Denny's — Restaurant in Bolingbrook

To preface, I had a generally positive impression of this Denny's prior to its renovation. This review is in regards to my experience at this Denny's POST-renovation.

I experienced very poor service, perhaps the worst I've ever experienced here during my 24 years living in Bolingbrook. The remodeled interior is nice, and I like the wooden floors, but other than that, the actual service of this location was unacceptable and completely unprecedented from what I've been used to prior to the remodeling. I am not the type to complain, but my experience tonight prompted me to.

To start, after delivering our drinks, our waitress abandoned us for almost 15 minutes. For 15 minutes we waited to get our orders taken. Note that it was not busy, this was at around 8:00 PM before all the party people infiltrate the diner. We ended up asking another waitress to get the attention of our waitress, and even after that, a different waitress from our original one ended up taking our order.

The food eventually arrived in a prompt fashion, but my order (country fried steak) was served with the wrong side, and without gravy. I was waiting awkwardly for at least 10 minutes to have the gravy delivered, and while waiting, waiters and waitresses were just congregating amongst each other, talking. No sense of urgency from anyone to correct my order. I understand that they had to prepare the gravy, but if you had time to talk amongst your co-workers, maybe you should make me, the customer, your higher priority and actually deliver me the essential ingredient to my dish before lounging amongst your coworkers. Once I have my food, you can leave me alone for the next 10 minutes for all I care!

After receiving my gravy, the waitress did not check up on us more than once to see how everything was going. And when she finally did come by, we asked for water which we NEVER RECEIVED. I also put in an order for an apple pie when our food arrived, which took an estimated 30 minutes to bake, but after 30-40 minutes passed by, I waited at least another 25 minutes for the waitress to realize, "oh, you know, I should probably get that apple pie for that table that finished eating almost half an hour ago." To top it off, the slice of pie I ordered was a mushy mound of apple and crust.

You can make the argument that I should've called on the waitress, and in some instances, I did. But it is ultimately the responsibility of the waiter to tend to the customer. Trying to get a refill on my water should not be a difficult job for me while I eat. And the best waiters do drink refills even without the customers asking. Part of me didn't want to say anything just to see how attentive the waitress was, and in doing so, it proved how inattentive she was. This complaint is nothing personal to the waitress herself, but to her duty as a waitress. Fulfill your responsibilities.

Final note: the manager or hostess (not sure what she was exactly) did not help the work flow of this place at all. She would occasionally talk amongst the waiters, and in doing so, promoted a very lackadaisical atmosphere which I think rubbed off on the staff.

All in all, I had a very unpleasant experience at a Denny's location that I normally associate...

Placed an online order for delivery at about 10:30 pm on May 3. Total after tax was $39 with some change. Delivery time said about 37 minutes. At 11 pm I got a text from dasher from door dash letting me know they could not find the restaurant and they were canceling. I then received what seemed to be an automated text from that persons cell with a door dash link stating they were looking for another dasher to deliver food.

I decided to call Denny’s at this point as now I’m concerned our food will be cold. I call about 7 times and no answer. My wife begins to call and makes quite a few calls before getting an answer. She explains what has happened and is told this is door dashes fault which may be the case BUT she reiterates that Denny’s is not answering their phone and we come to find out the dasher is also trying to contact Denny’s to figure out their location with no luck getting them to answer their phone as well. My wife asks to talk to a manager as she is getting nowhere with the woman on the phone. She is placed on hold for 20 MINUTES before the same woman answers and asks who she is holding for (not even an apology for being left on hold). My wife asks for the manager again and the woman on the phone says the manager is too busy to take the call. My wife asks what the managers name is and there is a pause and she says “Jimmy”. My wife asks for a last name and the woman ignores the question and places my wife on hold AGAIN. A man now answers and in an aggressive tone says how can I help you. My wife asks to who me she is speaking with and the man defensively answers with “who is this?!”. My wife proceeds to let the man know what has happened all the while he keeps interrupting her with excuses like having 2 new cooks and being busy which we understood but that did not excuse the way we have been treated. My wife asks again what his name is and he says “Jimmy”. She asks for a last name and he says she doesn’t need that and HANGS UP!!

I can easily say, this is without a doubt one of the top 3 worst customer service experiences I’ve ever had. I would assume this is a restaurant that wouldn’t want to be shrugged off as “what do you expect for service, it’s Denny’s”.

We finally got our food at 12am thanks to the determined dasher and she showed me that door dash told her that she was to pickup food from the Darien location when it should have been the Bolingbrook location.

All around it was just one big mess between Denny’s and Door Dash leaving this customer upset, frustrated, disappointed and with a bunch of cold food (steak and fries are not good when cold)The only apology I got was from the dasher who was the only one that did...

I went for suhoor (eating before the fast begins) and let you know we could only eat til 3:56 am and we arrived at 3 am. We were seated and the waitress took 15 minutes to ask us for drinks so we just took water and ordered then. She came back in 10 MINUTES to just give us our waters. By that time it was around 3:30. We would only have 20 minutes left to eat. We were still kept waiting and it wasn’t a packed house or anything like that. There were approximately 4 tables at most. At the corner of my eye, I saw the cook. THE COOK WAS JUST BROOMING!! Like bro hurry up and make the food. And we were still kept waiting... We called the waitress to our table and told her our situation because of the fasting time and she said the eggs and hash browns were ready except the crepes, so we just took the eggs and hash browns and not the crepes. We only had 9 minutes left to eat. We finished half our food and parceled the rest. When we went to pay, the server was down. So we had to wait another 10 minutes. The waitress also told us she was gonna take 15% off our total but our crepe wasn’t a dollar... She didn’t take our crepes off the receipt. I ordered the banana Nutella crepe breakfast for $7.99 with no sausage and egg w/cheese. She took my 20% coupon so it took $1.76 off but she never actually took off the price of the crepes from our receipts. So we still paid full price for something we didn't even get. I’m a regular but today was just really bad service, normally it’s not like this. The service was...