Salty's Fish and Chips coming to Cloverdale

There's a building in the northeast section of the Clover Square Village on 177B Street and Highway 10 and I see a sign on it that Salty's Fish and Chips is opening soon.

I'm assuming Salty's may be a franchise because I've eaten at the one in White Rock.

Is it a good thing to be coming to Cloverdale? There already is a fish and chips place downtown on 176th Street across from the Clova Theater - Sea Shanty. So, yes Cloverdale could probably use another fish and chips place, that's not the reason I'm questioning them.

Its the building they're moving to. Right now half of the building is the UPS store - courier and mailbox rentals. The side that Salty's is moving to has been the kiss of death for many restaurants over the past 10 years or so since its built.

Originally it was a donut shop, this was a few years before Tim Hortons came to town. I don't remember the name, an independent franchise. It closed down and another donut shop opened, this one a franchise, again the name escapes me but it might have been Robin's Donuts. I remember going in there one night around 10pm and they didn't have any donuts. All they had was coffee. "Come back around 2am," said the cashier. "The baker will be on shift and there will be donuts."

Yeah, I'll get that right on that and set my alarm to wake me up in a couple of hours so I can go back for donuts. I mean is it just me but when a business has "donuts" as part of their name, is it unreasonable to expect to go in during their business hours and purchase, say, donuts? I remember we ended up driving to Langley to buy donuts from Tim Hortons.

That may have been its demise if everytime customers went in to buy donuts and they were out so people went elsewhere and never returned. Ever hear of consumer confidence?

Its been a variety of restaurants over the years. Among others I remember an Indian restaurant, a sushi restaurant, and most recently a Bread Garden. Those are the ones I remember but never was a customer.

Its kind of a bad location. You have to drive through the Chevron gas station to get to it. It gets overlooked by people who see a variety of restaurants ahead in the next block or so: A & W, Ricky's, Tim Hortons, McDonald's, Wendy's, Starbucks.

I like fish and chips. Maybe I'll come down one night and check it out. I wish them luck staying open. They're going to need it. That place has been the kiss of death for every other eating establishment that's tried to make a go of it over the years.

ABC Country Restaurant review

In mid-April 2004 we moved to Pitt Meadows. During the week we were moving in we went to lunch at a nearby restaurant on the Pitt Meadows/Maple Ridge border called ABC Country Restaurant. We started with zuchinni strips that took a long time to arrive. When the waitress brought them over with 2 plates, the plate on the bottom was covered in wet ketchup. She quickly removed it and brought a clean plate. When lunch arrived, mine a shrimp sandwich with fries, there was brown grease on the plate. Kerry, who was eating a burger and fries, had the same brown grease on the plate. The general appearance of the sandwich was not good. Too much sauce and it was soggy. I don't believe any management was on premises. We heard a very loud and interesting conversation coming from the kitchen which is in the centre of the restaurant, about a party. Several staff were involved in the conversation, mostly male, at least one female. We were seated at a window, on the perimeter of the restaurant, so that gives you an idea of how loud the kitchen conversation was. When we returned to our car, we saw a man arrive who looked to be a manager, carrying several items into the restaurant, so hopefully things in the restaurant settled down after his arrival. He couldn't park worth a darn though, taking two spots near the entrance door to park his truck.

We were horrified with the experience. We prefer to dine in cleaner, quieter premises and said we'd never be back.

The ABC in Maple Ridge is not to be confused with good experiences we've had dining at the chains in Langley and the White Rock/South Surrey restaurant. Good food and quiet respectful atmosphere.

On February 4 we were over in Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge and decided to give the ABC Country Restaurant another try because they were having a special for $22 - 2 entrees and a dessert.

We both ordered fish and chips. The waiter was a young man, probably in his late teens very quiet and unsure of himself. He took our order and stopped by several times to check on things even though we still hadn't received our food. There was another young man, a busboy, also appeared to be in training and hoping to be promoted to waiter who stopped by several times checking on us. Our food arrived. I ate a couple of chips and went to the fish. The batter was runny, not crisp. I asked Kerry to try his because he was still eating his chips. He also took a bite and declared the batter not cooked on his too. The assistant manager was near and we let her know it wasn't cooked enough. She was very apologetic and whisked both plates back to the kitchen. She returned a few moments later and told us we were getting two more fresh meals. And sure enough when the plates returned everything was fine.

The only other mishap was with the dessert. Our waiter put our order in but one of his co-workers swiped our dessert and took it to another table.

Now nothing that happened was the young waiter's fault. And the staff were good and resolved the issue immediately and thanked us for being so understanding.

I really think we won't be back. We should have learned from the first time.

And on the original complaint back in 2004, we advised the head office but didn't receive a response.