The Beacon Restaurant — Restaurant in Wichita

The Beacon was just okay, in my opinion. We walked in and found a small yellow legal pad to sign in with our party size. There was little space to wait, so I felt like my family and I were constantly in the way of waitresses, patrons coming in, and patrons trying to pay and leave. The wait was less than 15 minutes, which was part of what brought us here this morning in the first place (the restaurant we planned to go to had a 45 minute wait which wasnt going to work with a 4 and 6 year old). When we were seated we realized just how close together all the tables were. I could smell the perfume of a woman at the next table over and my husband could hear people at another table next to us discussing bowel movements. Our waitress came quickly and got our drink orders. However, because the place was so noisy or because she didn't right the orders down, she didn't hear my husband say water and was going to bring him ice tea. He corrected her, but by the time our drinks came I got iced tea instead of the coffee and water I had originally ordered. When I explained I had ordered coffee and water she took the iced tea back to the kitchen and sat it next to the iced tea dispenser, I could see into the drink area of the kitchen from my seat. I heard her tell another waitress that the iced tea was good and it sat there on the counter the rest of our visit waiting for someone to order it. It took about 10 more minutes before my coffee and water came. My husband noticed a piece of food stuck to the outside of his cup. As it was on the outside and not the inside, he brushed it off and we didn't make a fuss or ask for another one. I don't know if there was a kids menu or not. We weren't given any. When we daughter ordered a cinnamon roll, we were told they were out. That's when our waitress informed us about Mickey pancakes, which my daughter agreed on. I didn't know how much it would cost, as it wasn't on any sort of menu, but I didn't figure it would be too bad. While we waited for our food my husband and I noticed the look of the inside of the restaurant. It looked like something built in the 80's that had never been updated. The fans were old smoker fans used to filter the smell of cigarette smoke out of the room. Obviously, people can no longer smoke in Wichita restaurants, so these must be left over from when they could. Some of the ceiling tiles were falling and showing age. It just looked very dated. When I turned my attention to the floor I noticed there was dropped food on the floor from previous guests. I assume it would be hard to get under tables and clean well with the restaurant so full and crowded. There were 2 lines of tables in the middle of the seating area with booths wrapping around the edges of the entire room. Walking space was hard to come by. I kept worrying that my daughter's chair was going to be pushed back to far and she'd trip someone or that someone would trip carrying plates behind me and dump them all over the floor. Our food finally came and it tasted good. It was your standard diner foods. I thought the hashbrowns really shined! They were crunchy and delicious. I'm very glad I ordered them! My eggs were not quite to over medium like I ordered, they were slightly on the easy side, but not enough to cause a fuss. Once I seasoned both the hashbrowns and the eggs, they were very good. My husband liked his hashbrowns and English muffin. My daughter ate all of her Mickey pancake and bacon. My son could only handle about half of his waffle, but he ate all of his sausage patties and liked them very much. My coffee was standard diner coffee and nothing much to write home about. The prices of our meals were very reasonable. I was was quite pleased with the prices of everything. Overall, our experience was fine. The food and atmosphere is what you'd expect to see from a diner anywhere across the country. I think there are a lot of Wichita restaurants that have a lot to offer and offer unique items. I didn't think The Beacon was really anything...

This is not my first visit to the Beacon. All of my other visits have been during the week, and my experience has been much better.

This visit was on a busy Saturday morning at 11am, so perhaps that might put things in context for some, and maybe for the restaurant management.

The Beacon is a typical local diner with great prices, portions and selection. On all of my previous visits, the food was exactly as expected, and I believe I've left positive reviews on prior visits. Always for breakfast and usually with friends, we all enjoyed our meals, to include special requests (crispy bacon, hash browns well done, etc.)

Generally, if my experience is subpar, I just don't leave a review. My philosophy is, it just wasn't for me, and I really don't like leaving negativity online, bad karma and all....

On this visit I ordered pancakes with strawberries, two over medium eggs, and coffee.

Specifically, my experience today was ruined by the chef, let me explain.

A few bites into my pancakes I noticed that the strawberry sauce that covered the top was refrigerator cold. Sad, but not a show stopper as I had hoped that the hot pancakes would somewhat warm the strawberries and sauce.

It took about 35 minutes for my meal to be served, but again, not complaining about the time it took because it was a busy Saturday. Anyway, the strawberries never warmed up which was unpleasant, but as I dug into the pancakes I started to see what looked like melted butter, until I realized that it was raw pancake batter. 75 percent of the pancake was completely raw.

Okay, an oversight due to being slammed. Got it, not a big deal.

The waitress was lovely, apologetic, and quick to return to the kitchen and try and get things back on track. You'll note I rate the service as excellent.

20+ minutes later my replacement pancake (I reduced my order to one pancake because they're ridiculously large), finally arrived, and now I'm annoyed. Maybe because I'm sitting at the counter with a clear view of the kitchen, grill, and cooks, and I'm watching all of the other orders being heaved onto the service counter, but I would have expected to have been bumped to the front of the queue and not wait nearly a half hour for one replacement pancake.

When it arrived, it was slightly overdone, and the strawberries, yep, cold like they just came out of the refrigerator.

Dear Beacon management:...

Ate here on 1/5/19 the service was pure trash. I gave two stars because the food wasn't terrible as well. The waitress didn't bring our food out at the same time, my "Belgian Waffle" came out twenty minutes after the rest of the food was delivered. She also delivered coffee to our table that we didn't order and every time I tried to explain to her that we didn't order coffee she just ignored me and kept walking. She also did this when I tried to ask for an extra napkin (I had to get the napkin from another waitress).We anticipated having to leave quickly so we requested the check and to go boxes. The food was good until I found a hair in my hash browns. I alerted the waitress so she could have another order of hash browns prepared for me and she got angry and without saying a word to me snatched up the ticket and brought it back and slammed it down on the table and said "I took it off" and stormed away. I asked three different employees if I could speak with the manager and they all had different stories explaining why I could not speak to a manager, one ridiculous excuse was that they were new and they didn't know who the manager was, another was that there was no manager there...I decided that this place wasn't worth my time and paid for our food and left.

Also FYI the "Belgian Waffle" is just a plain waffle with nothing on it. It's not the traditional dish that typically has fruit and other embellishments like whipped cream or...