The family stopped at the Orange Top Diner for breakfast on the way to the Renaissance Faire on Saturday morning. As we walk in, there is sign that said cash only so I take out the cash from the ATM. The place looks bit dated but wife says places like this can be a gem so we are standing at the entrance waiting for the table.
The restaurant was not too busy, about 2/3 full, but none of the empty tables were cleaned after previous diners had left. The lady behind the counter said they will clean a table for us to sit and few minutes later, bus boy (?) comes pushing rolling bin for dirty plates and tells us to follow him. We follow him in and he cleans the table in front of us, sets the table, and puts down the menus. He says someone will be with us momentarily and then leaves. So we sit and wait...wait...and wait. About 20 minutes later, the same bus guy says they are bit busy but someone will be with us soon. So we wait some more..another 10 minutes, then 20 minutes pass. I am at this point thinking, couldn't they even bring us some water?
While I am sitting there, I notice one waitress working but she is not running around busy or anything like that. She is walking around, chatting with other diners (perhaps regulars or locals) and very lackadaisical.
At this point, kids are getting restless and they say they are no longer hungry. I want to leave too but wife does not want to cause a scene. She mentions that we are not in NYC so things are slow and mentions that she noticed other tables that had come before us did not get served yet. But we were upstate for the Faire, not to sit at the restaurant waiting for the waitress to take order for some 40 minutes!
I notice the side door and tell her we are leaving but not causing a scene. I tell the kids to get up and we quickly left the restaurant. I don't think anyone in there noticed us leaving, which I think is their problem. By the way, as we are leaving, we notice few other customers following us out through the same door.
The service is one of worst I have ever seen. No one in the restaurant seem to care whether the customer got service, except for the bus boy who stopped by to say someone will be with us. We ended up wasting 40 minutes just waiting for someone to take our order. In the end, I cannot say how good their food is, or even how good their water is because nobody there cared about their customers. If you have all the time in the world for privilege to pay to try their food, then go there. Otherwise there are other establishments that want your business and work to get it and those are the businesses you should be patronizing.
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