We stopped by here on Saturday since we had popped over to Brighton to get some things at Gamestop and I just wasn't feeling any of the Brighton restaurants. Howell we have just started to really explore and we had a great experience at Diamonds and I wanted to go again. Unfortunately they didn't open until 3PM on Saturday (11AM during the week, but not weekend :( ) so I was pretty pouty and grumpy when we saw we couldn't go there. Also the Thai food place doesn't open till late on the weekends too, SUCH A BUMMER!
But we knew there were other restaurants open that we hadn't tried yet, so we trudged to the main street and my SO pointed out this place which he wanted to try before (we had gone elsewhere, kiddy corner to it and was disappointed, so I was a little skeptical about this place) I'm really glad we did give it a try.
I was hungry and grumpy at that point so I just marched across the street (once the little dude showed up on the crosswalk indicator of course) and sat down at one of the booths (it's seat yourself) and the bartender greeted us with menu's very quickly. Very basic menu, burgers, the sodas and teas were $2.25 (maybe higher, they put tape and wrote over the top of the previous prices) and I about had an aneurysm. We stuck with water (we swore off soda anyway, but I was going to get a tea until I saw the price). There was a couple of dudes having lunch by the window and us, so it was pretty empty which we liked. After we put in our order (he got a burger with bacon and I got the Irish sammich, which is essentially a rueben) and he went back to the kitchen a couple more dudes came in and sat at the 8 top and announced "We have more coming."
And by more coming he meant like 9 children, 4 more dudes and a couple of their wives and one daughter.
So yes, a nightmare in this case.
It seemed one of the staff in the back (a cook?) had suggested this place to them as he went and sat with the men and chatted with them. Maybe they were part of a school sports team, the little boys wore hats and gloves with "Renegades" on them. I don't know the Howell school area so I can't really say for sure, but the cook guy had that hat on too at one point, so maybe he has a kid in it or his brother's kid in it. I'm probably analyzing it too much but hey, had nothing else to do while we waited.
The food was great. The burger was delicious and the reuben was very good as well. My SO had a side of onion rings and I had fries. We couldn't finish them all after we polished off our sandwiches. But they were good all around.
At this point though, the huge group had put in their order and we waited a good 10 minutes without receiving our check. I decided to go up to the bar and have a beer so we moved over to the bar. I could tell the very small staff (I think 3 people?) was busting their bums with this large order and children orders so by the time I finished my drink it had slowed down enough that I requested my check and got it right away.
So good first experience with the food and the servers. The large party sort of dampened the mood for the rest of us but they can't control that. Hopefully they got some good tips from that group because it went from a sleepy Saturday afternoon to a zoo. (the kids were actually well behaved, sat at the tables didn't run around too much, but everyone was sitting in different spots so splitting the checks at the end must have been hell). read more