The Tap and Barrel: A Review

Tonight my mother, brother and his partner, Michael and my mother's realtor went for dinner at the Tap and Barrel.
My mother's realtor gave her gift certificates to both Monk McQueen's and The Tap and Barrel after she purchased her condo and so she invited him out to dinner with us, and it was nice to meet him since he had grown up in the Kits area with my parents and had known my father growing up.
The Tap and Barrel is definitely a pub made for sunny weather with more seating being outside than in, so it was a bit disappointing (but not unexpected) that we had to dine inside tonight because of the rain.
Due to the early hour we were there and the inclement weather, it was pretty quiet and yet the football game was still blaringly loud as to impact my ability to hear my mother who was at the far end of the table.
I get that I am getting old and decrepit and that I don't enjoy atmospheres like what I found at the Panaroma Brown's on Friday where my friend and I had to almost sit in one another's laps to be heard, but on an off, slow night with sparse attendance?  Maybe don't beat down your patrons eardrums with something they likely don't want to listen to to begin with.
The second strike?  The wine prices.  Really?  The cheapest glass of wine on the list is $9 a glass?  Really?  For years I have lamented wine prices in restaurants: they're ridiculous.  And in the last year or two some restaurants seem to be cluing in to this and offering house wines for $4 and $5 dollars a glass.  I get that this restaurant wants to have an extensive wine list and that they are somewhat more avant garde with the way they are offering their wine from the cask, but at least offer a cheaper alternative for people that can't stand the thought that their two glasses of wine (plus HST) will cost more than a decent Cotes du Ventoux at the liquor store.
For a rather slow night there was an amazing number of staff around but I didn't find the service was excellent.  By comparison, we ate at Bridges for lunch last weekend and our waitress was slammed but stopped by our table often and was exceedingly gracious.  She was actually one of the best waitresses I've come across.
Our meals came and - to reference Bridges again - for the price point?  I'd rather go to Bridges.  My meal was good, but obviously it had been waiting somewhere for the other dishes to be ready as it was tepid at best.  I wouldn't say my food was bad but, having been to (don't kill me) the Browns at Granville Island yesterday, my $14 shrimp tacos (and $4 wine) were much tastier as well as cheaper than tonight's meal. 
So, after an average and overpriced meal and a shouting match to be heard over the football game, we ask for the bill.  It comes to $155 and my mother puts down the two $100 gift cards that her realtor has given her.  The waiter promptly comes to collect them and then returns to our table to impart the following bit of wisdom which just doesn't sit well with me: they will not give cash or credit back for the difference.  We can either leave a $45 dollar tip, or my mother can use one gift card, and then pay cash for the residual $55 plus tip.
I call bullshit.
The waiter says something about "corporate".
I ask to please speak to the manager.
In the interim my mother's realtor - who gave her the gift cards - feels terrible and offers to pay the difference himself.  I feel badly that he feels badly and am angry that we are even being put in this position to begin with.
The manager comes over and spouts the same parrot-talk as our server and I tell him that it's unacceptable: we discuss what a gift card is, and how it's not supposed to leave its recipient in the lurch in any manner.
He says he will go and "make a phone call" and see what he can do.
Really?  Really?
Magically he manages to figure out how to transfer the balance that is owing to us onto one of the gift cards.  Wow.  That must've taken some doing, eh?
I'll definitely be interested to see how these guys who are all deck and floor to ceiling windows make out between now and May 2013 because they blew it big time tonight.
Tap and Barrel Olympic Village: 2/5.