Dain's Place — Restaurant in Durham

Based on the experience my friends and I had tonight, I will never give this establishment another dime of my money. I want to start off by saying that I have been to this place at least 10+ times before, and I had some good times there, like watching the Cavs in 2 NBA Finals, and grabbing some celebratory brews the night they won the title. Also went there other times to just get some quality beer and watch college basketball/football. Before tonight, I really enjoyed this place, which is why I was so disappointed. Myself, my fiancé, and 4 friends came for drinks after dinner. They were out of several beers listed on their menu, which is fine, but the waitress who took and delivered our first round of drinks never came back to see how we were doing or if we wanted another drink during the 90 minutes+ we were there. Since she never came back to us, we closed out our individual tabs at the bar. Once we left, the bartender ran out on the street and accused us of not paying for a $6 beer. Bartender's attitude was rude and accusatory towards everyone in the group, assuming that 6 professionals would skip out on a $6 beer. After 15 minutes and much arguing, they realized they overcharged us, which could have been avoided if our waitress actually waited on us while we were in there. No apology from bartender or waitress. Multiple times bartender told us, "I don't care what you think", as if we were trying to rip them off. So disappointed in the way we were all treated, calling us out in such an aggressive manner for something that was screwed up on their end, especially since we had all frequented the establishment in the past. Guess we need a new...

New edit. I'm sorry that I didn't see the owner's response earlier. I'll be more specific. Two visits previous my friends and I stopped in for a few drinks. Despite sitting at the bar for 20 minutes we were virtually ignored by the two workers behind the bar who were more interested in chatting with each other and answering the phone. The great bearded bartender who made that place seems no longer in residence. We left without getting drinks.

On my last visit there (admittedly 6 years ago, I ordered the BLT from the menu. In the past this has been one of the world's great sandwiches: 12 strips of bacon, healthy tomatoes on nice fat, marble rye toast. What they brought me was a pale comparison to what I was used to there: maybe 6 strips of bacon and a thin, anemic tomato slice. When I asked the server about it, she snapped that people complained that the old version had too much bacon (!) and pointed to the menu description which, indeed, had been altered accordingly.

These two experiences plus the absence of the previous staff suggested to me that the management had changed, and that the place was now more about profits than service and quality.

Perhaps I'll try again, but it will be hard for me to forgive them for ruining one of the greatest sandwiches I've found anywhere. Sure, charge more for it if you must, but don't serve it to me and tell me it's better that way.

Sadly, Dain's has changed for the worse. About a year ago they lost their customer focus. The menu and the attitude of the servers reflects some sea change in management. I miss...

Terrible service. We ordered a round of drinks, but then our server never came back to our table for 45mins so we decided to close out and leave. The bar tender accused us of not paying for one drink and made a huge scene yelling that he "knows how to do his job well". Turns out the server who could hardly do her job serving actually overcharged us one drink-- guess they can't do their jobs at all. Bartender and server never apologized, but rather the bartender said he didn't care about our service. Don't go here-- service is terrible and the bartenders and servers are rude. Would give no stars.

Dain's manager even gave us his contact information (publicly, of course) to speak directly to us-- two people in our party that night emailed him over a month ago and the manager never replied. I give the manager of Dain's place no stars as I would the employees there. I guess that explains why the staff there are so bad-- management...