BlackBear Breakfast and Lunch — Restaurant in Highlands

BEWARE! The favorable reviews for this location seem to be the result of “stacking the deck” by friends and family.”

If you read several reviews, I think you’ll agree.

This is the first time I’ve ever left a one-star review. Most often, when I’ve encountered substandard service and/or products, I’ve simply resigned myself to not return and criticize only when asked. But in this case, I would feel bad for anyone to have the same experience I had in not one, but two visits, or to experience what I witnessed among other patrons.

The service and food quality was so poor at this restaurant the first time I visited, totally contrary to the positive reviews listed here, I decided to give it a second chance. The second visit was surprisingly worse than the first.

In addition to leaving my first one-star review, leaving the restaurant before my food arrived was something I did the first time ever here on my second visit. I did pay for the beverages that arrived, but not for the food that never arrived.

I and my adult son left after waiting 30 minutes without our food arriving. I made the decision to leave when I heard the patrons at the table next to me, having ordered prior to us sitting down and still not getting their food, complain to their waitress that customers entering the restaurant after them had already received their food.

The waitress’s response was, “I dunno, it’s crazy.” She didn’t offer to go into the kitchen to figure out why, offer a sensible explanation or even apologize; not even a feeble “sorry.”

The first time I visited, I went with a friend who said the restaurant had been recommended to her. It was a Sunday afternoon at about 1 pm and our party of three were one third of the number in the restaurant.

It took the waitress more than 20 mins to bring menus and take our order.

When we had questions about the menu which listed several items with exactly the same name with different descriptions, each question was answered with the same one word answer, “Yes,” despite asking how eggs could be prepared, etc.

We gave up and just ordered by pointing at items on the menu.

The portions were remarkably small. For instance, a “two slices” order of French Toast was one slice of regular loaf bread cut in half. The bacon was totally crumbled and the scrambled eggs were completely over cooked.

The waitress never returned to the table after the food was served to ask about the condition of the food. I’m convinced that, from experience, she knew what the answer would be.

Given the stark inconsistency between the reviews here and our experience, I gave them another chance a week later.

This time the restaurant was about 3/4 full.

The service was even worse. It took even longer to be waited on despite being seated by our waitress.

Several times we observed our waitress standing in the middle of the dining area, helping no one but flipping repeatedly through her order pad, apparently trying to make sense of what she had written.

An older waitress walked by and told her to pay attention to customers.

Again, our waitress, different from the one the week before, was unable to answer any simple questions about the menu, such as, how can the eggs be prepared. Apparently, everyone simply gets scrambled eggs.

Like the others at the table beside us, we watched as people who arrived after us received their food. We were a party of two who made no special requests but ordered standard items on the menu. Parities of four and more who came in and ordered after us were served before we saw any of our food.

The table beside us said they had been waiting for more than 20 minutes before we arrived.

Assuming the food would likely be the same or worse than during my last visit, considering the service was surprisingly worse, I left three dollars on the table to cover the iced tea and water my son and I finally got, and left.

We watched as other customers did the same behind us.

Given these multiple similar experiences, one can reasonably assume the recent positive reviews must be the result of several...

Welcome to BlackBear breakfast restaurant, now speak Spanish. The greeter knew English and seated us promptly. But someone else was our waitress and didn't speak English well at all. I told her I wanted a steak Texas omelete. She didn't understand. I repeated myself. She then pointed to the menu. I pointed to the word steak. "Ok" she said. A few minutes later she comes back asking if I wanted the steak. Another woman came out to deliver the food. She said something, but it was so butchered I didn't understand what she said. She put the wrong plate down in front of me. I told her that was wrong and switched my plate with the plate for my girlfriend. A guy behind the counter wished some customers a nice day. He spoke perfect English. So there are two young people who can speak English and two older who can not. Why are the older women interacting with the public? The young woman and young man SHOULD be doing all the customer service. As for the food, it was ok. IHOP has...

First off the food was good which makes this post hard to do. We had horrible service. Basically cleaned our own table to sit down at which was kinda okay. They took our drink order and 15 minutes later still no drinks. We had another waiter come and take our drink order he brought them Pretty quickly. Finally someone came and took our food order (it was breakfast food which is pretty fast to cook) hour later we still have no food. We would ask for our drinks to be refilled and they would never come back. The only way to get drink refills is to go to the front counter and ask for them. People that sat down after us and it was more than one set of people had their food within 15 minutes. Then they had the audacity to ask if I wanted to leave a tip. The answer was absolutely not. Again food was good and the service we received was just uncalled for. The picture is how we got our bill so unprofessional and...