somebody else's waitress to get another cup of sauce, as well as some extra gravy, as their presentation consisted of covering the potatoes with the pressed turkey and then pouring gravy over it, so that when you removed the turkey you were presented with dry mashed potatoes. Yum. Not quite just like mother used to make. When our waitress finally reappeared I'd already finished as much of my tepid, flavorless dinner as I felt particularly interested in eating. She was apologetic at that point and asked if we wanted to speak to her manager, but I saw little point in following up, since I dislike White Spot's food to begin with and only went there because someone else suggested it as possibly having a decent turkey dinner. Before this I hadn't been there in years, and this experience certainly didn't do anything to change my mind about keeping it at the absolute bottom of the list for "places I want to give money to". Especially since I did in fact wake up at around 4 this morning with a very painful stomachache. And re: the turkey, this is far from the first time I've had a server tell me "yes it's real" when I ask about a roast beef or turkey dinner, and it annoys me, because it's obvious they have no idea what pressed meat is when they serve it up to me without a moment's hesitation (pressed turkey and roast beef are very different in both look and texture to the food they imitate) - so why lie out of sheer ignorance instead of just taking 30 seconds to check with the kitchen and save yourself an unhappy customer? read more

I know it's a chain but all white spots aren't similar. This one really stood out. I've dined here many times and the staff are very organized, helping each other out. The restaurant was completely full on a dinner rush with a line up and my drink was never depleted. If we want reliable service and quick food, this Whitespot is our first thought. read more

Went here for happy hour and we had a lovely girl named Teagan who was delightful. Food was really good , fish & chips always spot on . Love that happy hour drinks are so reasonable. read more

Last night myself, my two children (daughter age 6 and son age 2), and my mother-in-law decided to go for dinner at White Spot in Nanaimo (Woodgrove location) after a lovely day of shopping. We have been long-time White Spot customers for as long as we can remember so it was a no brainer to go there. If only we had a crystal ball... We arrived at 5:45pm and were seated promptly. When we got to our table I took my son to the family room to change his diaper. I pulled the change table down and couldn't believe the slant that it was on. I put my son down on it knowing that he would be okay because if he slipped my legs would be there to stop him. He immediately freaked out because he didn't feel safe. I made the decision to change him on the floor since I had a change pad and there was an abundance of paper towel in there. We made our way back to the table and the waitress, Danielle, came to see if we were ready to order. Since I had just sat down I wasn't ready. My mother-in-law noticed that there were some appies that were on sale if ordered before 6pm so she ordered the gyoza, this was at 5:55pm. The waitress returned at 6pm but I still hadn't decided but we ordered for the kids. My daughter ordered the pizza and my son ordered the macaroni and cheese. At 6:05pm I ordered the teriyaki chicken rice bowl. The kids' pirate packs arrived at 6:20pm but they screwed up the order and gave both kids the macaroni and cheese so the waitress left the apple slices and took the macaroni and cheese back. We tested to see if the macaroni was hot to give to my son and it wasn't. We gave him one bite and he instantly spat it out. I tried it and it was the most disgusting macaroni I have ever had. It was completely watery and had zero flavour. At 6:25pm we sent it back and ordered a grilled cheese for him. I believe it was at this time that we were told that my mother-in-laws gyoza, which was ordered 30 minutes earlier, was sent to another table so they had put a rush in for another. At 6:30pm my less than mediocre meal arrived. Five minutes later my daughter's pizza arrived and at 6:40pm the 'rushed' gyoza finally appeared, 45 minutes after it initially was ordered. Please note that my son's grilled cheese sandwich still is nowhere to be seen. Fifteen minutes later the manager, Emma, comes to the table to tell us that the grilled cheese should only be a couple more minutes and that she put a rush on it. I told her that a grilled cheese only takes a couple minutes to make and it was ordered half an hour ago. She apologized and told us that the whole meal will be taken care of. I told her that we will take the sandwich to go and he would have to eat it in the car. At 7pm the sandwich arrived and we left in disbelief, asking ourselves how a meal could go so terribly wrong. When we got the car I asked my mother-in-law to open the sandwich so it can cool down. She opened the package and it is absolutely disgusting. One side was lightly toasted and the other side was completely soggy. I grabbed the bag and stormed back in. I asked the hostess to find the manager for me. Emma arrived quickly and I told her that it is 7pm and my son has not eaten. I showed her the sandwich and told her there is no way I am giving this to my son, it is completely inedible. She agreed and again apologized and offered us some fries. I declined the fries and told her that I just wanted her to know what her kitchen is putting out and how upset we are. She said that she would let the kitchen manager know. The entire meal, if you can call it that, our waitress acted so clueless when it was clear how upset we were about everything. I am a believer in always keeping a smile on your face when a customer is not happy but she didn't even acknowledge our unhappiness. Not once did she apologize for anything, only Emma did. When we arrived there were several empty tables so it was not busy, us being seated immediately is evident of that. Customers who arrived after us were receiving their orders before us and nothing we ordered arrived at the same time, there is no excuse for that. We will never choose to eat at that location ever again. After speaking to friends about our experience we have learned that many people feel the same way after receiving terrible customer service. I believe that Emma did the bare minimum in rectifying the problem but she should have gone above and beyond considering how botched our 'meal' was. read more

Went for breakfast there on Father's Day and the waitress didn't put our order in and we had ordered the most simple breakfasts waited a whole hour for our breakfast read more

Not bad in the service dept but the food wasn't up to standards,ordered eggs over easy the came sunny up, ordered toast, came without butter, asked for butter toast was cold before the butter came. We tried this place because our usual was closed and we wanted to add a new place to the list of standbys. Not this one, won't come again for breakfast read more

The service is the worst ever.... I have bento so many restaurants and have not see service this bad ... We didn't even know where our waitress was. The restaurant was empty but somehow they were super busy..:: we could have walked out of there without paying and no one would have noticed read more

Horribly run and even worse management, when I asked why my meal took an hour they simply accussed the chefs of taking too long when we had a perfect shot of our meal sitting on the completed and plated end of kitchen for 30-45 minutes before one of the servers finally realized those 3 plates of food were our and that they took our order almost an hour ago. If that wasn't enough one of the assistant managers by the name of Ashley spilled wine on my brand new dress. Thanks!! Ashley if you're read this please rethink your career choices. read more

Went early got there at 4:55 to avoid rush. It wasnt busy yet just a few customers. We were seated and the waitress ignored us for 15 minutes tending to a special needs table. Other waitresses looked over multiple times but nobody took our drink order. Went up front and asked wtf and she apologized and went into the back to tell someone. The front desk girl then grabbed us waters and we waited another 10 minute without even a drink order. Its not the first time ive had bad service here. Avoid... read more