NORMS Restaurant — Restaurant in El Monte

I actually was super let down.. I was going to take pictures but my phone was dying and my waitress was super nice and let me charge it up however, it still didn't get charged enough to take pictures before I left. So, here's The Good the Bad and the Ugly on my review.. I've been in and out of California for the past couple of years doing work the Norms is apparently a staple, so I was super excited to try it out. I was very disappointed at what I got as opposed to what my expectations were! Locals love this place and you see Norms everywhere; the original is a Movieland staple and everybody loves it. My experience was not so grand.. the place was well lit and bright so I was really set aside when I walked in and noticed how dirty it was. My table was clean but my menu wasn't, the condiment holders and shakers weren't either. My waitress was superb though, hit all the spots came to me quickly gave me my drinks did a quick check back and then left me alone when I told her to give me a few minutes on the menu. I love servers that don't touch their hands to where I'm going to put my lips and who offer straws for drinks in glasses! As a former food service worker and one who grew up in the business with grandparents who owned restaurants way before my time that is the number one thing that will throw me for a loop when I'm out and honestly nobody should tolerate that as a customer! Restaurant wasn't very busy so when it took 20 minutes to get a simple SoCal breakfast which is the two eggs, meat, hash browns and pancakes I was a little surprised. Pancakes were lukewarm but the rest of the meal was cold, and my over medium eggs were definitely on the light over easy and inedible. Honestly if you're wanting hot bacon to get cold bacon makes me want to just cry when crispy piece and a half of a soggy piece did not to whole pieces make. The pancakes in and of them self were okay however, I'm not really sure where that off putting taste came from whether it was the low end margarine, really really light sugar-filled fake maple syrup or the batter itself but I got a couple bites in and gave it up just because it wasn't what it should have been. Light, fluffy, very warm and sugary goodness! I will say this my waitress again was great with her check backs my coffee was hot and you know it wasn't her fault. I wanted to give this more stars because really I've heard the ravings and I've seen other Norm's restaurants delivery food so I'm going to give it one more shot but at 22 bucks it's going to be an expensive one.. and no I wasn't offered my discount for First Responders even though I was in my ER uniform since I had just came from working my 14-hour shift in a local ER... they didn't even ask me if I qulified for the senior discount even though my non-colored hair was in full regalia.. I'm not going to beg for a discount that's shown and , ALL OVER THE DOORS, TABLES, ETC!I 3ven qualified for the AAA so I should have got one of the three.. And please stop blaming covid for the problems I know it's hard out there to get employees I'm in healthcare and we're having the same issues that the entire world is people want to get paid a whole lot of money to not do their job I'd like to get paid at Fair wage just to do my job! But we need to stop blaming covid and get on the ball and make these people responsible for doing their job or send them out the door because honestly I would have preferred to avoided knowing the restaurant was short and have a qualified meal that I paid for as opposed to getting something serve to me that's an edible,...

So... for starters, my wife and I found that the building itself literally says "we never close" on it, but Google showed that they close 11. We finally saw the hours on the door that they are only 24 hours on Friday & Saturday. Weird, but whatever. So, we go in, and the young man that I figure is our host barely speaks to us, grabs 2 menus and walks to a table, drops the menus there and keeps walking. I figured he was going to grab utensils for us. Nope. Dude dropped the menus and ran. Our server was okay. Nothing amazing about her. She forgot to bring my lemonade twice, but she's older, so whatever. My dinner was good, but seriously, it was fish and chips. My poor wife though... she ordered the garlic mushroom chicken with baked potato. First off, the potato was brown inside when I cut it open for her. Either the potato was old, or cooked improperly. Either way, not cool. And then the main part of the entrée. How they gonna call it GARLIC mushroom chicken, when there is absolutely no garlic flavor to it? And then to add insult to injury, the chicken was dry! And finally, we were basically kicked out of the restaurant! We arrived at a little after 10. My wife IS NOT a fast eater. However, we were almost done with our meal. That same guy that was supposedly our host actually came over to our table talking about, "so it's 11..." In all my life, I've never been pushed out of a restaurant like that. I've even worked in restaurants (as has quite a few of my family), and to push out patrons in such a way is pretty much unheard of. This place even went so far as to turn off a bunch of lights as we were getting our stuff together to leave! Then here's the kicker... as we were driving away, we saw the lights inside turn back on! How rude! So, either we have an owner of this location or manager that is a cheapskate, or we have a closing crew that needs to be reprimanded for their disrespectful mess......

Horrible food and horrible service! I used to love Norms but not anymore. 2 other take out orders missing items and then this issue... Online order for open face turkey, classic sirloin steak trio, and fish and chips. I got to norms about 15 minutes after i ordered my food. I was told it wasn't done cooking. Fine, I'm okay waiting. Except I kept waiting, and kept waiting. 1 of the employees that just arrived asked what I needed about 10 minutes after I got there... told him I'm waiting for my food to finish cooking. Waited longer. Another person said it should be about 5 minutes. Kept waiting. So a total of 40 minutes later, the employee that had arrived right after I showed up asked me what did I order, I told him, and he starts looking around the counters, behind stuff, very odd. Then he pulls a bag from around the register that was behind stuff and said "here you go". I asked "so my food has been sitting in a bag behind stuff for 40 minutes?". He said yes but couldn't get me a manager because guess what.... he said no managers are ever there after 6pm. Of course the lazy managers only work the easy day shift, no where there to help with issues during the busy dinner rush and they said no one was in charge. Still had to wait longer because the open face turkey was not in the bag. I got home to all cold food since it had been about an hour since most of it was cooked, and soggy fish and fries. No dressing for either salad. Also, the sirloin steak is not a real sirloin. It's flap meat which they should label it as flap sirloin instead of tricking people that it is a nice cut of sirloin. Almost $60 in food in the trash and we had to get fast food instead since it was already so late. Not to mention I was clearly lied to that it would be done in 5 minutes (like it was in the process of cooking) when it was sitting in a bag the...