Bowmanstown Diner — Restaurant in Bowmanstown

This is a nice old fashioned diner. It very much feels like you’re stepping back in time. However, both the food and service was lacking a bit in my opinion. I got the Salisbury steak special, which was ok, but was really lacking in flavor/seasoning. Two members of my party got the London broil special, which while good in flavor, was way overdone and fairly tough. The fourth member of my party got the Delmonico steak, which was very good in terms of flavor, seasoning, and tenderness, but was well-done and not medium as they had requested. HOWEVER, I must say that the desserts were outstanding, and more than made up for the less than stellar meals. I highly recommend the carrot cake, it was seriously one of the best I’ve ever had. They also have RC Cola in the fountain here, which you don’t find to often these days.

As far as the service goes, things could have been a lot better. Our waitress was nice enough, but seemed to have an air of annoyance about her and was acting like she just wanted to be done for the day. At one point, she accidentally spilled a half full glass of water off the table into the walkway, and while she did replenish the water, I never saw her or anyone else come to clean up the spill. Very unsafe, especially with the many elderly patrons who were there.

Then there’s the matter of the check. When she initially brought it to us, the total was around $16, way to little for a party of four. Being honest people, we mentioned that the amount was wrong when we went up to pay. The girl at the counter called our waitress over to fix it, who arrived at the register acting like we were bothering her. After scribbling some calculations on the check, she came up with a new total of $80, which was of course way too much, making us have to call her over again. Now even more visibly annoyed, she did some more angry scribbling, finally coming up with a total of around $50, which sounded more appropriate. Still not sure if that was the exact amount, but at that point we just wanted to leave and not have to deal with that lady anymore. You would think that being honest would have been better received. We could have easily paid her original amount and cheated a small business out of $30, which probably would have eventually been discovered and taken out of HER paycheck.

All that being said, I believe in second chances, and therefore would definitely consider giving this place another try if I was in the area. However, if it’s anything like this...

We took my Nana here yesterday to celebrate her 92nd birthday. She walks with a walker and is extremely jumpy. So some of us went early to get a table and to be sure it was not near the kitchen. There were 2 tables available, one by the kitchen and the other was begrudgingly going to be used for our party of 5. They have a policy that you can't sit down until everyone is there. Meanwhile my mom is hobbling around with an ankle brace..whatever...we waited while the hostess and waitresses stood around giving us the evil eye. Some very uptight man in a white shirt kept walking by giving us the stink eye as well (he appeared to have underwear on that were maybe 4 sizes too small). Anyway, we finally were seated and placed our orders. (No children's menu available). I ordered the Sunday special of "London Broil", medium rare. It came out well done (and not resembling ANY kind of London broil I had ever seen). I sent it back. The waitress was exasperated, grabbed my plate and took it from our table, located at the front of the restaurant to the kitchen in the rear where she screamed loud enough for all of us to hear that "apparently the meat isn't medium rare!" The meat was gray. Ew. Anyway, she came back to the table and sort of threw the menu at me and told me I'd have to order something else because the cook couldn't make it medium rare (maybe because it was 1/8 of an inch thick). My young child announced he had to go to the bathroom so I got up and tended to him. When I came back, the waitress was clearly annoyed that she had to ask for my order so I returned the menu to her in the same fashion it was handed to me and told her I really wasn't interested in ordering anything else. She asked why and I told her I wasn't interested in hearing her scream at anyone else in the kitchen at which point she became defensive and started yelling at me. YELLING. I tried to stop her but she was on a roll and when I didn't react, she walked away. I won't go into detail about the lack of cleanliness or the face that the handicapped entrance has FOUR glass doors to go through before getting to the dining room. This place was disgusting, the hostess and wait staff were rude and I'd never in a million years go there again or recommend it to anyone!!! To the folks at Bowmanstown Diner, thanks for making my Nana's 92nd birthday...

As a native Pennsylvanian who grew up eating at the iconic Bowmanstown Diner, on a recent visit to see my 84 year old mother-in-law, I was appalled at their lack of customer service and willingness to accommodate our family group of 7 people. Knowing that we wanted to eat in the attached dining room, and knowing that there is limited space there, we called ahead to see if we needed a reservation for 7 people that evening. We were told that they do not take reservations, but accommodating our group of 7 should not be a problem. Upon arrival, we were told that they did not have a table to seat us together. There were several customers in the dining room, but there were also tables available. I asked if we could push 2 tables together so we could all eat together - they told us no they can't do that. I then saw an empty table for 6 and asked if we could put a chair at the end of that table, and they told us no that they couldn't do that either. Apparently, the owner forbids them to push tables together or move them around! They did say that we could put 2 more chairs at the already crowded table for 5. That sounded like fun - yikes!! At this point I was getting somewhat perturbed as there were plenty of options, and room, to accommodate us. If it had just been me and my family, I would have left for another restaurant where we could all eat together. However, since we had my 84 year old mother-in-law with us, I did not want to make a big deal of it in front of her. In the end, we ended up eating at 2 different tables - my husband and his mother, sister and brother-in-law at one and myself and 2 adult children at another. The whole point of us going to dinner was for the family to be together to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday. In the end, their lack of willingness to accommodate us to be at one table really put a damper on the whole evening. It was especially annoying because, while there were customers in the dining room, there were also tables that could have been pushed together so we could all sit together. At the very least, when we called ahead to say we had a group of 7 for the dining room, they could have mentioned that we would not be able to sit together.

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