Bonnet Lane Family Restaurant — Restaurant in Abington Township

I came in for my first day as a line cook at 6:30am. I walked in to greet Mike the owner. He told me to go follow his other line cook to get familiar with the job while Mike was busy doing his job. At first glance the kitchen was pretty big for a diner. I followed the cook around and was asked to do some simple task like cutting ingredients up. This is where professionalism goes right out the front door. There are two dishwashers who's pretty old I say in their 50s or late 50s and they were in charge of general cleaning of the kitchen. Mike then proceeds to literally mock and say other bad things which does include profanity to his dishwashers. In kitchens I worked at, dishwashers are treated with the upright respect but the fact that he treated his dishwashers like that...... was the first indication. Mike attitude was also like a ripple effect because his main cook started to also mock the dishwashers n honestly, I felt very bad for them because their jobs are hard enough. While learning on the line, Mike doesn't say a word to me at all about myself or something as simple as "what do you like to cook when you're at home". Where I worked at, gloves are mostly used for handling raw product like chicken. Dude when I say that food safely flies out the door I mean it. An order of "Cesar salad with chicken" comes up. You def expect gloves to be used for the chicken. Nope the cook uses his hands with no gloves and proceeds to grab the chicken and put it on the grill. He puts the chicken container back and NEVER WASHES HIS HANDS! I seen Mike myself dropped kitcgen utensils on the ground and uses it again without washing it or replacing it again. Sure this isn't a fancy place at all but when you don't wash your hands after you grabbed raw chicken n continue to cross contaminate the entire kitchen, you got serious problems. They also have a rag they would use to drain fried items like sausages and scrapple. They use that same rag to clean the cutting boards and drop it then use it again. Like Mike you run a diner not a 4 star restaurant but at least have some common food safety practices! I never returned after the first day and will never return cuz of the treatment that he treats his staff and food...

My family and I have been visiting Bonnet Lane FR for a little over 2 yrs on Sundays. Usually the food is spot on and the service is well. However, after my experience today. I really wanted to share my concerns. We expect things to go well and understand when they don't we just want people to take accountability for their lack of service. Today my family and I went there with another family and we waited 15 mins or so to be seated. Our waitress came over took our drink order and came back shortly for our meal options. We waited over an hour for our food to come, not to mention we sat watching people who came in after us get seated and served while yet we still waited. The excuse for our delayed meal was that there were takeout orders and they were busy. However, I couldn't understand again if they were so busy why did we see others being served before us. They said it was because we had a big party 4 adults and 4 kids. So due to our size our meals were delayed. We are talking about breakfast food. Not steak, literally, pancakes etc. We literally had to take our food out in takeout containers after being there for over 2 hours waiting for breakfast food to be made. To say I am disappointed is an understatement. Oh but wait there is more, when the food came out some of it was not even correct. What a terrible way to spend Mother's Day listening to my child ask repeatedly why is it taking so long for our food. When clearly it didn't for other guest. I considered giving this review a 3 but the lack of accountability and acknowledgement of their poor service today. Reminded me that they could have done better but chose not to. We paid our bill in full to take home cold food to be thrown away. No discount would account for how poor their service was today. We probably won't be returning and today was the first time we brought another family with us. So much for first...

I love coming here for the atmosphere. Classic stuff on the radio, beautiful inside after their recent renovations, and the servers are always quick and friendly. [Update 10/13/22]: The radio choices have changed a bit, it's a bit more eclectic now. I love it - I catch a lot of different music when I come in now.

Some items on the menu are lacking, but they're priced pretty well for these days and it's not hard to find what they do well. I come more for the coffee, the table, and the people more than the food, but the food doesn't often disappoint.

One thing is I wish their hours were less limited, they're just closed a lot more than I'm used to from a Northeast Diner. Though they do cater to a certain earlybird crowd and everyone's doing the best they can after COVID, so I can't fault them any points for it. I've spoken to the employees about it and it seems to primarily be a staffing issue.

I would recommend Bonnet Lane to most anyone who wants kind and efficient service (be ready to leave a good tip!) and solid food at an affordable price. I would encourage ownership to look at and improve a few of the recipes on the menu to match the wonderful atmosphere and items that do hit the mark. One of the items they don't do well is pancakes, for example. I don't know how anyone makes mediocre pancakes, let alone a diner. It's been a minute since I tried them so maybe they have improved, but pancakes are a must-have knockout for any diner in my mind. [Update 10/13: there has been a noticeable improvement to the pancakes lately!]

I don't know how servers are treated here but I hope it's very well, because they're the main reason...