Martinsburg Family Diner — Restaurant in Martinsburg

The first impression walking in was that this place had a severe identity crisis. Is it an oriental place? No. Is it a 50s diner with a bar? No. A small family diner? No. A non alcoholic club with food? No. An arcade? No. Some eclectic mix of all of the above that will confuse and disorientate you? Yep. Once you reconcile all this while waiting to be seated in the "family restaurant," great expanse of odd seating via a random bar on one wall, booths randomly scattered in multiple rooms and tables everywhere, you are greeted by kind welcoming staff. You will be seated. Told your server should be with you shortly. You're given a menu that weighs no less than 5 pounds, just waiting for you to sift through its never-ending confusion of dishes, platters, and specials. As you shuffle through the daunting amount of choices, you discover the menu makes it even tougher to decide what you may like to eat at this time. It was truly overwhelming. Vague or no descriptions of most items leaves you waiting for your server to ask so many questions she spends nearly 10 minutes merely explaining items with "some corn thing like dough but not dough but made of corn" descriptions. It is clearly not her fault, but training or management skills issues related to menu knowledge, though it would likely take at least a masters degree to know all these menu options. You should be able to navigate this with ease, as the staff are very friendly and extremely sympathetic, stating, " Sorry, we try to tell the owners this happens constantly but falls on deaf ears." Everyone shruggs, and you ask for a few more minutes. At this point, as you're narrowing down the options, you realize just how expensive the choices are. 2 pancakes are $8.00. Seriously? Must be some incredible "corn dough thingy but not dough" laced with-well who knows what- I love breakfast and order it 97% of the time and have never seen a $4.00 pancake. Must be the size of a pizza, I figure. Nope. 2 average size pancakes, tasty, but certainly not $8.00 tasty. There are extremely limited al a carte options here, making a combination of items even on breakfast menu extremely cost prohibitive due to the already abnormally expensive prices. We're honestly not sure how this place makes in in Martinsburg WV given the demographics, though it must be mostly the high middle class to upper-class visiting this gem. Our food took a lot longer to receive than you'd expect given the size and scope of this establishment. Our server apologized on two occasions for this, to which we all kinda shrugged again, smiled, and said no problem. Our food overall was underwhelming for the experience and time it took to receive it. Pancakes, though very costly, were good. Eggs are eggs, toast is well, warm bread, not toast, and expect to butter it yourself unless you simply want warm bread slices. My sausage patties were unquestionably microwaved beyond recognition, dry, rubbery masses of unedible who knows what, I requested replacements to which our server responded "how about I get you links instead, the pattys will just come out like that again I promise you." So they know this is an issue. The links would have indeed been much better had they not simply microwaved them as well. Epic breakfast meat failure here. When asked in disbelief, if they microwaved the links, the answer was "yes to get them out to you faster." Overall, we do not feel the quality of food or the time to get it coupled with the high-end pricing justifies a meal here. Especially when the waitstaff recommends a "better diner just up the road," which we informed her is closed on Mondays as we went there first. We DO, however, agree with her that there are FAR better places in the area to get a much better meal coupled with a far better experience. If you like microwaved and expensive low quality hard to choose meals in an identity crisis location, then this is definitely the place to waste your hard...

Today was the second time we have had the unpleasant experience of being "served" by Alesia. This server fumbled from the word go taking her sweet time to approach the table of two all the way to the very end where we had to ask for our check. Bless her heart. She definitely values her relationship with a visitor a snacks that we over heard her telling her that she could really sell those they are that great. It took an abnormally long time to get our drinks; coffee, hot tea and waters. The server brought 2 things of water because she didn't want to come to the table as often. The restaurant was pretty slow during our visit as it is Monday around 10am. Our ticket says we are sitting at table number one. So, very close to the bar which is how we got to hear all of each conversation that was more important than appropriately checking on our table. We ordered a medium rare steak and eggs and chocolate chip pancakes with bacon.. our initial drink order arrive just before our food by about 3/4 mins, and another server brought us our food. While our server was off socializing. Again. After the we watched as our server flitted around socializing instead of focusing on the task of serving. One of her pastimes I noticed was walking around asking if people wanted coffee refills without the coffee pot, and once she flitted off to get the coffee pot she spent her time socializing instead of refilling coffee. Just think. You pay 3.00 for a cup of coffee and a cup of tea and no honey is brought to the table for the tea, and there is not one refill to your coffee cup. While we were finishing up eating, and literally taking our last bites the server approaches the table asking to take the plates we are eating from.. Why are you in a rush for someone to leave? It's not like you waiting on the table while we were there. I could've definitely bought Starbucks and gotten a hotter and better cup of coffee, and the service would've been timely. So, if you go to eat here ask for anyone but Alesia. The food was good, and the the other servers have always been wonderful, but this server is so terrible her coworkers are having to pick up her slack so she can socialize instead doing what she has been hired to do. This was not a one time thing. We have had this server in another instance during Memorial day weekend. We gave her the benefit of the doubt that weekend because the restaurant was busy. Nope. Other people have to step up and do her work no matter if the restaurant is busy or not. Just shameful.

In response to the reply we received. We understand the concept of runners, and team work. Thank you for pointing that out.

We also understand the concept of extremely poor service time and again. Especially when it continues to come from the same server. Not properly managing your tables, or noticing that we said every single other time we have been there we have had great service, and food, but pointing out there is no I in team... That's petty, and why? Because we gave a fair review? Because we spoke to someone who was supposed to be a supervisor, and the situation was handled poorly? Saying you'll handle something accordingly and then chastising the reviewer for being honest and feeling the need to remind someone there is no I in team is exactly why people just stop coming places.

Maybe if we were rude, insitive, or the server was having a bad day and this review was left. That would be one thing, but this was two separate incidents. Everyone who eats at your restaurant knows everyone helps each other as needed, and that you have dedicated bus people and runners. It's not acceptable for a server to carry on that way and ignore her tables. Coffee should be hot, and we would enjoy being able to complete our meal before the plates are removed from the table. If I could remove the stars completely at this point I would. We won't be returning and we will continue to share the terrible experience and the...

We read the reviews and thought it would be good. I ordered a three way cheeseburger (3 different types of cheese) medium well. He ordered an open faced roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. Both of our meals were horrible. My burger was well done because you simply cannot cook a frozen patty to order to begin with. The fries were real good though. His roast beef was nothing but a processed frozen roast with no seasonings, no flavor, full of gristle. Mashed potatoes were fake and had zero flavor as well and the gravy was from a can or a bag. Our server got the manager. She came over and we could tell right away SHE was not happy. She asked what was wrong with his, he told her. She asked me and I said it was flavorless and obviously a frozen patty. She said they don't season anything because some people are allergic. Now, my husband is a chef and has owned restaurants. I'm a pastry chef and attended 4 years at culinary school. Salt and pepper allergy is not a thing. I promise. Their issue is, they have WAY too many items on their menu that they clearly cannot handle. One thing I noticed was BOILED scallops. First off, you do not boil scallops. Second, frozen scallops are not something anyone should sell in a restaurant. That place is a great location and could do much better business wise. The key is to do a few things well, fresh, and local ingredients as opposed to doing a hundred things poorly. Any chef and successful restaurant owner would tell you the same. So, the manager took my husband's roast beef off of our bill and apologized to him but made sure not to even apologize for mine because it isn't their fault they can't use seasonings due to a Salt and pepper allergy that doesn't exist. Don't tell patrons the food is made and sliced in house if that isn't exactly true. I'm sure I'll get a sweet reply since the manager was quite the caring sweetheart. Some kind of excuse and snide remark. But at the end of the day, I sincerely hope you think about what you're selling and end up making the necessary changes to make that place successful. We certainly need a decent restaurant in this area and you guys most certainly have the location and ability to make it so. I do have photos but there's no option to post them....