Black Bear Diner Manteca — Restaurant in California

Typically this diner has been pretty good, great even. However, today was a horrible experience. 2 of 3 plates were a catastrophe.

Improperly cooked burger, like somehow it was cooked rare/raw, medium rare and well done within the same patty, which was cut in half causing each quarter to have a different texture. (I really shouldn't have eaten it as it was.)This was a sourdough burger and the bottom bread was soggy and the top was toasted but missing the corners of the bread for some odd reason. This was also supposed to have grilled onions and dijon mustard but raw onions and no mustard was given. Also they gave mountains of fries on the other plates, I ordered onion rings and received 4 and a half rings.

The other bad plate was fish and chips with coleslaw. Fish was soggy/greasy and tasted frozen. Fries were overcooked. The coleslaw had a quarter dollop of sauce adequate for about one bite. Tartar sauce was mostly mayonnaise making it even more unenjoyable.

Server was a sweet girl but seemed to neglect our table almost as if she sensed our discontent throughout our meal and eventually intentionally ignored us after bringing a cup of "lemonade" which very visibly a cup of lemon pulp in water. Coming back to our table much later to rectify this and that's when they realized machine ran out of syrup and it took foreeeeever to get a new one, we were ready to leave before it arrived. I was pored the very first cup which was mostly water and lemon pulp as the old batch hadn't been fully flushed before filling the cup I was given making this cup of "lemonade" a slightly better cup of sour lemon water.

2 stars instead of 1 because the manager made things right by being genuinely apologetic, taking 2 meals off the bill, and admitting 2 of the 3 cooks were bad. (Please get them trained properly.)

Note to this server** this was not all on you but as the frontline worker it's your job to look at the quality of the items you are carrying and send them back having the cooks redo the work if it looks different than you asked or un-presentable. I'd rather you tell me my food will be a few extra minutes due to quality concerns than to be given a plate just to send back or complain about. If you notice unhappy customers approach them asap rather than avoid them because all of this could have been avoided had the communication been available.

P.S. Although the burger was taken off the bill, I'm paying for it now; if you know...

This is the first time I have visited this Black Bear Diner located in Manteca. It certainly did not disappoint. It was as nice as my usual Modesto Black Bear Diner. The food was delicious & it was amazing how fast it came out! Great job kitchen staff! Our server who was also serving the table next to us deserves a raise, or a bonus, or some kind of recognition for calmly dealing with a difficult situation. There was a young child who was having a major meltdown. I have a child who has Autism. It was clear to me that the child was also on the spectrum. The way the parents stayed calm and calmly used certain words and strategies to calm their child was what we and many others with a child on the spectrum use. The male server stayed so calm as the parents had to give more focus to their screaming child than to his questions about their order. I was so proud that he nicely said to the parents "Take your time, I can take the rest of your order later but right now is there anything I can bring or do to help you calm your child? I can put their meal in first and it will be here in less than 5." The parents said "Yes please" and thanked him. I was amazed he wasted no time. He got the order in, brought crackers to the table and went to get the child's order in under 5! There needs to be more servers who have the patience to help in a stressful situation while remaining calm. Great hire! I absolutely recommend this Black...

If you like a quiet meal, which granted, is hard to find these days, Black Bear is not for you!

Our visit (four seniors) was around 4:30 pm on a Wednesday evening, so our miserable experience wasn't due to the bears being too busy.

We were given their strange "newspaper" menus fairly promptly, but from then on it was poke, poke, poke. I was about to go ask someone where our dinners were after a ridiculously long wait of about twenty minutes.

The music inflicted upon us was outrageous! We asked that they turn it down, and although they claimed that they did, I doubted it. The $%#A@&!! music was awful and ruined our dining experience. I told who I thought was the shift manager that they should advertise that they are a concert as much as a restaurant so that people would know. He told me that it was turned down as low as they were allowed. I told him that they play that din for the help, certainly not the customers. He didn't care.

Finally, my fried chicken dinner was served. It was overcooked, over breaded, and hard as could be. The mashed potatoes and gravy tasted Ok, but the texture of the stuff told me that they sat on the plate for a long time waiting for the chicken to be done.

I was told that Black Bear was a noisy place to eat and have avoided it for years - this was my first visit ever. And it was definitely my last and only meal at Black Bear....