Ocala Downtown Diner — Restaurant in Ocala

Today was unfortunately a very disappointing experience for my mother and myself. I work in the hospitality industry and very rarely am I able to sneak away to have lunch with my mother who also works crazy hours. But today we figured we'd try out the diner, I'm usually lucky and get Erin for my server who has not once given my family bad service, but that luck ran out today, from start to finish our server was so bad I've easily forgotten her name because she in 20 minutes has made me not want to go back. We both ordered burgers, hers was the blue cheese burger cooked medium mine was mushroom swiss cooked medium rare. My burger came out first had maybe 2 mushrooms on it tops!! And was well done. Being from the restaurant buisness I didn't get bothered by it to much and just dealt with it, on the other hand my moms burger came out a couple minutes after mine with just American cheese which is not what she order so the girl took the burger to the kitchen and a minute later came back out with what she said was another burger which i will tell you was a complete lie, I know what it looks like when you put a dome over a burger patty on the flat top and squirt water into it to melt off the cheese instead of cooking a fresh one, slapped two cold slices of Swiss cheese on it and brought it back out, I looked at it and visibly can see the Swiss cheese so we both expressed to the server it was still not the right cheese,but she reassured us it was and we disagreed so she then argued loudly with my mother that she was wrong and that it was the right cheese so my mother just threw her hands up and said ok you win which disgusts me!!! Then right after the rude un educated server was addressed by the other server that she was in fact wrong and we were right that the burger doesn't usually come with Swiss, It usually gets a sliced blue cheese and that they were out, so hearing this I expected her to turn an apologize to my mother for being unprofessional and rude, but instead shrugged her shoulder and said well I didn't know that. I'm so disappointed in this whole ordeal like I said I didn't remember her name out of pure disappointment but I will say IF I ever go again and the brown haired rude waitress with the cross tattooed on her left fore arm is working I'll do myself the favor...

We visited Ocala Downtown Diner on a weekend, late summer 2023. This is an eatery that is open for breakfast and lunch. They are open everyday and close at 3pm most days except Sunday, where they close at 2pm. They were pretty busy when n we visited, but not overly busy. There were tables available. We were promptly seated with menus. There were two menus. One for traditional folks. One for vegan followers. I didn't look close at it, but the vegan menu looked to have a fairly good amount of choices. So I'm guessing that this might be a good place for these folks to get a meal. The traditional menu wasn't huge, but adequate. We ordered our meals, which came out fairly quickly. I will say that everything we had was quite good. I asked the folks at the next table, and they said their meals were also good. They looked good, that's why I asked. The diner seemed reasonable clean, but they do allow dogs. There was a customer who brought in a well behaved dog, while we were there. He was very respectful as well and posed no issues that I could see. Some folks may not care for animals while eating. But it wasn't an issue for us. Especially when the customer(who was nice) and his dog were respectful to others. They had individual male/female restrooms, which also seemed clean. All in all, the Downtown Diner, is smaller and a little tight. But not to the point of folks feeling uncomfortable. It does make it easy to speak with the tables...

2023Edit: I've gone to this diner for many years now and it was one of my favorite spots. The last 6 months or so something has noticeably changed and I feel the quality of the service and food is now unacceptable. I used to always be treated kindly and professionally but since some of the old staff have left and been replaced by newer people, that professionalism has left as well. Extremely disappointing and sad. I won't be disrespected and treated rudely when I can just as easily go somewhere else, which is what I'll be doing. After seeing some of the owners responses to other reviews I'm shocked by the toxic sarcastic and dismissive responses. I hope the remaining good staff find a better place to work. Seems like the S curve will probably be vacant again soon.

Great food and staff. The vegan and gluten free options are fantastic. Only wish they were open for dinner as well!

2020Edit: After a few years now I still only have good things to say about the Downtown Diner! The staff are always welcoming and accommodating and the food is on point. This has become one of my favorite spots in town and I go here regularly now. If I had to recommend only one place in Ocala for great food and hometown friendliness it...