Village Inn — Restaurant in Iowa City

When you are roadtripping, gas station sustenance gets old fast. So when we opted for a sit-down meal, we were happy to come across Village Inn and give it a try. It will remind you of a scaled back version of the national chain Perkins, and if you like that sort of menu, you'll probably like Village Inn.

Our server was friendly and accommodating. The place is clean and comfortable, though it may make you pause with decor indicative of color update 60s or 70s style. My partner favors breakfast meals, and when he asks for it smothered, it's a big smile that pops when a server responds, "Which kind of gravy do you prefer?" For my choice, I went with one of my sandwich options when I want to see if a place knows how to do something right - a Rueben. Both of our plates arrived with hot food server perfectly. His plate was truly smothered with country gravy. My sandwich was one of the best Ruebens I've had. Not too much dressing, balanced amount of kraut, and the corned beef was essentially shredded instead of sliced. The whole thing put together made for a flavorful, easy-to-eat sandwich. When you are traveling, not having to labor through a sloppy mess of food goo of a sandwich is a nice thing. Lots of different classic options should provide you a menu item pick if you feel like giving this quaint...

Horrible experience. Had a sick family memeber and needed to order for out. After 5-6 failed attempts to reach anyone at the resturant, I decided to drive down to the Sturgis Corner location and placed my order. As I walked in I realized it was in fact very busy in which helped bring to light the only possible reason behind zero phone efforts. However, as I placed my order for carry out the "manager" mentioned he heard the phone ringing and opted to not even bother. It really would have taken 1 maybe 2 mins at most. So I shrugged it off, asked for an estimated eta, and received an answer of 20 mins, but could be alittle longer? That seemed legit with a packed house. So I mentioned to him I would return in 25 mins to make good use of the wait time. As I returned at the 25 min mark. I continued to wait another 20 mins to find that my order was room temp and the desert I was sent to get was frozen. He was nice enough to give me the option of either choosing something else, or waiting 24 hrs to eat it. This of course was all discussed after my card had been run. Bad customer service and poor job of setting time expectations. I've been there a few times before and never had an experience like the one I had today. So hopefully this was just an...

I used to really like Village Inn. I was excited to check it out after the renovation. It is very nice inside. If you take a table, the chairs slide very easily on the floor. Makes it easy to slide up to the table. We were there on a Saturday. The restaurant was at 25% capacity. Lots of wait staff. Where it went down hill was when I saw other tables getting their food and they were seated after us. Our waitress disappeared. I reached out to the manager and asked about the status of our food. He looked into it and had another team member deliver our food. It was good but not great. Seemed like some of it was sitting under the warmer. When the manager came back he had an apology riddled with excuses. Our waitress had a medical emergency. I don't know why he didn't step in to cover her area. He made me feel like I should have felt sorry for him. He claimed our order was submitted 14 minutes ago and that was perfectly acceptable. The funny thing was we had easily been there an hour. Guess our waitress didn't push send on her electronic order machine after she took our order. I might give them another try as they are one of my favorite breakfast restaurants. If that manager is there, I will...