Pat's Pizza — Restaurant in Holden

Big fat FAIL at Pat's pizza in Holden. My family and I are regulars at the Pat's in Ellsworth, ME. So we thought that an afternoon with pizza and mini golf at the Holden location might be a good time.

My wife and children and I were told to sit anywhere we would like as there were only two other tables in the whole restaurant at 12:30pm Sunday July 7th.

We ordered our drinks and they were promptly brought out. That was where the whole Pat's experience went down hill.

My wife and I tried to order nacho's off the appetizer list, and were told by the waitress that they would come out after the main dishes if we ordered them because the table before us ordered appetizers.??? (This was the only other party in the restaurant, the other table had left right as we sat down.) Why would a kitchen no be able to handle two tables?

We ordered two small pizzas and a chicken parm. sandwich with chips. We waited 1 hour for our food to come out. By this time the family and myself are getting pretty hungry. The food shows up and first impressions are that the pizza is pretty dark, and the sandwich was very puny. To add to it, the sandwich was cut in half looking like two finger sandwiches.

I decide to take a bite of my sandwich, and low and behold it falls apart into a pile of mush into the basket. I also notice that there is maybe a tablespoon of cheese on the chicken parmesan sandwich. This now has peaked my curiosity to find out what else is missing from the sandwich. As I take a fork and dive into the "sandwich" I find some chicken that is heavily breaded and diced. I removed the chicken from the mush pile and reassembled it onto a side plate. It was one small 2oz breaded chicken finger that was diced and put on a hot dog roll then covered with sauce. Disgusting!

Now I would have let it slide as a bad experience without a review if I hadn't received the most asinine and disrespectful response when I complained to the waitress. On top of an hour wait I was told by the waitress, " We are Pat's Pizza not Pat's sandwiches." When the burnt on top and raw on bottom pizza was mentioned she said, "That is our standard cook." I was fuming at that point. Why would you have sandwiches on the menu if you don't make them well. A chicken parmesan sandwich is essentially pizza... Bread, sauce and chicken and cheese!!! However I would not be lowering myself and making a scene. My children and I left the restaurant and my wife settled with them.

I will be re-telling this story to whomever will listen for a very long time. Cheaping out on ingredients and having a customer is wrong attitude is not a good...

I wanted to share my recent experience with this location. My family has been loyal Pat’s customers for over 30 years at the Orono Pat’s but decided to give this location a try since it was a little more convenient in location. This past Sunday, we decided to try out the Holden Pat’s as we had just had a celebration of life for my Uncle who passed away this spring. We were a party of 8. When we arrived there were a few open tables and one large table open. The woman working let us know that it was reserved however we can sit at any other of the open tables “if you want” but she would not move them (none of the open tables were close together-so that is understandable ). A nice family offered to move so that we could sit together however the server would not allow us to push the two tables together that were directly next to each other. Our family felt very unwelcome so we decided to leave and go to Orono. Clearly we should have done that in the first place. The customer service (or lack of) that we received was appalling. I am very understanding as I myself work in a restaurant and know how it can be hard to accommodate large parties, especially with the staff shortages happening currently. There was no plausible reason that she couldn’t have let us push those two tables together other than the fact that she simply didn’t want to. Her loss. I’ll never undetected why rude people work in the food...

Friendly service, but the qualify of food and drinks is very different from other Pat's locations. This is a very small Pat's that mostly caters to golfers who want take-out but there is a small dine-in area. We are long-time Pat's customers for over 30 years and have always admired how the food is exactly the same across all their locations. Unfortunately, this cannot be said for the Holden store at Traditions Golf Center. The bread sticks were very different--they were missing the salt seasoning on the top and were very thick instead of thin. The pizza sauce lacked the distinctively good Pat's flavor. The loaded Pizza was overcooked; the meat toppings were all burned on the top--we scraped them off and was able to enjoy the rest of the pizza. The server told us that is just how the loaded is supposed to be due to the double-dough requiring a longer cooking time. Again, we have not experienced this at other Pat's. The margaritas we ordered were also unlike what we have always received at other stores; they were extremely watered down with what was clearly a cheap mix.

Again, the service was friendly, but this store is clearly not following the Pat's specifications that makes the food a notch above an ordinary pizza place. Someone from Pat's should encourage them not to...