Rick's On 5 — Restaurant in Wallingford

Went to ricks the other morning for the first time. When you go in, it’s quaint and quiet. Visually there’s some things that can be improved to the establishment like the brown water stains on the drop ceiling etc… otherwise the layout is decent. Our waitress was friendly and quick. We ordered the waffle, eggs, home fries, bacon, and toast. Here is my honest review: the waffle was sub par. It was not fully cooked inside and the butter they serve is not quality more of a bland Margarine. The eggs were your typical diner style along with the bacon and toast. However, the toast would’ve been good with a good butter not that cheap restaurant depot brand. The problem I have is with the home fries. Now home fries are generally prepped 1-2 days ahead and they heat and go them per order. The home fries were not cubed, not sliced, not shredded… , kind of a mash up of a really bad hack job. It’s not pretty to look at. Usually home fries are par boiled, seasoned with onion powder salt pepper and a dash of paprika then thrown on the flat top to get that golden outer crisp & soft warm potato inside. This was not the case. These potatoes were drenched in paprika to the point where 1 that’s all you taste, and 2 so much so it turns your plate orange. You literally cannot taste potato & forget bothering to dip in ketchup because again it’s all paprika. More is not always more. Also the plates they serve the food on are massive. I mean unnecessarily large. Which ya know what, probably easier for the waitstaff to serve that way… but I’d rather get a smaller sized plate with actual...

Place is very clean, organized and cozy. Server was friendly and courteous.

I ordered a chicken soup with rice, and a breakfast burrito. My mother ordered a regular bacon, egg and homefries with toast. Burrito was decent, nothing special about it in particular. Same with regular breakfast. We both ordered orange juice with our meals.

Soup was warm, but was definitely not chicken. Redish brown broth, vegetables and seemed the dark meat cubes tasted saltier and more like beef chunks.

I mentioned this to the server and she said she could take it off the bill if i didn't want it. That their chicken soup was "different". I still wanted a warm broth as part of my meal, so I said thank you and that it was fine.

Overall bill came to about 30ish.

Overall better prices and better staff than Colony diner down the road, but wouldn't go out of my way to eat breakfast here. More competitively priced breakfast with better seasoning, ingredients and...

One of the worst breakfast experiences I’ve had. First off, it took at least 15 mins before anyone came to take our drinks. My partner and I both got the overstuffed omelettes. I got the veggie omelette. All the food came out cold and took forever. The omelette was big, but looked like the only cheese was a Kraft singles slice ripped in half and thrown on top. Wasn’t even melted. Took my first bite and it was awful. It was as if the egg was wrapped around a microwaved frozen bags worth of veggies, including all the liquid that results from steaming. Disgusting amount of veggies and they definitely were not cooked into the egg portion of the omelette. I’ve never seen anyone, even a child, make such a horrendous excuse of an omelette. Everything else absolutely sucked and service continued to be slow and inattentive. Maybe this was a one off experience, but we will never be returning...