Mel's Diner — Restaurant in West Hollywood

This Mel's Diner is right in the Universal Park. It has a 1950's retro Americano diner theme, not really sure if it is connected to the Original Mel's Diner. But would make sense since Universal Studios distributed the movie American Graffiti which featured a Mel's Drive In.

To order, you place and pay with the cashier or via mobile to pickup your food at the counter. They call out order numbers, and ask to see your recipe for pickup.

My fried chicken order took 30 minutes. The person right in front of me ordered the exact same dish. His order had no wait time, he got it within minutes. As I waited for my number to be called out, I stood by the pickup counter watching life. There was a young woman that asked about her order. She did not wait as long as me. I saw her order her food after me. The young man handing out the orders gave her a $12 milkshake for free for her "wait". He didn't ask, he just gave her one. He was very apologetic. But for me, he only offered a free fountain drink which one already came with the meal. I asked for a bottled water instead which he provided. But no milkshake for me.

The fried chicken was served in a retro aluminum tv dinner tray. I was told the trays are not reused but were recycled. Not sure what if that was accurate info, sure hope so. Anyways, the pieces were a wing and a breast served with a , scoop of mashed potatoes n gravy, peas n carrots, and a frosted brownie. The chicken was ok. It was not bad tasting nor great either. Same with everything else. The brownie was chock full of HFCS. If they were aiming for a tv dinner taste and flavor,...

This restaurant was the most terrible restaurant ever in my life. If you are reading this, feel lucky that you found out this review. It would save your life. This is an 100% real review of what we experienced.

The service was horrible. When we were ordering, I literally was shocked about the cashier's attitude. But after, I realized that was just a bit. When we were waiting for the food, we saw the chef making the food. But he was literally like the sloth in zootopia! We were actually so mad. After 20 minutes, we asked them about how many minutes do we need to wait more. They said they are still making the food and there are 3 teams in front of us. We were kind of mad about that because we waited for so many minutes. When it has been 30 minutes, our food finally came out. We ordered 3 hamburgers and 1 hotdog, but they only gave us 3 hamburgers. So we asked them where is 1 hotdog. Cashiers asked to the chef and they said that they were out of hotdog. And we are finally so mad and frustrated. We said “Then, give me other burger or something. We have waited for 30 minutes and you are not giving the food.” We said to give other burger since they didn’t gave us the hotdog. Then, the cashier said “It would have need better to say ‘Please’.” You would have noticed about how we were so mad about this restaurant.

The food was so bad too. The burger’s patty was black at the outside part and it was uncooked in the inside part. Also, the onion ring was to soggy and greasy. The only best thing...

This is literally the ONLY one-star review I have written on Google so far. Mel's Diner was horrible in every way and I have no idea why Universal doesn't replace it with something new because they overall have incredibly great dining options.

I was the third person in line the day I was there and ordered a hot dog but didn't get told that they didn't have any until 10-15 minutes later, forcing me to choose a burger instead that I really didn't want in the first place.

It was the kind of burger you would get in the early-2000's at a middle school cafeteria. It was burned, dry, tasted awful and had absolutely no flavor to speak of. Heck, even the cheese tasted fake to be honest and wasn't even melted. I wouldn't have paid fifty cents for that meal, much less what it actually cost.

I am a passholder and come to Universal at least a couple times a year and this is by far the worst experience I have ever had...