My family and I are big fans of Elmer's as it's kind of our go to restaurant for mostly breakfasts, but the experience this past time for dinner was unfortunately not up to the high standards we have for Elmer's. The place was virtually empty and we were greeted by Zack, I believe his name was, and he is apparently the supervisor of the servers according to his name tag. He was extremely friendly and it would have been a delight to be served by him.
Starting with the service which is where the bulk of the issue existed this trip. Zack would have no doubt given us a great experience if he were our server. That was not the case, however. I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble here because I know that everybody has an off day now and then, but our server was not smiling, not friendly, and overall just not very helpful. She did the very minimum you would expect from a server. I asked if I could get fries with the Breakfast Burger rather than the hash browns or fruit listed on the menu and she said you could get fries for a side with pretty much anything and that you can even get as many refills as you want on them. This was good news as I was starving and the so-called Northwest fries are super satisfying. I was excited by the prospect of many of them. Little did I know that when our food (which took longer than you would expect given how quiet the place is) was delivered to us, we wouldn't see our server again for quite some time. It's generally a good practice to check in a few minutes after delivering the meal to make sure everything is fine and see if refills are needed on drinks. A refill on the fries would have been nice as well and one would think she would have asked me if I wanted more once she finally checked in. Nope. No dice. And when I asked for a refill on my long empty Pepsi and for waters for the kids she had a real sour look on her face and kinda slammed the drinks down hard on the table when she brought them out. She just seemed very much like one of those people who thinks we should be grateful that she's serving us, rather than ensuring that we were actually really well taken care of. We don't have money to eat out very much, so it was disappointing to have such a mixed experience.
The Breakfast Burger is not something I would order again as there was too much bacon jam on it and it wound up tasting like candy. Might have been alright if I had anything to wash it down, but as mentioned before the server essentially vanished while we were eating. Everything else was fine aside from the guy repairing tables with power tools very close to where we were eating. It wasn't busy as I mentioned, but if you're going to be using power tools in a restaurant, I think closer to 9 pm would be a better time.
Updated on 10/5/2019
I was contacted by Elmer's and was comped for a couple of meals and drinks in the hopes of giving them another chance...and we were not let down this time around. Everything was exactly as it should have been. Our server, Raymond, was engaged and involved with us for the entire meal and generally just seemed to enjoy what he does. He was fantastic! The Crabacado omelettes were perfectly cooked and there is nothing at all to complain about. My family's faith in Elmer's has been restored. Well done! read more