Jim A.
Yelp
I stopped in with my co-worker for a late breakfast on Wednesday and I was impressed with the look of the diner and especially the pastry display up front. It made me want to skip breakfast and go right for dessert.
Being back in my hometown area after some time away was nice and I was looking forward to some great diner breakfast options and Carnegie has plenty.
Not wanting to completely stuff myself, I just wanted a basic breakfast- eggs, potatoes, and bacon. Carnegie's version comes with...salad. Ok, I've never seen any place serves a salad with eggs and bacon, but whatever, I ordered it.
My coworker wanted some fruit, so he ordered the "Symphony" which was three eggs, potatoes and fruit. It cost $5 more than the three eggs, potatoes, and.....salad that I ordered, but again, whatever. Fruit is expensive these days I guess. I added bacon to my order so the prices were about the same.
Our server came over after a couple of minutes, got our drinks right away and took our order. She was very pleasant and efficient. Great start!
As is the case in the NY/NJ area, our food came within just a few minutes, my coworker was shocked because he is not from the area, shocked and impressed I should say.
We looked at our plates and the first thing we noticed was there was no fruit on my coworker's plate, just eggs, potatoes....and salad. So, he paid extra for fruit that he didn't get. I told him to just let the server know, but he didn't want to make a fuss. I told him I would tell her, but he just said no. You'd think the server would have noticed, but she didn't.
My eggs were supposed to be over easy and they were over medium at least, closer to hard than medium and that wasn't good. I like to dip an English muffin into the egg and really wasn't able to do that with these eggs. Plus, I literally had the most disgusting English muffin ever- I don't know what brand this diner uses, but it was horrendous, absolutely horrific tasting. It was moist, like it had been wet, it wasn't toasted at all, and it tasted really bad. Like a ghetto brand muffin of some kind. I know you want to save some money, but please, spring for some good old Thomas's English muffins, your customers will appreciate it.
The hash browns were very greasy and didn't taste great at all. Both of us barely ate them. About the only thing that was done right was my coworker's scrambled eggs and my bacon tasted really good.
I hate to leave this review for any NJ diner, but if you can't get breakfast food right, there are problems. I gave three stars when I really wanted to give two, but I gave an extra star because the place is nice, clean, and the people were nice and I'm sure they would have rectified the fruit thing had we said something, so that's on us I guess.
Whenever I'm in town for work, I stay at a hotel nearby, but I think I'll have to find another diner for breakfast.