Village Inn — Restaurant in Saint Petersburg

Been coming here on and off for some time now! I've always asked for Sarah as she is a top rate waitress! I couldn't believe it when last week I overheard her boss tell her " You're fired! Get out my store!" I wouldn't think that this would be done publicly in the guest view. Anyway, what I gathered from what I could hear is that her boss was upset that Sarah was responding honestly to a guest about this new 18% surcharge that the Village Inn is now tacking onto your bill. She said basically she was getting a pay cut because she typically gets more than this because she provides great service. She had also informed this guest that she would be going to work at the IHOP on Park Blvd because she couldn't afford a pay cut. Now if you know anything about tipped wages, what this surcharge is for is to make up the difference between what the waitress earns from the company $8.98/hr. and the minimum wage of $12.98/hr. If a server's tips do not equal that of the difference, the employer must compensate the difference. So basically, the customer is now paying that difference for Village Inn when paying the surcharge. While it may be frowned upon by corporate to discuss financial situations like this with a guest or even telling them where your next employment will be, it is very unprofessional for an employee to be reprimanded/dismissed in front of guests.

While the food was okay ( I eat a simple poached egg, bacon and toast, hard to mess up and even harder to make outstanding lol), the atmosphere is adequate for an older restaurant that needs an update, the only reason I truly came to this location was Sarah for her outstanding, great service! Here...

This is a restaurant where we've been dinning since 1993 and will continue till we either move or they close down. The staff is top notch and the food is excellent. Since we've been going we've only had 3 issues with the food. Not complaining about it though. No one is perfect and they get their bad days like expected. The one real bad time we've had and we weren't going to complain, but the manager was making her rounds and we just brought it to her attention. We were not looking for any free hand outs and she gave us half off our check as we didn't hardly touch our dinner. That was the only time we had said anything. The staff is the friendliest and the restaurant is always clean. The bathrooms I never have any problems with them either. I do recommend Elizabeth for a server. She is the best we've ever had. She is very sweet and attentive. I never had to ask for anything as she was always right there making sure we had what we needed. I will be requesting her in other visits. The managers are the best too. If your not satisfied they will see to it you are. The location isn't hard to get in or out of either. Plenty of parking and they have a covered outdoor patio. Make sure you dress warmly if you get cold easily as it's usually pretty chilly inside. I highly recommend...

Where to begin. Food was just awful. First of all I ordered the roast beef dinner, yuk! They tried to pawn off beef tips disguised as roast beef and the "fresh" broccoli was mushy. My husband first ordered the chicken and artichoke dinner but they were out of grilled chicken, WHAT??? How can a restaurant not have chicken? So he then decided to order the pot pie which supposedly came with salad or soup. He chose salad. The server came out and said, "Don't get mad, I am just a server, but they don't have any salad made up and they will have to make it so you can't have it before your meal as requested." My husband then cancelled that order and ordered the turkey dinner. Oops, they are out of the turkey. AGAIN? OUT OF CHICKEN and TURKEY??? So my husband orders the meatloaf dinner. MISTAKE. The meat loaf looked like a pile of mashed up bread with some meat in it and the green beans looked like they had been sitting on a steam table for hours. Awful.. We didn't touch our food except for the one gross bite. We walked out and told them no way were we going to pay for this crap. We tried this restaurant before and was not impressed with the mediocre food, high prices, and slow service, but we were willing to give it one more go. We will not make that...