IHOP — Restaurant in Napa

I have had a difficult relationship with IHOP.

I love the idea of a restaurant focused on providing a great breakfast all day long. I've never been wowed by any of their non-breakfast options. And even though I usually love their pancakes in all their different iterations, I still mourn the amazing Cream of Wheat pancakes they discontinued a decade or so back. But for a good breakfast, well-prepared? This is a great place.

This particular IHOP has two things in common with every other IHOP I've been to in recent years: the aforementioned fantastic pancakes and service delivered at glacial speeds no matter how busy or empty the restaurant.

During meal rush times, the wait for a table can be an hour or more, which would be less frustrating if a quarter of the seats didn't seem to be perpetually open. Lack of wait staff perhaps? But still, when they are busy, this could be excusable. When the seats are filled and there are twenty groups in line, a long wait for seats or food is reasonable.

But why does the food always take so long? When you are seated in a mostly empty store and you still have to wait 30+ minutes to get a stack of pancakes, that's unacceptable. It is, however, what seems to be the norm across the chain. Regardless of how busy or empty, regardless of the size of your party or the simplicity of your order, you probably will have time to go to the Denny's across the street, be seated, order, get served, and eat in the time it takes to get your order at IHOP.

So my advice is to go and enjoy some great breakfast food, but don't go during peak hours and don't go if you don't have a LOT of extra...

I just want to comment on a situation that was posted on Facebook about a waitress named Jan. The post was very disrespectful on this person's part in so many ways. Let me start by saying being in the restaurant business and being a waitress can be very hard especially when you are short-staffed, or the computer server goes down or there are problems in the kitchen. There could even be something else going on that the customers don't know. But when you yell inside a restaurant at a waitress that is the only one on that side of the area and she is doing the best she can and there were problems with the computer server and the waitress still comes up and says she is sorry about it, how can you post something on social media forum and put her or him down. I have been a waitress and isn't all peaches and cream. I JUST WANT TO SAY THANK YOU I HOP FOR HIRING A WONDERFUL PERSON LIKE JAN SHE IS A VERY HARD WORKER AND SHE IS A VERY NICE PERSON. And for people out here and go to any restaurant please be patient with your waitress and if there is a problem don't yell or scream just politely talk to them and they will be able to explain what is going on to you so you then don't feel like you aren't getting the service you need. And also remember when you act like a fool in a restaurant and yell and scream you are causing the other customers to feel very uncomfortable and that is not fair. With that being said JAN YOU ROCK AND I LOVE IT WHEN...

We got there and were seated right away, the problem was that after that a waiter never came to our table. We got coffee served by some rude guy in the kitchen, the restaurant was not as busy but there were about three waitresses serving and attendig to other people that got there after us and nobody ever came to our table even after that. We asked the hostess who was cleaning the table next to us and asked him who our waiter was and he said that she would be with us in a second, we waited another 15 minutes after this and had to ask a waitress if she was going to serve us, she said no and gave us a name and pointed at one of the waitress that was serving two tables down from us, she was ignoring and serving some other people that barely got there when we were waiting for a good 25 minutes already. After that we waited another 5 minutes and we could tell that she was ignoring us. We had to leave since we were ignored and for some reason denied service in a very subtle way. This Ihop;...