Ugly Mug Diner — Restaurant in Salem

We are tourists traveling from another town and have a party of 6. The host took a deep breath and rolled his eyes when we told him the size of our party. We understood that maybe they’re stressed out. I get it I was a server before. We had coffee because our wait was initially an hour, ended up being 30, so they asked us to finish the coffee outside, understandable. We did not throw a fit we got rid of the coffees and came back in. We were seated at two separate tables 3 each and we were ok with that. A lady brought us waters and said our server would be with us shortly. We started to look at the menu and I just genuinely really didn't know what home fries were. I have never heard that before so I’m sorry for my ignorance. Now I know. Server took a minute to get to us, we were patient. We heard two servers walk by and complain about how one of them did not want to serve us. The other responded to her that it was “a right of passage.” I don’t know what they meant by that. Not sure if it’s because we are a party of 6, or if they were choosing to judge us by the way that we looked. Brushed it off because honestly we waited a while we’re just hungry at this point we’re not taking it personal. Server comes to us and is irritated, asks if we have questions and if we were ready to order. We said no and proceeded to order. I was the last to order at my table of 3 and I decided actually I do have a question. I asked what the difference between home fries and the home fries special was and she said “one is home fries and the other has all the stuff listed on the board.” Tried to explain to her that I didn’t know what home fries was and she proceeded to get upset with me. Again, I did not mean to be rude, offensive, or however she took it I just didn’t know. Where I’m from we don’t use the term home fries I was just confused. I regret not googling it tbh because it made the server upset. I realized it was upsetting her and decided to just be simple and order chicken and waffles. After I ordered the chicken and waffles she decided to passive aggressively explain to me the difference to which I started to get irritated because it felt belittling. I looked at her and said “I just want chicken and waffles” she said “you don’t need to have an attitude.” At this point I told her she was making me uncomfortable and asked for a new server. She storms off. New server comes and I decide to not even eat here anymore with the party because we can’t believe or understand where the attitude and frustration was coming from. I asked new server for a manager and let him know what happened just so he can be aware that she seems to be in a really bad mood and that it wasn’t cool for her to be acting like that and making all of us uncomfortable. We had been looking forward to eating at this place and it was a MAJOR buzzkill for the mood to be ruined like that. As we walked out the server walked past us and the manager and said “I don’t care, fire me” making a scene which was more strange that she decided to do that. We ended up going to Reds sandwich shop where Dennis served us and was so cool and gave us an a million times better experience. We made sure to tip him FAT because of how much he flipped our mood around. Super funny and friendly literally loved him. Don’t ruin your mood and come...

Cool decor, thats about it! We read reviews and seen alot of videos on tiktok so thought this place was going to be great for our vacation. When we entered we were asked how many our reply 3. The host then said 10 minute wait and that we had to wait outside( in 30° weather) although there was room to wait inside. 15 minutes later we got a text saying our table was ready. Our waitress was Kelly W. She was just awful-extremely rude from the very start! I ordered an apple cider mimosa (which was on the menu) she rudly responded "I need your ID" no please, or any kind of manners. Five minutes later she comes back and says that's a seasonal drink they don't have it. (Not mentioned as seasonal on the menu) I ordered a different mimosa which was served in a glass cup with ICE it was disgusting. Ordered the elvis waffle it tasted good but not worth 19$ just a single waffle with 5 banana slices and maybe one crumbled piece of bacon. My sister ordered scrambled eggs with cheese, the cheese was two slices put on top of the scrambled eggs not melted and was a $2 upcharge that Kelly didn't mention. My other sister ordered a western omelet the omelet was good, yet the home fries were COLD and disgusting. Kelly never came back to check on us, as she was spending time at another table(I would assume were her friends based on their conversation). When she finally came back she placed the check on the table. I then had to wave her back over to tell her I wanted a coffee to go and the check needed to be split 3 ways. She got rude again and said we never told her that, although she never asked how the check was to be paid. We were really excited as tourist to try this place and it was horrible from the moment we first walked in. TOURIST BEWARE! NOT WORTH THE MONEY...

I thought this was one of those restaurants where the staff is supposed to be mean to you, that’s how bad the service was. Told us it was an hour wait so we went to the coffee shop down the street. 20 mins later our table was ready and we walked in with our coffee cups, which we were rudely and promptly told we could not have. We tried chugging our coffees & 2 mins later they told us if we don’t sit down our table would be given up. We had to have one person from our group sit down while we finished the drinks, and still they pestered her asking 3x when we will be sitting and threatening that they will remove us from the table.

Once we sat, one of the water cups sitting on the table was half full (looks like someone else drank out of it). We politely asked the waitress if we could get a fresh water cup and she quickly became argumentative, telling us “well the server probably just filled it halfway”. I work in the foodservice industry and would never argue with a customer over WATER. How hard is it to grab a new cup and refill.

Food was not worth the harassment from the servers. Mimosas were served in a beer glass with ice, weird.

Lastly, when we were waiting in line for the bathroom another waitress came by to tell everyone “move forward towards the wall”. Everyone took a few steps forward and she condescendingly said “Do you all speak English?! I said MOVE TOWARDS THE WALL”

Really weird experience. Our server was the one with the bright orange hair, and the one telling us to move towards the wall was the tall skinny one with half shaved head & chest tattoo.

Ridiculous we pay that much money to be treated so...