Black Bear Diner El Cajon — Restaurant in El Cajon

A friend took me to Black Bear Diner at about 4 PM yesterday, he'd gone there a number of times before and liked the place, but nobody else he went with did. So he asked if I'd like to go. I agreed, the building was rather unique in appearance both inside and out. I am going to be highlighting only the food and the service due to character limits

Food:

I sat down and ordered the Western Barbecue Burger, with fries and a sweet tea. The fries came with a sauce in a small plastic cup that LOOKED like ranch dressing, but certainly didn't taste like your bog-standard Ranch Dressing you get from the store! It was actually rather good, to the point where I ate most of my fries with the sauce it came with as opposed to the ketchup I had planned to eat my food with.

The fries came unsalted and crispy. I appreciate the unsalted fries as that meant I could put as much salt on them as I personally liked, as opposed to your average fast-food join like McDonalds that salts the fries in batches and to get unsalted fries you need to ask them for it. Either way, I would take those fries hands-down.

The Western Barbecue Burger was a 1/3rd pound beef patty, lettuce, tomato, barbecue sauce, and a crispy onion ring, pickles and cheddar cheese. on a Brioche Bun The burger patty was really nicely cooked, they give you a choice how you want it cooked, I had mine medium. The menu says the burgers on their menu also come with Mayonnaise, Thousand Island Dressing and red onion, but if those were on the burger, I couldn't taste it. But, the burger was certainly not lacking if they weren't on it. The burger was still delicious.

The burger came with a slice of orange, which I found unusual, but I have an orange tree in my backyard that we've tended to for years and I have to tell you, it tastes just as good as the ones we have at home.

Service:

We were sat down promptly upon walking in, I had a walker at the time for reasons that go beyond the point of this review, and our waitress moved the walker to the other side of our table I hate the idea of it being in the way, I don't remember her asking if she could move it, as I would honestly have preferred it remain by my side. As the side of the table I sat on was far more open in terms of space then where it ended up being ultimately moved. Though another customer who also had a walker needed to move mine again to get her own walker out from behind me. I did not see hers, so it was a bit of a surprise. The space between my chair and her walker meant that she could not have left with her walker without moving mine, meaning where I initially put it would have been a better location. It was a minor inconvenience, and certainly not something that too negatively impacted my experience, given it was not OUTSIDE my reach, as I could get to it, but it being moved resulted in it being in the way of another customer's walker and moved unnecessarily on account that there was still plenty of room to move around where the walker originally was by my side and within an arms length of me the way I prefer it. This is the main reason I rated the restaurant four stars.

A few minutes after being seated a waitress came up and asked what we would like to drink, and a few minutes after we got our drinks, we got to order. The food was made to order, and brought out in a reasonable time frame. The waitress who seated us thanked us for coming before we sat down, and as we were leaving we were told to have a nice day. The staff we interacted with was polite.

On checking out, there was a woman at the front counter fumbling around with her phone to find a coupon of some sort in the pick up orders line. Something she needed to spend five minutes doing, and there was nobody else at the register, so we had to sit there waiting for this woman to do that. Now, this may be the fact I had just come from physical therapy and was by this point exhausted talking, but the wait was irritating, and at no point did anyone else come in and help with the situation, Or even just get things moving along so we could go...

Victoria checked out from the start. What an experience, I really don't mean this in a good way. When a person decides to mentally check out, you really don't stand a chance. Let me explain. Before I do, I'd like to explain that we chose probably one of the busiest and most stressful days of the year to go have lunch at BBD, Thanksgiving morning. Still this doesn't justify the lack of attention, communication and straight up disdain from Victoria toward us. I could sense that something was off when she turned up to our table a little on the edge of being just an order taker and someone annoyed by our presence. I'm not exaggerating and will prove this point by the end. It really felt like she had made her mind up about us. Now I have to admit that we are not your model clientele that is quick to order and easy to take care of, but we are not difficult either. We typically have a few questions about the menu, need a few refills and can take a few minutes to make up our minds on what to order, but when it comes to waiting for food to be prepped cooked and served, we are ready to wait, and when we get our food we hardly complain about the quality, we understand that not every meal will be the best we ever had. Sometimes cooks miss the mark and that's ok. What is not ok, is to be made to feel like we are an inconvenience and that we were not welcomed, and or that we should be grateful for very poor quality service from someone who obviously felt like she was doing us a favor by taking our food order. I know this because I was a server and a bartender myself for 10+ years. I know the restaurant lingo, expressions and inside code. Ok back to our experience. My wife was helping her cousin place her order for one of the preset limited menu items, $29 prime rib that came with a soup or a salad, and excuse my wife for asking what type of soup it was, because Victoria eyes almost rolled back so far into the back or her head that she could have gone blind or something. Lol instead of checking what it was, she blurred out the first thing that came to her mind "Tomato" only to ask another team member a couple minutes later which soup it actually was. It wasn't tomato! But she never corrected that. Oh well. Order was placed and put in. I asked her to put in a separate side of French fries for my son. Cause he I didn't want to make him wait for everyone's meal to come out. I was expecting the meals to take awhile since it was very busy. I know from being in the business before. Fries take 3-5 minutes when dropped fresh or frozen. Victoria went on break and passed us on to Dylan. Understandable, Dylan asked if we needed anything to which I asked him to check on the fries I had asked for from Victoria. He agreed to check and still nothing. After 35 minutes of waiting on a single order of fries I had to get up and talk to the manager on duty. Explained how our experience was going and how 35 min French Fries were a clear statement of how little our server cared if any. Meals ended up making the table at the 45 minute mark along with the French fries which then became clear were never ordered. Now this is were it became very clear that Victoria really didn't give 2 shi+$ about it. After we got our meals, one was missing and never made it to the table. The manager dropped off the check, but Victoria never came back to the table. Even tho she had come back from break. She never came back to ask if we needed anything, she never came back to apologize. It was all Dylan from there on. Even tho she was clearly helping other customers. This was the clear evidence to me. Again we weren't expecting impeccable service, but man oh man! For sure a meal to remember. I want to make clear that I understand tipping etiquette, 10% 15% 18% 20% or even a little extra when service is good. We left $18 on the table after this awful experience. Not even 10% but the truth is I only wanted to cover the tip-out servers are expected to share with other team members like bussers, hosts, and even cooks sometimes. But truth be told Vicky...

My mom and I were deciding between here, a cozy little diner in El Cajon close to the Parkway Plaza Mall or Denny's. My husband and I went here a few years ago, and it was awesome. So my mom and I decided to have our Voting Debate breakfast here on November 4th. (We use mail in ballets, And have to vote away from my dad... He is a Democrat and only votes Democrat regardless of what the candidate stands for. My mom and I vote for each individual based on what they say.) We thought it would be a cute mom and pop, cozy, family environment and we wanted to support the small business. Turns out it's not a small business there are 158 locations in western US, and they are working on opening new locations from coast to coast. I don't think a senior discount would hurt, but I don't do their finances. I got the meat lovers omelet, with red potatoes, it was hot and delicious. Before coming here I was raving to my mom about the French toast, I remember it being amazing, hot, fresh, fluffy, sweet, mouth watering... Well not today, my mom got the blackberry stuffed French toast bear claw. It was not hot, it wasn't even warm, it also wasn't cold, but maybe it sat too long and not under the heat lamp. It was disappointing, she was already frustrated they only served blackberries, I guess bears don't like other berrys, lol. She's not a fan of blackberries, due to the seeds, but got it anyway. The seeds weren't as bad as she thought, but it wasn't hot... The server was awesome, he insisted on making her a new plate. The new one was hot, burnt her mouth, (not their fault) she wasn't having a good experience. My mom's big thing is pancakes, she compares every pancake she eats to Izzy's. So I got a pancake instead of toast. Their pancakes are like a sweet cornbread type pancake. This did not impress her either lol. To be fair, it's a different thickness, flavor, and texture than a regular pancake, so it wasn't bad, we just weren't a fan. We finished eating, and filled out our ballots. The waiter was awesome he didn't rush us to leave after we finished and they cleared out plates. They weren't busy, no one was waiting to be seated, but most of the tables were taken. We discussed we would give them another try later. Until we went to pay our bill. When we got to the register my mom asked if they took AARP, the cashier said no, military discount only. The girl behind him said loudly and unnecessarily 'Military Discount only." My mom ignored her, and said to our cashier, not even a discount for old people like me, and laughed. There were 4 employees standing behind the cash register doing nothing, and the girl speaks again, in a very rude way, "You know how many old people we get in here every day? Everyone would get a discount." I said "So you don't offer a senior discount, because your primary customers are seniors?" And she said "Why would we give everyone a discount, that would be stupid, and laughed at us." My mom and I just looked at each other. Our cashier looked uncomfortable at this point. My mom paid and we started to leave. Between the cash register and the door they have merchandise T-shirts, coffee cups and a few other things. My mom picks up a coffee cup that has no price on it and asks how much is this. And all 4 employees say they don't know. Then the girl says maybe $14.99. It was smaller than average. Not one of them offered to check on the price. Our bill was a little over $50.00 for two breakfasts and two coffees. If they offered a 10% discount for seniors it would be around $5 off. If this diner can't afford $5 off a bill, and has to sell merchandise at an outrageous price to stay in business they are doing something wrong. Next time we'll...