Bruen's Restaurant — Restaurant in Stanton

A cautionary tale... My partner and I were traveling through Kentucky and stopped for breakfast. The parking lot was small so we circled the area a few times and found an ideal spot. As we walked towards the door, a very nice older couple told us “It’s busy, but worth the wait”. We thanked them and noticed the vehicle was from Texas. We entered the restaurant and it was indeed busy, no open tables, so we waited. In about 3 minutes a party vacated a table and we sat down, the table held the remains of the previous guests so we waited for a busser. After about 10 minutes nobody came, so when the table behind me opened up I cleared our table moving the empty plates, etc to the table behind me and wiped it down myself, again, we waited. After about 10 more minutes of not being acknowledged my partner went to the counter to get menus. An employee shouted from across the room, “Someone will be with you shortly.” At that time a woman came and bussed the table behind me, never making eye contact and left. By this time the room had cleared out a bit and customers were coming in, sitting down and being served water and menus within seconds. Not us. The young mother of the family next to us looked my way and seemed to feel our frustration. Still, we waited. After the next table was seated and given menus I had enough. I laughed out loud and we got up and walked out. The young mother seemed to signal a recognition of our circumstance and appeared sympathetic. We were there for over 40 minutes without anyone visiting our table. We will never know if we were ignored because we are lesbians but it’s a fact that we were the only customers that morning who did not receive service. While I cannot rate the food, I can rate the service as very poor and atmosphere as cold. The only bright spot to the visit was the couple from Texas in the parking lot, they were lovely.

Just...

This feels like a worn-down American diner, definitely not as well known as the tourist spots like Miguel’s Pizza, but certainly not bad. If you’re craving a good burger, this place hits the spot.

There were a few things that disappointed me overall, but I wouldn’t be opposed to going back. First off, my plate was lacking fries. I don’t need much, but it really didn’t look like much of a side order (in my opinion). My husband’s order, however was overflowing, like they combined mine with his. The plates came at different times, not a huge difference in timing, and I ordered Mac and cheese without being given a fork. By the time I received one, I was about half way through my food. Again, a small peeve. The most unfortunate issue was that I found a hair in my food, which really threw me off. This is largely why I deducted two stars.

Service was fine, not exemplary… just decent. Everything needed just a little bit of salt, but the mac and cheese was creamy. I can see that being a big hit with children.

The things I did like were the small town vibe, the coziness, and the price. Honestly, it was an adorable meal. A single patty cheese burger with fries was 6.75. I’m happy with that.

Overall, this place didn’t wow me on this visit but I would go again.

Support local businesses and remember that everybody has...

We were really excited to try this out based on the reviews. The building has not been well maintained but we decided to look past this because the reviews say not to judge a book by the cover. The inside was in as rough condition as the outside. Our server was an older very sweet lady. She was helpful and happy to help. After ordering we were told there were no more biscuits to go with our biscuits and gravy unless we would like to wait 30 minutes. She offered us toast with our meal instead of the biscuits which we disappointedely accepted. We waited well over 40 minutes for our food which did not all come out at the same time for our group of 3. When our food came out the gravy was very runny and had a strong flour taste. 2 in the group ordered soft bacon, one came out almost raw. She did take it back to the kitchen to cook. I'm hoping we just caught them on a bad day... But we won't be going back...