Van's Burgers & Soda Bar — Restaurant in Mathis

We just moved into the area and have been checking out the local selections. We were at Van's during the week, toward the end of the lunch rush & it was pretty busy. There seemed to be mostly local office workers and other working folk out for lunch, and some family-type situations with younger kids.

From the outside of Van's, the building looks a little rough and has no windows, which makes it questionable looking. When you walk inside, it's pretty dark in there & coming in from the bright sun, it takes your eyes a minute to adjust. Not having been there before & not knowing what to expect, it was a little intimidating. There's no hostess or sign telling you to seat yourself or wait to be seated & no one to greet you. We had to find a waitress and ask & it was a little chaotic.

There are large, over-sized booths along each side with one really long table all of the way, from the front to the back, right down the middle. The place is actually kinda small, but you don't really notice it. They did a great job of using all of the available space without it feeling over crowded.

Down each side, there are several flat-screen TVs hanging on an angle up where the ceiling and walls meet with the volume turned way down or off, which was good because it was already pretty loud. It has a casual, sports bar vibe with a lot of pictures & sporting equipment hanging up everywhere, from the local high school. The inside was done up really nicely; it was clean & welcoming and we felt good & relaxed once we got past the whole hectic entrance situation, , sat down and got settled.

Most all of the booths were still full & we didn't want to take up a six-person booth with just the two of us, so we sat on either side of the long, family-style table. Our waitress was nice & friendly and apologized for the wait even though we only waited a couple of minutes before she showed up.

We ordered the loaded Nachos as an appetizer, hubs had the smothered beef cutlet and I had the chicken fried steak & we both had sweet tea to drink. The food was really very good: cooked correctly, hot, fresh & flavorful.

Our waitress brought the receipt and was able to run our card and print the receipt right at the table, which i just love! My only complaint was that the receipt was not itemized; it only showed the total amount due with tip amounts of the usual 15%, 20% & 25%.

My biggest complaint is that I wish we'd been given a proper, itemized receipt (and I should've asked for one). They should provide you with one so you can verify charges and correctly figure your tip.

And, even though I appreciate the pre-calculated tip amounts provided on some merchant's receipts, I always check the math to make sure they were figured on just the subtotal and not on the grand total.

You're not supposed to pay a tip on sales tax. I hate seeing the tip amounts figured including the sales tax. It makes me feel a little like they're trying to take...

Burger - 4.25 stars Chicken Fry Cutlet - 3.75 stars Service - 3.75 stars

A couple of minor changes could have easily made this a 4.25 to 4.5 star visit.

Wife ordered the Van's Touchdown Burger. I thought a bit more highly of it than she did. Everything tasted fresh. I didn't even mind the mushrooms, which I don't care for. She said to rate it 4 stars, but I boosted it to 4.25. The fries, close to shoestring style, were excellent. Fries 4.5 stars.

I had the Chicken Fry Cutlet. The salad, while good was more like a garnish, than an actual salad. Think the little pile of lettuce a Mexican restaurant puts under your guacamole. It's put on the plate with fries and large chicken fried steak. In my case, the gravy was dripping onto my salad. I know they end up in the same place, but I prefer my salad sans gravy, but with salad dressing. The thousand islands dressing was good. I asked for a small plate to put my salad on and was brought a small cardboard boat. Unfortunately, the salad fit with a little room to spare. Salad - 3 stars. Once again, the french fries were excellent. Fries - 4.5 stars. The breading on the CFS was very good. 4.25 stars. The steak looked extra large, but after cutting off breading with no meat inside, it ends up being large. Perfectly acceptable to me. It was more than enough food. The weak point was the cutlet. The flavor was mediocre. Not bad, just not very good. Cutlet - 3.25 stars. Had the cutlet been as good as the breading, this would have been a fantastic CFS. My wife thought a bit more highly of the CFS, than I did.

We both agreed on the quality of the fries. They were great.

The prices were very reasonable for the quality and quantity of food received. The service, while friendly and efficient, occasionally seemed pushy. We were given our bill about 5 minutes after we received our entrees. The server did continue to check on us, though. My wife had barely finished her burger and a busser was there trying to clear things. It would have been much nicer had the server stopped to check on us and picked the tray up at that time. We just felt a little rushed even though they weren't that busy and it was still 2 hours before closing.

All in all, an enjoyable visit and a good meal at a reasonable price. We will likely stop by the mext time we're in the...

I'm torn when it comes to Vans because the food is delicious. The service, however, leaves something to be desired. When I visited there were several empty tables so I sat myself which is standard operating procedure for vans. After I set I wait 30 minutes before a waitress comes over to get my drink order. Our waitress is polite and we give her our drink order and tell her that we're waiting for a couple of friends. My friend show up about 5 minutes later and she comes over to take the food order from the table. Now during that half hour, we had no one coming ask us if we needed refills or if we wanted to order any other appetizers. After we ordered our food our waitress was AWOL again, we spotted her several times standing in a circle with the other wait staff having conversations and laughing, and yet we still didn't get any drink refills. At one point I had to walk over, find a random waiter, and get them to refill our drinks. An hour and a half after I originally arrived, and an hour after our friends had arrived, our waitress came out to tell us that our order had not even hit the flat top yet and that it would be several minutes before it would be ready. At this point we almost got up and left, but she assured us that it would only be 7 or 8 minutes. We waited. Almost 20 minutes later we finally received our chicken fried steak sandwiches, but the drama wasn't over yet. She had forgotten every single order of fries that the table had originally ordered. So we waited another 5 minutes for the fries, and surprise surprise, our waitresses nowhere to be found for the sake of drink refills. Now to be fair, the first time we came to vans we had a terrific experience. It's the reason why we came back. I will dine here again, but if we get similar performance from the wait staff I will take it off my list of...