Western Café — Restaurant in Bozeman

Eaten here a few times in the last couple of weeks, and have been more or less disappointed in the service each time. The food is and always has been amazing, but no more small-town local diner charm and kindness that you'd expect from a place such as this. Usually have to awkwardly stand at the door waiting for several minutes to even be acknowledged before waiting a bit more to get sat (even when they're not busy). After getting sat down today (already been in there for 4 minutes at this point), it was another long wait before I even got handed a menu to look over or drinks. I already knew what wanted so didn't need to look over it long. The guy who sat next to me, well after I sat down, seemed to be a regular, and thus got his order taken first, then finally mine, which I had to change due to them not having cinnamon rolls made yet. No biggie. After my good got dropped off, I realized I needed some Ketchup, but my waitress already ran off. I asked another gal if I could just get some ketchup real quick, and she literally rolled her eyes at me, then started putting some ketchup in a paper cup, then as my waitress came by, snapped at her that I needed ketchup rudely, and left.

When I was ready to pay, I asked what flavors of pie they had available, pointing to the ones they were putting in the display case (there were several made and ready on the counter that they were in the process of cutting and putting in the display case). She looked at me like I was dumb, and said "none" and walked away with my card/check. Never felt more disregarded and looked down upon than this visit. Mind you, this was early in the morning with only a few other guests in the entire restaurant, and 3-4 waitresses, plus several other staff in the back, not when it's busy and packed (though even then the lack of acknowledgement and kindness still happens). Used to be my go-to breakfast spot here in Bozeman but now I think I'm going to have to start branching out to some of the other places in town. Simple basic humanity and customer service goes a long way, and I was not even remotely unreasonable in any of my questions or behavior or anything else. Even getting breakfast from McDonald's of all places results in far more kindness/etc than here, which should be...

To start I had grown up in Bozeman and loved coming to The Western. They used to have a great atmosphere and fantastic food. My favorite dish was the Bobcat Special. The cinnamon roll french toast was to die for. So I thought this time I went in (10-23-23) I'd get it again. We were set at the counter the waiter that we got was fairly rude. He didn't treat us with a smile like the cafe used to do and he wasn't even being friendly.

After my dad and I place our order he gave me half a cup of coffee and he left us alone until our food came out... Needless to say I was out of coffee very fast. When we got our food my dads eggs were cooked wrong, he asked for fired hard and got them over easy. Took the waiter a long time to get to us even though my dad was trying to get his attention to get it corrected. In my dish, I discovered an egg shell. The cinnamon roll wasn't even fully cooked, it still has a doughy center (which is hard to do because they cook it twice), and tasted bland. The sausage I had had no flavor, it just tasted like ground pork and had no flavor of sausage spices.

As we were sitting there other customers, at the counter, were getting ignored and they were receiving wrong orders. A lady next to me asked for crispy bacon and eggs medium. The bacon was under cooked and her eggs were over easy. She couldn't get the waiter to come by and correct it. She just told him she didn't want it and left. On the side by my dad a guy got his meal. He didn't like any of it and asked a passing waitress if he could get his under cooked hash browns cooked longer to be crispy. She went to the cooks and asked. When she returned she informed the guy that the cooks said they won't make them crispier because that's how they cook them. The guy just got up and said "this place sucks" and left. My dad and I listened to other people complaining about the food too.

It's sad to see one of my favorite places becoming something so bad. I used to love this place but both my dad and I won't be back. I miss what this place used to be l. It's no longer a small town ma and pa feel restaurant but is just a place for bad service...

Worst service i’ve ever had at a restaurant! I don’t normally leave reviews, especially bad ones but this takes the cake. The last 3 times i’ve tried to get breakfast at The Western, i’ve had to leave before i could even get food. They are known for their notoriously long wait times but today we arrived there and got our name on the list and the hostess said there were only 4 names ahead of us. We go to the front to wait and about an hour passes by and it seems like everyone who arrived after us gets seated before we do. Mind you, we have a 7 month old baby with us and we have to wait in the 90° sun. We ended up having to leave before we could eat because the baby was getting hot and tired! This isn’t the first time this has happened either, the same thing happened about a year prior. Another time we tried to have breakfast there, we went on a quiet wednesday spring morning. It wasn’t busy because it wasn’t tourist season yet. Our name got called fairly quickly to be seated at the bar, we told the hostess we didn’t really want to sit at the bar and we didn’t mind waiting for a table. She scoffed and sat us at a table. We sat at that table for about 30 minutes without being greeted by anyone, no menus, no water, absolutely nothing. Tables that were seated way after us were greeting right away and we were ignored by waitresses when we asked for water and menus. After 45 minutes of not a single word spoken to us, we got up and left. I’m not sure why they are so rude here, we would love to give them our business and we tip very well, usually we tip the bill. We love supporting local businesses as we have one ourselves. As a local who has lived here my whole life i honestly can’t believe how we are treated each time we try to eat there. I ate here all the time growing up with my dad and it’s sad to see how bad it’s gotten. I will never eat here again and i will tell everyone i know...