Gasoline Alley — Restaurant in Bath Township

This is MUCH better than average. I stumbled on this place by accident, and the stars were aligned as we rolled into the parking lot at 1058 yesterday morning, and saw a man sitting by a side door, and asked him, "When do they open." With some authority (the owner ???) he replied, "11 o'clock. You're just about right on time." The parking lot was empty, though in the time it took me to park, two more cars pulled up. We went in, saw a sign, "Please wait to be seated", and the young man looked over the sign, and said, "Sit where you would like." This restaurant has an extensive menu - two sides of a newspaper page-sized card - laminated. The front side is a remarkable selection of sandwich combinations, along with the catch-all, build-your-own. The verso has a smattering of other items, such as fish, pizza, soups, salads, drinks, and so on. The young woman who waited on us was clearly well educated, and while rushed, had the ability to come out of warp drive just long enough to actually pay attention and listen to words as well as facial expressions. My spouse wanted the fish, and the waitress replied, "That's easy". On my menu, she pointed to the first sandwich on the right column, "Specials", and said, "That's our most popular sandwich. We also have lunch specials on the board" [a hand marked white board hung on the wall behind us had eight or so items of the day - one of which was onion soup, which I ordered]. Along with the soup, I order a "sissy" version of the indicated Reuben sandwich (four of the specials had offered the "sissy" [i.e., smaller] version). While we were waiting, we could marvel at the busy and interesting decor, presumably related in some fashion to the period and theme of the comic strip. We also could not help but notice a steady stream of customers. At one point, I overheard one of the staff, tell a customer that the restaurant was short of servers, and whatever the customer was asking, the staff person requested the customer order and receive their food at the bar. When our dishes arrived, my spouse's fish was near perfect - piping hot, fried just right, and both of our orders included copious fries that were a disappointment in contrast to the other excellence around. My sandwich arrived, either had not been heated much, or had sat, and was only luke warm. Still, the ingredients, from the pastrami, to the sour kraut, the "house" bread, and the sauce served on the side, were Goldilocks right, and the smaller sandwich was just right for me. Apparently, the restaurant caters to families, and a family with mom, dad, and four children about as young as they could be without being twins, were seated next to us. Between them, they made the biggest mess I've ever seen, and the short staff began the cleanup as soon as the family left, with no complaints that we could tell. There were desserts in two coolers on display on the bar. We were too full to have anything else. Lunch for two, including two hot teas, came to just over $31, plus a generous tip. Our server is destined for greater things. In summary, highly recommend this little gem in the outskirts...

The food here is good and I like the menu but the service here is the worst I’ve ever experienced. I get it, it’s a busy place, but this was the last straw for me. I went in with my coworkers and we tried to get a table. The girl at the counter ignored us as we stood there waiting to be seated. Then one of the waitresses came through a couple times and finally told us “keep this aisle clear” like yes, we want to keep it clear but NO ONE HAS WAITED ON US. So we stood there waiting for a minute until finally the counter girl acknowledged us and basically told us that they are full. So we said that we would like to eat outside and wanted a menu to order takeout. She angrily pointed at the menu rack, so we grabbed some menus and went back outside to look over the menu so we didn’t take up any more valuable aisle space.

Upon coming in, once we decided what we wanted, we waited at the counter to order, and aforementioned counter girl ignored us and instead went about seating other people behind us. It was apparent by her body language and huge RBF that she knew we were waiting for her and just didn’t care. She went about her business and ignored our presence multiple times. We stood there for a couple more minutes waiting to see if she would respond, which she didn’t because apparently she’s having too bad of a day to care about her job, so we decided to leave and had a much better experience at chic fil a.

I just don’t understand her attitude with us. We were completely ready to order, we just wanted someone to take our order, but I guess that was too much for this worker.

To sum up, good food,...

Visited tonight, 11/18/23 approximately 6:00pm. with the family and was sorely disappointed in the food. I'll start with the positives. The fresh fries were good. The chili was good and they advertise it to be from Whitey's. Our server was very sweet and attentive, but unfortunately I'm here to rate the food which is a large deciding factor in my rating.

The "bully" sized pastrami, roast beef and corned beef sandwich in its large size was disappointing in size, so I'd hate to see what the "sissy" size looks like. The meats were very dry. The pastrami and corned beef had good flavor, the roast beef was tasteless. I'm sure these meats were reheated as you can get them cold or hot, but they almost need some type of au jus dip with how dry they were.

The sauerkraut balls were good flavor wise, but the insides came out luke warm at best.

The best part of the catfish sandwich was the bread, the fish didn't smell very fresh and had a pretty distinct fishiness. The batter they use is a thick batter, along with a fattier fish made it pretty greasy. It was almost like the fryer temp was a little low and it was too long in the fryer causing the batter to soak a lot of the oil up.

Overall I was quite disappointed as I have had many good reviews by fellow friends, but thus far the entire meal was very disappointing. Overall a lot of the items lacked flavor and were below average.

Quick summary:

Pros: Great service, cool atmosphere, decent sized menu.

Cons: Food lacking flavor, freshness and proper temperatures.

I do plan to return at some point and see if it is...