River Edge Diner — Restaurant in River Edge

Horrible. Friday 12/23 I visited my friend. She wanted to take me out to eat for the holidays. I was skeptical, as I am immunocompromised and haven’t eaten in a restaurant since before the pandemic. She suggested this diner we had gone to many years ago which we both really liked. Since it was very early evening she told me it would not be crowded. When we arrived she was correct, the restaurant was not at all busy. I went inside wearing my mask. A man asked if there were just two of us and seated us in a very small area with booths very close to each other. Although many booths were open he seated us directly across from a booth with three other people. I noticed that the very spacious dining area on the other side of the restaurant had customers sitting there and eating. I asked the girl at the counter if it was ok if we sat there. She smiled and said “sure!”. We seated ourselves there. I felt much more comfortable, We were at least 20 feet away from other patrons. Plus we now had room to put store purses and layers of clothing on this absolutely frigid day. The man who had seated us in the booth stomped over to us and demanded to know why we had moved. My friend explained that I was nervous. He replied “about what?!?”. Not wanting to tell this stranger about my health issues, I pointed to my mask. He rolled his eyes and said “more customers will be coming soon”. I felt really embarrassed. I couldn’t believe he was so angry that he felt he had to question us. About 15 minutes later, the next set of customers came. In this large, almost empty restaurant he sat them right near us. What a spiteful human. I asked our truly lovely waitress who the bearded man was and she advised me it was one of the managers. Wow! Is that really how a manager treats customers at Christmas time?? I’d like to say the food was good, but it wasn’t. My burger was thin, red, mushy and contained nothing but a bun and burger. No condiments, no lettuce, no tomato and no onion. When I inquired why I was told “they don’t do that anymore”. I would have needed to ask for it, and it would have cost extra! My fries were a small cup filled with mostly paper and a few fries. Luckily they tasted ok. My friend and I were not offered and refills on our beverages. I tried several times to wave down the other waitress who brought the food, but simply could not get her attention. This place was really good years ago. Since the new owners took over it’s become awful. The only saving grace is the adorable older waitress they kept. She is very sweet, friendly and always has fashionable hair colors. If you’ve been there, you know her. Overall, NEVER again. Rude...

PLEASE READ: AWFUL CUSTOMER SERVICE!! Visited the diner today and had a pretty awful experience. There were 7 of us total (6 adults and 1 child). We were seated immediately and the waitress was quick to come over and take our drink orders. The drinks and food took a little while, but it happens as we had a rather large table. When our food came out there was a long HAIR in one dish and another dish had the incorrect side (homefries instead of fries). We had told the waitress and asked for the plate with the hair to be taken back and for the side of fries like we had ordered. She apologized and took the plate to the kitchen and came back out with French fries and an empty large white plate. She then said she had to remove the homefries from the plate and asked us to scrape them onto the empty dish. Never in my life have I seen this happen at a restaurant (plates are returned to the kitchen or kept on the table and the correct item is brought out). We were pretty thrown and asked to speak to the manager. The manager apologized because he knew he had to , but then proceeded to try and make the table feel bad that the waitress was upset and didn’t know to not ask a customer to give back food in that manner. We asked him to just take the plate and bring back the correct order if that’s what they needed to do. The manager was rude and almost blaming us for having the wrong order and hair in our food. At this point the dish that had the hair in it was no where to be found and the waitress asked if we wanted another one about 15 minutes after all of the other plates had come out. We said we did want another plate, as one person still hadn’t eaten because of the hair. The plate took about another 10 minutes to come out. Everyone ate (we are there for over an hour and a half at this point) and then we got the bill to pay. My husband spoke to the manager and noted he was surprised he didn’t adjusted the bill and that the service has changed and seemed to go downhill since the remodel. This triggered the manger to call my family rude and literally physically LUNGE at my husband. There was almost a fist fight at the diner because the manager couldn’t control his emotions and take criticism....

I went with my son, daughter, and granddaughter here for breakfast today. The place was pretty packed, but we got a table for 4 promptly. I can't say enough about how great this place is except as we approached the table there was a squashed large cherry tomato right under the side of my seat that had already been stepped on and juice and tomato guts smeered on the floor right by my foot and smeered into the walk way. Everyone, including the waiter, saw it but did nothing about it.

My son even got it under his shoe from moving his foot around. No one addressed it. I know we don't eat on the floor and waiters take care of food orders, and not charged with cleaning the floors but come on. It was squished and dragged along the floor with its pits, jucies, and guts all over the floor and continued under our feet.

YES, I SHOULD HAVE said something, but it was so obvious i had faith that someone would be on it and address it soon. It was very out and exposed.

But everyone continued to work around it the whole meal.

But my service was great, the food was great and I'd go back again. But team.....even if it isn't your job to clean it up, tell someone. Don't make me be the one to make you address a mess that you can't possibly miss with your eyes that is all over the floor.

Be proactive at your job. Take the blinders off. I still tipped the waiter 20% cause he did do a fine job outside of the...