Perkins American Food Co. — Restaurant in Spearfish

Now, hopefully we all understand that this is Perkins, not any kind of fine dining establishment. Hopefully anyone heading into a Perkins understands that the food is going to be generic, the service isn't going to be the greatest, and there is no atmosphere to speak of. These things are just in the nature of what a Perkins is, and to dock points because of any shortcomings in these areas would be unfair. What a person should expect is to gorge themselves on large portions of inexpensive comfort foods in true American fashion. The food should be warm or cold when it is supposed to be. A bill should be placed in the table as soon as the waitress is certain she cannot sell you anything else, so that she can move on to her other tables, of which she will have many. Before that, she should check in often to ensure that she has no further opportunity to sell you anything else, so that you leave feeling twenty pounds heavier, oddly satisfied, and definitely very American. So with those things understood, I can begin my review. I turned up post dinner rush with two kids in tow. Our wait staff did not appear to be overly busy or frazzled. We ordered our drinks and respective versions of protein, grease, and salt, and we received those items as described. My son commented approvingly about the size of his burger and I gave him some helpful maternal advice as to how to fit the thing into his face. Very good. This is where it stopped, however. Our waitress did sneak by at one point to slide a ticket on to our table and was gone again before anything could be asked of her. No drink refills, no side of ranch dressing, no inquiry whether we needed to take an entire pie home with us. Nothing. She ghosted us. The second part of the review regards my country fried steak and eggs. First off, at an establishment such as Perkins, the steak should come with so much gravy on it that you cannot see the steak, or taste whether the steak is any good or not. This steak did not. There were some gravy molecules sprinkled about on top, but I did have to masticate my way through this piece of dry gristle mostly unaided. Secondly. I order my eggs over medium. I do this, because all I require is that the cook pay attention during the one minute in between the time it takes for a runny yolk to turn into a fully hard yolk. He shouldn't have to pay attention the rest of the time, because this is Perkins, and it's all just going to get covered in gravy anyway. Alas, I received true over easy eggs. If he would have waited thirty seconds longer, we would have a very different review here, because places almost never hand me over medium eggs successfully. In the end, we all did leave feeling full and patriotic, none of us received food poisoning, and we returned home and fell into a deep food coma sleep. On principle, I do have to dock points for the lack of standard wait service, and definitely for the...

We visited Perkins early and were greeted right away. Our server/waitress/hostess/awesomeness was named Bobi. She was pleasant and friendly and always wore a smile. That smile that is very infectious and makes you want to smile along with her. The food was perfectly prepared and the serving size was generous. I'm still in awe that they had my exact International Delight Hershey's Chocolate/Carmel creamer! Apparently their manager is a coffee creamer freak just like me and has it constantly in stock along with other delicious flavors. We were on a hunting trip and staying close by so we ended up coming back to this Perkins for three days in a row not because we had to but because of the way they treated us. Two of those days we had Bobi serving us and the last was also a pleasant young lady who was new to Perkins but was well on her way to becoming a rock star! Love this restaurant. Why go anywhere else!! As if all of this wasn't enough. The manager came out and chatted with us, checked on our progress of the hunt and just generally was a nice guy with good conversation. These little things that he did makes a huge difference in whether customers come back and he knocked it out of the park. Nice job!!! We will be visiting Spearfish again in a few months. You can bet I'll be eating at this Perkins...

Out of towner review: At first sight, I wasn’t sure if this place was a mirage or I found a time machine to go back and visit the past. My wife and I grew up seeing so many Perkins restaurants in Florida, so when we visited the area and saw one off the highway, we decided to stop in with a bunch of our friends. I had ordered steak and eggs with well done potatoes and a side of French toast. The steak was actually pretty good, nicely cooked. The French toast, however, was terrible. It was undercooked and I didn’t end up eating it.

My wife ordered some eggs with sautéed vegetables and found what seemed to be paper or cardboard pieces in it. It was really gross, not to mention the veggies were wet. The waitress was very sorry and refunded us for the meal, but it wasn’t a great start to our day. Our friends ordered the smaller, which they seemed to like, but also had a side of blintzes that were very sweet and didn’t look like the item shown in the menu.

Overall, what seemed like what wound be a fun and delicious visit to Perkins ended up being a rather disappointing meal. The restaurant was packed so maybe this was a rare occurrence, but we don’t plan to go back to Perkins...