Phoenicia Diner — Restaurant in Town of Shandaken

My husband and I have been here multiple times as we frequently hike in the Catskills. Sadly, the last two experiences ensured we will never return.

I’ll start with saying that I understand this is a busy location but that was never the issue. The behavior experienced from the staff was the concern.

The worst instance was with a waitress, who I will not mention by name. She came up to our table, skipping the pleasantries, never introducing herself and just saying “hi”. We had been waiting for a while so we said we were ready to order. She said she wasn’t, and just said she’d be taking drink orders. When she came back to take our food order, we very clearly stated “3 pancakes”. When our order came out with 5, we intended to tell her of the mistake, which really was no problem as we weren’t going to eat them and asked to not be charged for them. She never came back to check on us until she gave us our check. The issue wasn’t the mistake in the order but her behavior rather. She became immediately defensive, telling us we said 5 and she wasn’t “going to argue with us”.

The last time we were there, we had a different waitress. We didn’t expect she was our waitress because she kept taking orders from 3 different groups of people that were sat after us. When we asked another staff who our waitress was, she said the waitress would be right over. We expressed our concern because people were eating who had been sat after us and we hadn’t even had our drink order taken yet. The staff member told us “everyone came in at the same time”, which was a little frustrating because it wasn’t true. Finally, our waitress came over to tell us she’d be right with us and then turned her back to us and took the food order of a group that had come in 3 people after us, before ever asking us if we’d like coffee.

These experiences left us disappointed in the service. I won’t mention the waitresses by name that we had poor experiences with, but I will say, we had Karen one morning and she was lovely. Hopefully, she can rub off some of her kind energy onto the...

I had been here a few times a few years ago and I remembered loving the place, but on my most recent visit, not so much. It was very crowded and very loud, so maybe we just came on a super busy day. It wasn't as clean as I remember it being in the past, both of my glasses were dirty and I just felt like the glassware really needed a deep clean. We went for lunch and were there for almost two hours, mostly waiting for our order to be taken and for the bill to arrive. It may have just been a really busy day but I was a bit disappointed compared to my previous experiences a few years ago. The server told us to split the bill with the cashier but the cashier was kind of spacing out and messed up the split. Although she apologized profusely, it was just another little inconvenience and we left it because we needed to get out of there. I gave 5 stars for food though, because the food is fresh and tastes great, they have great serving sizes, and there are great unique menu options, not just typical diner fare. The atmosphere is that of a diner but the food is restaurant quality, in my opinion.

Update - Revisit 02/24/24 We decided to give it another shot after my last visit left me feeling a little ehhhh. The cleanliness definitely wasn't an issue this time, glasses and silverware were both very clean, I think last time was just an off day. We did not get stuck there for an extra long amount of time, and our server and the check out staff were both excellent and personable. The place was definitely just as loud as last time though, where it was actually quite comical that we felt we were yelling to hear each other over the crowd and the very loud music. Music was good though. Food was also still sooo good. I edited to a 5 star rating for service and I still stand by my 5 star rating for food. New...

My husband and I placed an online order for 2 orders of pancakes and the egg turkey sausage and potato platter. We were so excited to have found this diner because it had great reviews and was only 25 minutes away from where we were staying. When we picked up our food and proceeded to open the boxes all of our food was burnt. I would understand if 1 or 2 out of the 8 pancakes were a little burnt but how do you serve someone 8 burnt pancakes and look at how burnt the turkey sausage they gave us was. Something like this doesn't happen on accident. This felt like someone intentionally filled our boxes with burnt food. When I went inside to show the manager or whoever was at the front when I walked in they literally had nothing to say as to why something like this could have happened all she said was sorry and even that didn't feel like she actually cared. She gave me a full refund and I expected nothing less for being served food like that as if we didn't pay good money for it just like anyone else who ordered from there. There were 5 other bags waiting to be picked up next to ours when we picked our food up. We were in their parking lot for over 30 minutes after receiving our food and none of the other people who came after us to get their mobile orders came back to the diner after they got their food because there was obviously NOTHING wrong with their orders but somehow our bag with our food in it was the only one who received food like this. I'm still upset about it and will not be back and will not recommend this diner to anyone. I hope whoever sees my review will think twice before coming to this diner because this is the kind of food they...