Hometown Restaurant — Restaurant in Fairbanks

I have been dining at the Hometown Restaurant for years. Since shortly after they opened. Initially, the food quality, portion size, price and service was excellent. However, over the years, I have noticed a gradual degradation in the food quality as well as the portion size. The most recent unfavorable dining experience was this past Sunday when I ordered the fried halibut sandwich with fries. The halibut was lukewarm at best. The recipe changed from a previous Panko breading type coating to a distasteful sub quality breading. It was topped with American cheese, which I thought was a better choice for a burger but not for a halibut sandwich. The slice of tomato did not improve the flavor. Another aspect of the food that was very noticeable was the serving of fries. The taste of the fries was fine except that the portion size was about half of what I’d received in the past. The price for the sandwich was somewhere around $24.95. For this price, I would’ve expected a at least the same portion that I have received over the years. This appears to be a downward trend in the quality and portions. I have no plans to dine at this restaurant any further. I have lived in the Fairbanks area for nearly 50 years and have seen a similar pattern at other restaurants. I am by no means singling out this restaurant, but there seems to be an ongoing trend. Although the food quality and size portions have seen a degradation, the wait staff’s service continues to be consistently excellent. Finally, it appears to be be more preoccupation with a larger profit margin at the expense of food quality and...

Overall I give this restaurant an average rating. The food was pretty good but not to die for I've had better at numerous places in fairbanks. My biggest set back which will keep me from ever going to back to this establishment was the service and the quality. Our server passed by our table numerous times before she even noticed we had just sat down and hadn't been greeted yet. When she finally did approach our table we were given 2 menus when we had 3 people, and were never asked if or what we wanted to drink. I then had to ask someone to come to the table to wipe it off because if was covered in something sticky, normally I would have moved to another table but due to the high volume of customers at the time of our visit it was the only open table. When we finally did get our beverages about 15 minutes later they were extremely watered down and I was brought Sprite when I had asked for Mountain Dew. My girlfriend had asked for sweet tea and ended up having to add many packets of sugar because it wasn't sweet tea at all. Not once during our visit did we have someone come to our table and ask if we needed anything else or how our food was. I had initially thought maybe she was new on the job and gave her the benefit of the doubt but after sitting there realized that she had been there for awhile and knew a lot of the regulars. I'm not sure if this was an isolated event or not but regardless of the volume of the people the service should...

We heard about this place from a friend and stopped in for a late breakfast/early lunch on a Sunday. There was no line, but we still waited for about five minutes before anyone acknowledged us even though several staff members were continuously walking by. Once acknowledged, it was a few more minutes before someone finally came back to see us. Once seated, we ordered quickly and the food came out fast, portion sizes were great for the price. The breakfast hash was really good. The chicken fried steak was the special for the day and was just your typical frozen processed steak, with a ton of gravy on top. Recommend asking for the gravy on the side. Had trouble finding our waitress to get our ticket, then it had drinks on it that we didn’t order, which took even longer to resolve. Once we made it to the counter to pay, discovered that they must have the slowest internet connection in Fairbanks tied to their card machine. It took 3 attempts before the payment finally went through. Food and service aren’t worth coming back...