Metro Diner — Restaurant in Florida

I really wanted to like this place. I've heard nothing but raves. Unfortunately I caught them on a bad night. Total chaos when it came to the waitstaff. Two waiters arguing over the price of ice cream (at one point it was getting heated, and it was pretty uncomfortable to watch let alone having to listen to it it 2 feet away from me).

Now onto the food. I got the biscuits and gravy meal. One of the biscuits were beyond hard, the hash browns were super greasy, and the gravy tasted like it had been sitting out for the majority of the day. Granted, part of me blames myself for ordering breakfast for dinner. But that being said, someone had to have cut those biscuits and if it took effort to cut them? Maybe you shouldn't serve them.

Now onto the manager on duty... Literally 30 seconds after we get our meal, the manager came up to us in a bit of an aggressive manner "Hows everything taste????" At that point, I had one bite and said "good". He then said something in a frenetic pace and tone that I didn't catch it all. I then bit into the rock hard biscuit, and a pool of grease that had formed in said gravy and honestly lost my appetite. The eggs were decent though.

The waitress (who was very pleasant. The only reason I'm giving this place 2 stars) asked if anything was wrong, and I explained to her the situation (with a ting ting on the biscuit with a fork in question for good measure). She apologized and said she would let the manager know. Two minutes later, I hear the manager in question very audibly say from the back (and could also see the waitress with my plate standing there) "WELL I ASKED HIM IF EVERYTHING TASTED FINE AND HE SAID YES!!!!!" Which did not settle very well with me understandably so. He then comes over to the table (after calming down I'm assuming) and told me sorry for the unfortunate meal and he would take it off the bill.

Now don't get me wrong. I understand what it's like to work in food service. I put in a combined 10 years of my life working in restaurants, cafes, pizzerias, etc. That being said? Never in my wildest dreams would one of my managers act the way he acted. It was extremely off putting, and made it a pretty firm decision that myself and the rest of my party will never darken the doors of this...

Sunday morning at 11:30 we arrived expecting to beat the rush. Nope, the place was packed. 12 parties ahead of us. It was then I noticed two open counter seats. We took them and it was really almost entertaining because this counter seat allows a front row view of the food prep. This was a polished team of food preparers. You could see the team of I guess 6 or 7 cooks worked intently and smoothly together. There was no goofing around, just intense concentration on each aspect of prep. There were 2 guys handling deep frying. There were another couple of guys--primary cooks, I'd call them, one handling the grilled items, the other seemed almost exclusively handling egg cooking tasks. Another person prepared tray after tray of bacon to go into I guess you'd call it an oven. We also got to see her preparing the biscuits which are really extraordinary. . .I had my mind set on their fish and chips, while my wife went for biscuits, gravy, hash browns and egg. Neither of us could believe the amount of food on our plates. One whole plate was covered with my wife's biscuits and gravy. She had to have a second plate for the eggs and hash browns. My plate was LOADED with two big fish fillets and fresh french fries (I saw the guys fix them fresh). The fish and chips were every bit as delicious as I remembered them. Neither of us could eat everything on our plate, so came home with another meal's worth of food. . .Just a real treat. And the server Brandon was uncommonly attentive in the midst of a rather frantically challenging atmosphere of snow bird diners. He mostly anticipated our needs before we could ask. He was great. . .As with all these popular place here in Venice, the noise level approaches decibels of an airliner taking off. But that's the price to be paid for dining at a popular place, right? Unequivocally...

Went with my husband on the way home from the doctor. Very clean, empty when we arrived. We sat ourselves, then it took 10 minutes for menus. Of course, this being our first time, we had no idea what they had. It was freezing cold there and I first ordered coffee. My husband just got a water and that seemed to bother our waiter. He asked a for lemon, did not get, so asked again 2 more times. He never got it, so I asked for a small plate with some lemon wedges from another waitress. I told her we had ordered it several times, but our waiter must not be able to hear the word lemon, she laughed and said he was fairly new and apologized. So now I see they had a special board in the back. I did not want anything other than soup and salad. My husband went to read it. He forgot the soup, but our waiter came, so I asked him. His reply was that the special board had all their specials on it, including the soup. Okay, So here is the deal. I worked as a waitress and bartender for over 25 years, even if you have a special board, your job is to know what is on it. If you can not remember, right it on your pad. Luckily the other server knew all the specials, one I even ordered. We thought the food was okay, not a big selection, especially tired a diner. We ate, never saw our waiter throughout the meal. I wanted desert, but decided against it. We paid and left the waiter a tip, not a good one, but a tip. I wrote a note to him with our complaints, so he would know why he did not get a good tip. Will probably...