Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse

We’ve been twice now and very impressed! First time did a yoga class, then lunch. The food is fantastic. All gluten free. Vegan options available. The cider itself is also very tasty. The bonus for us was the dog friendly patio.

i’m hoping we caught them on an off day, because the place was truly lacking. we waited for around 5-10 minutes before being acknowledged and seated. there was a table already set for a reservation and a free table, but they still checked to “see if it was okay” for my party to sit at the free table. that’s fine, understandable. the 2 people working there seemed both too busy and not busy enough, a lot of standing around looking confusing and then dashing away to the back in a panic, very odd. washrooms seemed unkept, a bit dirty, and there wasn’t any toilet paper when i visited the women’s washroom. service was slow and not exactly unfriendly, but desperate, maybe? rushed, for sure. they continuously offered their help with any questions, but seemed legit taken aback when we asked them anything. the entire menu being gluten free was a great selling point for my celiac mother, but when i asked about dairy free options, both servers were unsure of their own offerings. i had to start looking at labels for cookies myself, and the options were still minimal for desserts. when offering a flatbread, the server seemed lost and didn’t know if it contained dairy/butter, for an allergy friendly establishment its weird to not know this information off the top of your head. this was even more of a surprise to me since we just had lunch and our server was very knowledgeable of the restaurants menu. me and my dad had the temperance flights and they were out of 2/5 options, so we couldn’t really choose the flight of 3. it was fine. it was juice. my mom had the mulled cider, she thought it was fine, but i thought it was overpriced for what it was. it was also interesting when they warned us it would take 5ish minutes to received the mulled cider, but didn’t offer to have it arrive either with our flights or if it was okay to arrive afterwards. it’s such a small thing, but it was awkward to have a flight almost finished and then her mulled cider arrived. again, the workers seemed completely unaware of standard restaurant/bar/food establishment etiquette and norms. when the mulled cider finally arrived, the server then said to wait a couple of minutes for the cider to cool down. maybe i was already ticked off at that point, but it was baffling to me that they could heat it up a bit less? the glass was also quite small and had a very sad looking dehydrated apple slice on top of it. one positive note was that they let us purchase a tasting glass when it doesn’t seem to be a regular purchasable item. this is the only positive note. but the truly worst part of it all was during the check out. my dad was paying for a honey jar and a jam, i believe. and since they don’t have a scanner, the server had to manually type the items into the machine to get the price and add it to our bill. he could NOT find the price of this honey. he later excused himself and told us that he wasn’t a front of house staff member, but do they not train staff for emergencies? why is he doing something that’s out of his scope? could he not have been trained before his shift today if they knew they’d be lacking the appropriate number of staff? why is their POS system so bizarre and counterintuitive? i understand these systems are expensive, but i’ve been to many farmers markets, merch stands, or etsy pop ups where they had their phone, a square machine, and a dream – and they made it work! after he finally made it work (and after texting his flighty supervisor) my dad paid, just in time for the supervisor to arrive with a pile of boxes on her hands and a dismissive “oh i didn’t see” about the poor guy’s text being ignored. the ride to our next location was abysmal, we were all confused and disappointed by the experience. i’m usually a cider person! i love cider! this place makes me think i would rather just buy normal cider at superstore for 5 bucks. which is sad! their collection of temperance wines was lovely, but this experience as a whole made me have a very negative impression of sea cider and has put me off from purchasing their cider.

One of my favourite spots, and now they are fully gluten free! Everything can be adapted to be dairy free to boot. The flatbread is amazing. Views are incredible and the friendly staff are so welcoming and helpful. You can take anything you like home from their shop. Highly recommend if you’re visiting or a local.