Big Boy Restaurant — Restaurant in Bismarck

This was my first experience at a Big Boy Restaurant. In fact, the only reason that I even know of big boy is because of a scene out of an Austin Powers movie! I learned a few things while I was there:

This place is drive through only. I parked, but a sign on the back of the building tells you that there's "no backdoor service." There's a big parking lot which apparently is where you park and eat your food. Not ideal in my opinion, but I guess that's part of the experience. According to the staff, they are most famous for pizza burgers (flying style), fries + gravy, and frozen coke (coke slurpie). Naturally, this is what I ordered.

The pizza burger basically a burger patty + pizza sauce + onions + cheese inside of flattened white bread. Consider ordering the double burger otherwise the bread:burger ratio is a bit higher than it should be. The fries + gravy were good, but it's hard for deep fried potatoes with country gravy to be bad. The frozen coke was exactly like a coca-cola slurpie from 7-11. After hearing such rave reviews about this place, I was a bit disappointed. Overall, it was still good and I'm glad I stopped by - but it's probably not a place that I'll have to visit every single time that I come through town. It's definitely worth a try at least...

I thought living here 3 years now, I should make it to Big Boy's and see what this place is all about. I read how busy it can be, and having seen the drive-thru line a few times while passing by, I came at 3pm. Got right into line behind a car who pulled up to the first of three available intercoms. I'm thinking, what a newbie or what? I ordered the 12 piece chicken meal as I read on their Facebook page it was on special for $30. I also ordered one fish sandwich as a friend of mine told me they were very good. I wasn't too impressed with the chicken. The dark meat was kinda mushy like maybe it was over-cooked? The breast was drier than I like. The chicken pieces were on the small side. I am comparing it to Cashwise chicken, which I do love. The fish was indeed a good sandwich. The pound of fries... meh, who needs a pound of fries when all of it is pretty cool once I got it home. The gravy, very thick and floury. I added a ton of pepper at home. The dinner rolls were crumbly on the bottom, tender on the top. Maybe they sat around a bit? The cole slaw and beans were delicious! Not sure if I'm coming back. They sure have a lot of positive reviews, maybe caught them...

We have been wanting to come here for a long time but every time we came thru town the line was ridiculously long and not moving much. It finally worked for us to go there today and went at 1045am and didn't have to wait in line at all. The service was friendly and quick.

Unpopular opinion here, but this place was not worth the hype. Perhaps we had our hopes set too high, or maybe we didn't have the benefit of nostalgia with this place. Either way, it was overwhelmingly "OK". Everyone online raves about the pizza burger "flying style" , we didn't really care for that at all, didn't even finish it. The cheeseburger was decent but certainly nothing spectacular . The fries had zero salt on them (maybe I had to ask for salt or something?) and the gravy tasted like the flour had not been cooked long enough and didn't have much flavor. The milkshakes (purple cow and brown cow) were decent. The onion rings and chicken strips were pretty good! (that's the only thing that would bring me back there, honestly ). Long story short, I would not wait in line very long here unless you have fond memories...