Hilary R.
Yelp
I don't know where to start. I miss the Clarendon location. Miss the parking lot. Here, you have to park in Target's garage, take an elevator, and then go outside--but they do validate for two hours.
Party of two, seated promptly, the diner wasn't by any definition busy. After ten minutes, no one had stopped by our table, so I (nicely) asked the host to send a server. Five minutes later, someone came to our table. They didn't have any spring water (though it's on the menu), ordered tap water, hot tea, kids milkshake, kids grilled cheese, side of fries, and a salad with protein.
Twenty minutes into this. We have tap water, and nothing else yet. Waiting for the other drink orders. Kids milkshake arrives. Five more minutes, grilled cheese arrives, inexplicably with a cup of jam or cranberry sauce. Asked for the fruit that was supposed to come with it. It was brought quickly. No silverware or napkins on our table, so I got up and grabbed them from another table.
We eat, food is whatever, as usual for Silver Diner. (We wanted to go to Circa, was closed today.) Grilled cheese came to the table almost cold, so the bread was pretty hard, at that point. Salads should be rethought so that they're not filled with tiny bits of the ingredients. I can cut a vegetable.
We sat for fifteen minutes with cleared plates, waiting for the check but no one was to be found. Asked a busboy to find our server for us. She came over and I asked that the hot tea be taken off the bill because it never arrived. She said "Sorry, they made me close last night and open this morning, so my brain is a little..." They do not give you an itemized, paper check here. You see your total on the screen, and tap your card table side, while the server holds the credit card machine. So, if the server and I had both forgotten that the tea didn't arrive at table, I would have paid for it unknowingly.
And THEN, after really, truly sub-par service, the tip options are 20%, 22%, and 25% LMAO, which you choose while the server is holding the machine and watching you. I tip VERY well, up to 40% for excellent service and 20% just for usual, acceptable service, but this deserved neither. I pressed the one that was lit up (22%) to get out of there, because my daughter was bored out of her mind at that point.
Will not be returning. Also, the music is too loud to talk comfortably in that cavernous space, and we miss the table jukeboxes. Peace out.