I don't relish leaving bad reviews anymore. Restaurants have a tough enough time making a buck…read morenowadays as it is however, Ken's is one that belongs in the gastro-abusive category. Honestly if you know anything about food at all, you'd simply agree that this is the case.
After two separate visits, we thought we'd give it one more try, just to be fair and boy, the old saying about fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, couldn't hold more significance.
Here's a couple of tips for selecting a good restaurant or perhaps more accurately, not selecting a bad one: If their daily specials menu insert includes everything but the line cook's soiled underwear, leave. If the menu is 15 pages long, leave. If most of the positive reviews and/or photos are two years old or older, leave. If one of the photos shows hard boiled eggs that have green yolks, leave. How the heck do you keep so much food fresh to offer so many menu items? You can't, especially when your core business is breakfast.
The wife and I ordered a Rueben to split, deluxe with two sides and we chose fries and a cup of soup. The fries were straight out of a GFS bag, no surprise there. All so-called "diners" rely on nasty frozen foods from Sysco or GFS anymore.
The "cup" of Navy Bean soup I would call more a thimble. The cup was so small, we could barely squeeze the spoon in there to sample the wallpaper paste they call a soup. The sandwich was so disgusting, we both had a quick bite and immediately sent it back. Spoiled sauerkraut for sure. The corned beef stack was so thin, I doubt there was two ounces of meat. It was also soaking wet, as if it had been sitting in a pot of hot water and pulled out to make the sandwich. Perhaps steamed but given the lack of effort in producing what should be a diner staple, I wouldn't think so. Boiled meat has no flavor or color and this is precisely what we were asked to swallow. The whole sandwich itself was quite small, almost tiny. No thousand island dressing. The wife and I are no strangers to well made, tasty corned beef sandwiches. Ken's was one of the worst, if not THE worst we've ever had. If you can't make a good corned beef sandwich, you should not be calling yourself a restaurant, period. It's a diner staple.
So, now the bill. The sandwich was $8.99 on the menu. We ordered it deluxe and got the thimble of paste and the food service fries for an additional $5.49. We also ordered an iced tea, which was so over-steeped it was black and bitter, along with a bowl of "Coney Chili" (National for sure or some cheap knock-off, yuck). When we sent the sandwich back and declined a replacement the waitress person said they would take care of us and they sure did, they took care of us alright. $17.89 was our final tally after the deduction! They deducted $8.99 for the sandwich, charged us for the sides, which we barely touched then we had to haggle the bill at the register with some obnoxious, pushy Albanian women that thought it might be a good idea to give us a punch card with three punches, how generous. I said "if we sent the food back, why were we charged for the sides"?
During our negotiation process, which was embarrassing and humiliating, we noticed another order of Rueben's leave the kitchen and then we overheard a cook remark that the kraut was indeed spoiled. We also overheard the booth next to ours complaining about their food.
This was our third try. The first time we left because we were there on a Saturday morning and it was so crowded and noisy and they tried to seat us in the middle table where we would be rubbing elbows with our neighbors. We said no thanks, we'll come back some other time and pushy foreign lady literally hounded us to stay and we had to high tail it out of there with what felt like a tijuana street barker nipping at our heels. On the second visit, I was alone and ordered some kind of Greek Skillet with gyro meat which coincidentally, was also spoiled, I was afraid to eat the food and I did eat about half and got sick the next day.
How this place got a reader's choice award for best family restaurant is a mystery to me. They must have really stacked the votes. Maybe Ken's was once worthy of such a claim but it isn't now. Shame on this place for ruining no less than 3 dining experiences for us. Nothing worse than leaving a restaurant hungry and with a feeling that you've been pickpocketed.
