Stack Pancake & Steak House — Restaurant in North Arlington

Just left here a little while ago with our family of 3. No parking in the small lot they have so looked for local street parking. First time here but I see that the place is packed this Sunday morning to early afternoon. This is not unusual for any popular place. What's really the issue is there seems to be absolutely no concept of organization nor competent service at this place. We were never seated, we seated ourselves as everyone was packed like sardines waiting inside a small entrance way (some with their masks on). Some semblance of a line extended out the door but patrons were coming in from two doors on both sides of a small front entrance. People were pushing themselves through the crowd in and out the restaurant so you couldn't tell who was on line first. There wasn't a hostess or someone seating people, it seemed like people were just seating themselves in the 20 minutes we waited just to be seated. There was an older gentleman that said there were tables somewhere outside and that it was warm so people just went to those tables and seated themselves. We did so as well and everyone waited for waitstaff to stop and talk to them in order to be given a menu. We eventually got ourselves a menu but the waitress said "I'm not you you waitress but I'll get her to take your order." At that point we had already waited another 10-15 min or so without anyone bringing a menu or taking an order so we told her no one came and she decided to take our orders instead. The waitress was nice but everyone was very rushed and disorganized. You could see that people who came in after us were getting served first and others never even got a menu. Before the waitress agreed to take our order, we had to flag down somebody to get coffee and other drinks. The waitress ended up taking our orders we waited probably 30 or more minutes for the orders to come out and 2 out of 3 were wrong. During the time we waited, we asked the manager at the register what was going on since, yes, it was busy but many people were still waiting on orders including our family. He blamed the wait on us being in the outside section and said he would figure it out but came off as kind of arrogant and dismissive. When the orders came out and we noticed they were wrong, we asked the waitress to read the orders again and she did then left without changing anything. We grabbed a menu from another table then checked again and told her the correct orders then we asked for the bill. She said she would check then another 20 min or so later came back with the bill. We weren't going to change anything, at that point we just wanted to pay for what we got and leave. The waitress did try to correct the bill to reflect what we didn't get and we ended up paying less. Unfortunately, the food was mediocre, nothing special about the pancake plates. Just very plain pancakes with syrup, some syrup on the side, hashbrown and very plain omelets, even this supposed fancy lox one I ordered. I'm not really sure what all the hype is about. Anyway that's our review as truthful as we can make...

Placed an order on ubereats, and I only received half the order. I called the restaurant instead of going through ubereats. Big mistake. The gentleman who answered the phone (Mr. Stack, as he referred to himself) was clearly overwhelmed by the Saturday afternoon rush.

I explained my situation, and unfortunately, Mr. Stack's only solution was for me to come to the restaurant to pick up the order (impressive logic!). I reiterated that I ordered via UberEats as I didn't have a vehicle at the moment. Big mistake #2. I was eviscerated by Mr. Stack and made to feel ashamed for not having an automobile to pick up the order they had forgotten to send me (How dare I!). Using his unparalleled intellect, Mr. Stack proceeded to explain the pains of being on UberEats and revealed that he longed for the days when The Stack was not on such a bewildering service. He then offered a FREE hungry man breakfast (oh boy!) If I picked up the missing order. Unfortunately, my circumstances didn't allow for such a journey. I was again utterly berated before I bid Mr. Stack a good day.

Very puzzling how Mr. Stack has a position in an industry where being personable and charismatic are championed traits.

Mr. Stack. You, sir, are a testament to the fact that even individuals with minimal skills can still be ok members of society.

I'm sure the food is great. But whoever was working the phones Saturday Mar 4th at noon.....sad

Update: Ordered breakfast at IHOP instead (something I was trying to avoid tbh. In order to support a local business). Food arrived as ordered. Sometimes consistency is...

My brother was down here from FL and we decided to get breakfast here. There was a wait, which we completely understand it being a Sunday, the host kept pressuring us to eat outside (40 degree weather) several times, and several times we said no - unfortunately we gave in and ate outside. Service was horrible, two tables after us had gotten their food before us, we had to ask the waitress several times for water. It took 40 minutes for us to get our food, my daughter ordered a chicken cutlet with no tomatoes only lettuce and she gets it completely plain. We told the server we asked the sandwich with lettuce, and with our breakfast platters we get toast - we didn’t get the toast and when we asked about it, it seemed like it was an issue. When we finally got the toast (still no lettuce) our food have gotten cold and my brother could no longer dip the toast on his cold sunny side up eggs and neither could we - overall a horrible experience for it being our first time!!!...