Oscar's Cafe — Restaurant in Durango

My family had travelled to Durango for some family matters and decided we would stop by at a cool sounding 50's diner. And upon arriving at Oscar's, it was clear they had a cool atmosphere. Love the train track elevated above all the tables. However, that is about where the enjoyment of dining at Oscar's ends.

Oscar's has ok food. Not great, not completely awful. Mediocre at best. The gravy for the chicken fried steak was over peppered, the bacon was over cooked, the the french toast was crispy and did not taste like any french toast we had tried before. Almost everyone in our party stopped eating out of choice because of the mediocrity of the quality of the food.

However, where the experience truly stood out was the service. For being such a highly rated cafe, the service was absolutely terrible. The employees will bark orders at the customers who may not be familiar with the waitlist process. And the service gets worse from there. The menu said the lunch menu starts at 11 and we were seated at 11:10. To expediate the process, our party were ready to order promptly, only for the waitress coming to take our order expected us to know that the breakfast menu was still going on. This meant we had to rechoose our entire meal and wait another 20 minutes for the waitress to be bothered to come back to take our order.

Finally we got our order in and waited for our food. We were patient as we were sure that the meal was worth it. But as indicated, it was not. And the waitress at every interaction (which was three) was incredibly impersonal. Not once did it seem like we were anything more than a bother to her. And she definitely reinforced this when she disappeared for our entire meal and only showed up once to drop off the check. She completely ignored us even after she saw that we had empty glasses for the entirety of our meal. I do know the restaurant does provide refills as the waitress waited until we had paid before she refilled anyone's drink for the entirety of our visit.

In closing, I would suggest avoiding this cafe and seeking out a place that acts as though the customers are more than an annoyance and has the competency to provide, at the minimum, a...

Frustrating experience. They're clearly very popular, and even though we used the remote check in option and arrived on time, we had to wait an additional 40 minutes. The poor souls seated outside were treated to dozens of people milling around them, staring at their food, and attempting to make unwelcome conversation.

When we were finally seated, we were LITERALLY seated in front of the restrooms in a table that never should have existed (see the photo). There was 1.5 feet of space to pass through between our table to the wall, and our entire meal was accompanied by people standing by our table, commenting on our food, and bumping our plates. One person, while waiting to use the bathroom, actually asked us what we did to earn such a bad table. Toilet flushes, toilet smells, toilet noises, all throughout our meal.

Why didn't I complain? Because my family would be back out in the rain waiting for another table, and some other family would be stuck at this miserable table. And it would only hurt the servers, who aren't the ones who decided to put a table here.

No quality of food would make up for the lousy experience. That being said, the food was FINE. I've eaten at hundreds of popular diners over my life and the food was as good as any. But nothing truly exceptional.

I got the verde plate, with 2 scrambled eggs, hash browns, green chili sauce, and a tortilla on the side. They smothered it, which made the hashbrowns soggy. The green chili sauce was quite good, and could hold its own as a stew. The tortilla was ok, but probably not homemade. The kids' pancakes were fluffy and unremarkable.

Bottom line, management has a serious issue with experience. Our table shouldn't exist, the outside tables shouldn't exist, and the way they manage their wait-list is truly broken. The food is passable. The decor, while cute, looks like 1000 other diners out there and was invisible from our toilet-centric vantage point. Vote with your feet and pick a more...

Aggressive, rude, and violent manager. We were just kicked out of our favorite long time local restaurant and will NEVER be coming back because of this employee. It should be noted that we have been going to Oscar’s for 30 years and my siblings and i have had almost every birthday breakfast here. We can’t even begin to explain how unsafe it felt to be there today and how we will never step foot there again.

One of our party that is visiting us from Australia brought in a drink (non alcoholic) that he was trying to finish when this man told him to take it outside. He gave us 30 seconds to take it outside. During that time we were just trying to explain to our friend that it’s different in the us than he’s used to. However we couldn’t explain quick enough. The disgruntled man came storming over and proceeded to yelled at him and tried to take it out of his hands and felt there was still more so we tried chugging it but the man had already gone completely off the rails. To be fair, our aussie friend was stubborn and we do understand where he was coming from, but this man lacked professionalism, patience, kindness and any ounce of compassion. He spilled the drink on the table all over us, screamed at us to leave, and in this process snapped at the man at the table close to us. It was clear he was escalated and emotionally dis-regulated from the moment we walked in. However, if you work in the service industry and can’t handle a busy restaurant and slow customers, maybe don’t be a manager…try the kitchen. PS the reason to go to Oscar’s was always great customer service and a great ambience. I can’t really recommend that anymore unless you’re looking for a fight. If that’s you 5...