Hodel's Country Dining — Restaurant in Bakersfield

The food is always good here at Hodel's. I don't have a complaint about the food, but I DO have some issues about the seating and staffing conditions. I come here often............like REAL often! More often than I should! I don't have any complaints about the food whatsoever. The food is great! The seating situations on the other hand is not so good. I HATE being seated in a booth..............namely the booths surrounding the dessert area. The seats are uncomfortable, for one thing. The seats are 'bumpy', it's an uncomfortable feeling having to try to get out of the booth to get more food when people are trying to get their dessert. There are a couple of booths WAAAAAY in the back, hidden so far that the waitress or waiter forgets that there are patrons in booths back there. (I've complained about this before, (and even though I return, because the food is so good), obviously, my complaints have gone unheard and forgotten! The last time I was there; after we were seated, the waitress didn't even come over to ask what we wanted to drink; my husband had to go and ask a random worker for our drinks. Our finished plates were never cleared, and we were never asked if we needed a refill on our drinks. We could have just gotten up from our seats after we were done eating and walked out without paying..................but our so called 'waitress' was sure to come to our table to drop off our ticket, even though she never cleared our table of spent plates, or asked if we needed a refill...

Dangerous company and management. Ignoring the food as a customer, I invite you to consider this from an employee standpoint.

Workers sign a paper stating they will not unionize (illegal and does not actually do anything). Aggressive hiring tactics will only take people who are willing to break backwards and have no previous work history so that they can't recognize a toxic workplace.

Health codes are constantly ignored and are often cleaned up at the very last second because health inspectors always show up with announcement.

ALL of the dishes that Hodel's owns are run through one single dish washing machine that works at sub-optimal quality. Those dry dishes don't evaporate by themselves (towels are used, which is a no-no for health codes).

The singular dishwashing station is almost always understaffed, increasing risk of work related injuries due to glassware pile-up. At least they require non-slip shoes, but that hasn't prevented surgery required injuries in the past.

I urge you to not support this business, not because of food, but because of business practices and treatment...

This is an all you can eat type, smorgasbord, plentiful cafeteria with a dining down home country style cooking. Dining room is good size with many banquet party rooms to fit most all occasions. A Bakersfield favorite for very large parties and the food is better than most cafeterias. Daily fresh foods prepared pretty well, but not your gourmet plate because you select it yourself. The price includes dessert selections of pie, special cakes, many more. There are 3 types of bread and 3 types of soups and many types of salad and pasta salads and about 4 types of fruit to choose from. The selections of main dish always beef, pulled pork, pork ribs, fried or braised chicken, spicy chicken, and a baked white fish type-unknown. There are no labels on anything but the soups. All kinds of desserts. On a scale of one to ten, ten being the best-i would rate Restaurant a 7.5, but an 8.0 out of 10,,,for the amount of selection and of the effort to prepare this amount of food for the masses. Ranch style dining for the...