Fair Oaks Diner — Restaurant in Madison

My friend and I went for lunch yesterday. While the food was wonderful, the service on the other hand, was an experience in and of itself. When we arrived, around 11:30, there were three other people in the entire dining area. We were seated and had our drink order taken right away. The only waitress on duty seemed “out of it”. She slurred when she spoke, had to be asked three times to get us utensils and just seemed very peculiar. We enjoyed our meals, not being checked on the entire time, however our waitress was having a colorful conversation with another customer at an adjacent table. When it was time to pay and head back to work, our waitress was sitting at the counter, ASLEEP! I stood at the counter, next to her and woke her by repeatedly saying “Excuse me” and “Ma’am”, to which she seemed annoyed that I had interrupted her nap time. There were only two meals and two drinks on the ticket and I was paying for both (which was told to her when we ordered), so splitting the bill was unnecessary. She asked what meal was mine, to which I replied “Oh, I am paying for both” she again asked what meal was mine and I said “I’ll be paying for the whole ticket”. She stared at the ceiling for a second, then tapped her pen on the ticket multiple times, I leaned in and asked “Are you okay?” She then slurred , “I’m fine, I just need you to answer the question!” Getting rattled, I said “Please just add the whole ticket together and I’ll give you the money to cover both meals”. She scribbled random numbers on the ticket and gave me a “total”. It didn’t sound correct so I grabbed a menu off of the counter and reminded her of the prices of the meals. She insisted that it was the amount she had written down, so I gave her the correct amount to cover our bill and we left. I’ve never had an experience like this! The food was so yummy! Exactly what we wanted. But, the waitress’ behavior was...

The food was as expected - pretty good, but very greasy. One star is overwhelmingly based on the service. This is a small place, seats probably up to 30 people, but there were only about 10 when we got there at 9:30am on a Sunday. We got water right away, coffee about 5 minutes later, but it took the waitress about 20 minutes to come back and take our food order. The place did fill up while we were there, but I'm not sure that's a reason for it taking more than 1 hour and 45 minutes to get our food AFTER we finally ordered. The waitress did everything she could to avoid people in the dining room the whole time. I only got two coffee refills in the over two hours we spent (mostly waiting for food). We had ordered one omelet and one skillet. We were never offered an apology or explanation, and never given an opportunity to ask for one. Also, what they call "swiss cheese" has to be something like kraft swiss singles, it definitely wasn't...

Everything was very dirty and sticky! Service: what little we received was very rude and rushed. The menu was hand written on cardboard which was barely legible. when out plates were being brought out the server demanded to know "who had the ham and cheese Omelette! it was one of you!" turns out that was the willalby's Omelette that we had order. At some point while eating our greasy under cooked food a crumpled up grease stained hand written receipt was tossed on the table. When it came time to pay they took my card and demanded to know what there tip amount would be. Apparently you just tell them so they can go put it in for you. We regrettably blurted out 20% in order to escape this establishment as soon as possible. Will never return unless it is to take up a parking space and grab some Sala...