Village Inn — Restaurant in Federal Way

I used to come to this restaurant many years ago when my kids were still in the house. The food and service were exemplary...then. My how times have changed this restaurant. My first clue was the lack of customers during the middle of the dinner hour (around 6:30 PM). Maybe four customers including us. The place was always full before... My second clue was the duct tape on the seats. What happened there? I threw my coat over the rip. My third clue was the high prices on the Denny-esque menu; a very hard-boiled 'chain restaurant' flipper with lots of photos and 'special deals'. Nothing about the restaurant's history or any 'Village'-like connections. Very off-putting right from the get-go. My fourth clue was the service which was initially friendly by the gal behind the register who showed us to our table...but later became just mediocre when our serving waitress appeared. Just bare bones friendly. Nothing overtly bad, just very minimalistic. I had to ask the waitress directly for more water instead of having her keep an eye on our table and ask us. Not exactly cold service...but just cordial enough to ma-aaaaybe justify a tip later.

Still and all, I was hoping the quality of the food would counter all of my misgivings. Sadly, I had hoped in vain. All my instincts saying 'beware' were right on the money. I had brought my friend here for a good meal like I'd remembered and I was hoping for the best but what I got was just an overpriced poor man's Dennys. I ordered the 'Ultimate Skillet' and my friend ordered the fish & chips. The only thing that could remotely be considered 'good' was the tomato-basil soup my friend got and the big glass of ice water. Everything else seemed like pre-prepared TV dinner fare. My sourdough bread was greenish in spots and very stale. The bacon was see-through and one of the sausages tasted weird. Everything looked piled onto the too-small plates. You might as well have used a feedbag or a trough for all the nice preparation that went into this meal. If you're a starving man who doesn't care about price, presentation or service and just want to jam whatever down your gullet...guess what? You'd still feel ripped off. Apparently some national corporation got a hold of this restaurant and downgraded the food and raised the prices to make a buck. It's been running on the goodwill of past customers like me, coffee & pie, old folks and probably the pancakes which I saw good reviews on. Sorry Village people. Me NO like. Get the water, the tomato-basil soup and the pancakes...if you can afford it. Skip the rest and...

I recently visited Village Inn with my boyfriend and his family, and our experience was very disappointing. My boyfriend ordered the half-pound chicken fried steak, while his uncle got waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. They decided to split their meals and share. Partway through the meal, we discovered a short, straight, light brown hair cooked into my boyfriend’s food—definitely not from any of us, as we all have either darker, curlier hair or hair that’s much too short and bleached blonde.

When we brought this to the waitress's attention, she casually remarked that no one in the kitchen has light hair, which felt dismissive. We were asked if we wanted the meal replaced, but my boyfriend declined—after finding hair in the food, he didn’t feel comfortable eating anything else from the kitchen. Instead, he stopped eating and shared the rest of my meal.

This wasn’t the only issue. Earlier, another person in our group ordered soup and mentioned that the potatoes tasted moldy. He had to send it back and get a different soup. The eggs on one of the meals were undercooked as well but we did not bring this up to the restaurant.

The service overall was poor—it took a long time just to order drinks, and we never received water refills during the entire meal.

At the end, the restaurant only offered us a $4 discount for the contaminated meal. When we explained that my boyfriend wasn’t able to eat his food at all and didn’t want to pay for it, they argued and claimed he ate most of it—which wasn’t true, as he had only a few bites after splitting it with his uncle. After some back-and-forth and involving the manager, they eventually agreed to remove the charge, but it was a frustrating experience that left a bad taste in our mouths—literally and figuratively.

I hope management takes this feedback seriously, as food safety, service quality, and respectful customer treatment should be the bare minimum for any...

First, I haven't used the Yelp app to actually write my own review since 2011. I downloaded it today for the sole purpose of writing this review. This morning, me and my wife and a small group of friends chose to try out this place for breakfast. We were drawn to the lack of wait required compared to Sharis, Denny's or the Black Bear diner Sunday breakfast crowds.

We're a kind group of people who smile and laugh and are easy customers for any server. Every interaction we had with our server was so off putting that I now see why it wasn't busy here.

She consistently made passive aggressive comments about how many of us were here (seven) and was obviously irritated and did not want to serve us. After she brought out our food, she said "is there anything else, because..." and did a little eye roll. Because what??? It was non stop sighs and eye rolls. She would never walk the food around our table and instead stood at the corner and make us reach for everything. Placed all our silver wear at one end of the table, not wrapped in napkin and just said "here's these." So we all had to touch each other's forks before eating with them.

They made a big deal on their menus that you get bottomless coffee but we got a carafe on our table with enough to mostly fill the three people who ordered coffee once.

I didn't receive the toast or pancakes that came with my meal but she was so upset with my friend asking for the bacon that they forgot that I was too anxious to speak up about it. She legit made us feel bad for being there. It's crazy to me that I should be made to feel guilty for wanting to come in and order food from a business who wants people to come in and order food.

The food itself was breakfast food. Hard to be awful at that. It didn't taste bad but it was by no means so good that I would over look the rude service.

In all, the food was so-so, a bit pricey and the service was bad....