Francies — Restaurant in Des Moines

I’ve been wanting to try this place for a while because I had heard good things about it and it has been around for a long time. So I had high hopes for it. Unfortunately I found it very disappointing. When my husband and went last night, the parking lot was packed and the place was full inside. We thought that was a good sign.

The waitress told us before we ordered that there would be a long wait because they had so many orders in at that moment. We didn’t have a problem with that and appreciated the heads up from her. We ended up waiting about 40 minutes for our food. We figured it would be that long.

I ordered the New York steak and pepper sandwich and my husband got the bacon cheddar burger. I asked if they could add sautéed onions to my sandwich and the waitress said it wouldn’t be a problem. When I got my sandwich there were no onions added, the meat was chopped up into cubes instead of being in thin strips like I thought they’d be and the meat wasn’t seasoned. My husband said his hamburger wasn’t seasoned either. Neither were our fries. And most of my husband’s fries looked like they were the tiny remnant pieces from the bottom of the bag. They were just warm and not very hot so they weren’t crispy. They had probably been sitting for a while. Everything tasted very bland. We couldn’t remember the last time we had such bland food. I can’t figure out why people like this place so much. We definitely won’t be back. We have had better tasting and less expensive food from other places.

I was going to give this place two stars, but I added a half star because the waitstaff did a great job and they were hustling when it...

When we moved to the area five years ago, a family member who now lives out of state but frequented Francie’s back in college always said we HAD to go. She said they had the best tuna melt on the planet. Finally got around to stopping by and we are kicking ourselves for waiting so long. Very chill place with superbly made cocktails and food. It’s a short menu but seems like every item might be a home run. I had the Impossible Burger and my husband had the Cuban; would definitely rank both in the top five of any we’ve had anywhere. We took a pic of the tuna melt on the menu and sent it to our family member to see if she could guess where we were. She knew right away even though it’s been 30 years. I don’t think there’s any better rating than that. Well done, Francie’s - we look forward to...

The atmosphere was good here(the music wasnt booming, and i was able to converse at my table and hear the other party). The servers seemed distracted and the burger I had was good, but the fries were frozen crinkle cut. For some place that's charging about 20$ for a burger and fries, I'd assume they would at least try to make it seem like they were fresh cut. The other reviews I read were great, so I guess maybe I had overinflated expectations. The servers were really the biggest issue I had, from things they didn't take down when we were ordering so we had to ask twice once we got our food, to just plain ignoring us so I had to flag down another to get the check. I might check it out again not during lunch rush hours later. But kindof a disappointment with all the rave reviews I...