Pinocchio In the Desert — Restaurant in Palm Springs

Love love the food here. It's what keeps me coming back. This trip was to celebrate my cousin 39 Birthday🎉🎈🎁🎂. ☝🏾New changes that impact business and diners. Each table gets 90 minutes from seat to time to go. We had an 11 person party but was there around 10:45 and they wanted to split us up or make us wait we waited. And waited. 12:15 we finally get seated. Seen people/tables come dine have time to go shop amd come back to tables before left. 👀 We still got seated on the out side near the street after waiting 2 hours in Palm Springs summer heat. 🤔 We were seated at 3 two persons tables so it wasnt enough room, knowing our party size. Some of our party just left at this point. 🤷🏾 Not trying to make a big deal to dine, but the dismiss was blunt. Then we're enjoying cocktails🥂 while they put together an inside table cause we still hot, 🍾, and some if us still standing. 👀 Restaurant is nearing close time, the crowd has minimized and we are still on street heat. 👀 We were sweating through our clothes, embarrassed to stand up whole body wet. 💦 We asked for misters to be turned on. Only after the third time asking were we obliged.💦 Guess what misters didn't even reach the street tables set. As if it wasn't bad enough that the table space was reduced by umbrellas to keep shaded 👞. We expressed several times that we would like to be moved. They said they would but they brought cocktails, took our orders and delivered food. Not my best dining experience here by far, but like I said the food is good.💛 Next time I think I'll just order to go. If it wasn't for my cousin bday and being a DD🍾 for the party🍾, I would've left. I ❤ this place. But this was my honest experience🤞🏾. We finally got another 2 person table added so we can all be seated 😀, but the dismiss 🛑 had already been done. I'm a local. I bring my family here year around. I used to dine here before it was the hit brunch location, I'll dine here after. As a matter of fact I used to work at the Zoso ❤ hotel and got my staff hooked ❤ and guest alike❤. To the point where they would deliver GC to us to come enjoy on our time for recommending them. It was a trend 💛. I miss their old crew that knew us by name/face. Seriously though, eats is always good. We tried to make the best of it. Good luck getting a seat diners. I'm going back to pick-ups. Where I can eat in the comforts of...

Good thing it’s called Pinocchio’s, because this whole restaurant is a lie.

I want to preface that the service was not at at all the issue, as our waiter was friendly and very tentative. Our issue was the whole concept of Pinocchio and of course the food quality. I usually don’t knit pick a location’s aesthetic vs. the name, but it just makes no sense. The menu is branded with Pinnochio, but there is nothing actually design wise that relates, plus the consistency of food options doesn’t make sense. There’s burgers and breakfast and Mexican food and Chinese options, meanwhile there is country music playing. Point being, there really is no theme that the place sticks to (called Pinnochios, nothing music, design, or food related in any way).

Now, the main concern being the food. I guess I just don’t understand the current +4 the place has considering the poor food quality. My wife ordered the freshly squeezed orange juice, it was most definitely Tropicana (nothing wrong with liking that brand, it’s a matter of transparency being the issue, and that it was $4.50). She ordered biscuits and gravy, I ordered a ham and cheese omelet with breakfast potatoes on the side. Our friend also ordered the biscuits and gravy. It should have been an indicator of poor quality since the food almost within minutes came out to us after ordering. The biscuits were fragile store bought ones that crumbled when grabbed, and also were not warm (definitely frozen prior). The gravy was also just awful in taste and texture. The omelet was runny and watery with little flavor to it, and the side potatoes were fairly raw.

Fortunately everything was cheap in cost, but understandable why. Its confirmed majority of the product is prepackaged junk as you walk towards the restrooms and see the bulk stock of prepackaged supplies (instant supplies). By the way, the bathroom locks did not work, so be careful when using those.

This place was bad enough to compel us to write this review, so please urging others to disregard the 4.2 rating it currently has…it is far worse and unworthy of...

By far the rudest restaurant we have ever been to and that is saying a lot since we are pretty easy going people. We arrived yesterday to meet our friend standing in the back of the restaurant at 8:45am and were seated. Our server came to us immediately and was pleasant. One of our orders was wrong but fixed it with a 10 minute delay. Food was ok but nothing special. Our check was delivered and we paid around 9:50am. Shortly after the bus boy abruptly grabbed our water glasses off the table and literally took it out of my husband's hand. He told him he wasn't done with his water and grabbed it back however the rest of us didn't get what just happened and glasses were gone. I asked our waitress to give us our water glasses back and some water and she said that there was a 90 minute table rule and that we could go sit at the bar and ask for water there and she was sorry. HUH? We basically ignored her request because we still had roughtly 20 minutes according to this "policy" but she told us she was sorry as she couldn't bring the water back. The bus boy came by AGAIN and no kidding...grabbed by husbands water glass off the table and my husband grabbed it back out of his hand again! Another employee came to the table and we told him we still had more time at our table and I quote his comment was "we clocked you and you are at 102 minutes so you need to go to the bar if you want to stay". This was absolutely not true regarding the timing, looking at the time on our receipt was also proof and we still had 10 minutes left since we arrived. Seriously, they were timing us and brought it to out attention in this manner? I can't believe after spending $76- on our breakfast common sense wouldn't treat people like this. Timing your customers, treating us like we are doing Pinocchio's a favor by spending our money there and the lack of communication about the policy we can't believe this place is still in business. We left upset and will spread the word on the lack of value this restaurant has on its customers and our...