Holden’s new Diner 122: Good diner food, horrible service

We’re eating here right now. This is horrible.

Update: 12:45pm, 6/27/2010.

Diner 122 opened on 122a in Holden, MA., this past Wednesday, across from Watchusett High School.  Nick and I love diners: the cheap coffee, fast service, good prices, and greasy hangover food is the perfect answer to a long Friday or Saturday Night.  So, while thinking to try something new this morning, we went to Diner 122 (or the 122 Diner?  I don’t know which) to see how it was.  There was some confusion amongst the two or three groups waiting for tables:  do we sit ourselves, are we sat by a host, should someone ask?  We all thought that it was a little strange that nobody had recognized the customers who had walked in, and the servers were busy and didn’t have much time for those of us who just came in… So, we all casually waited for five minutes or so, despite a handful of open tables.  Finally, a waitress apologized for the confusion and told us to seat ourselves.  This was at approximately 11:24.

It wouldn’t be until 11:35 that Nick and I established first contact with another waitress.  After promising she’d be back, our waitress shuffled her way to us and we made our orders.  Me, a coffee and the “122 Omelet,” an amalgamation of cheese, meat, and veggies that sounded pretty decent, served with homefries and toast.  Nick ordered a coffee, a bagel with cream cheese, and a bacon/egg/cheese on an English muffin.  Prices seemed pretty reasonable: $1.50 for coffee, $6.75 for my omelet, and a few bucks for Nick’s order.  Our waitress exited at 11:43.  At 11:48, coffee-less, tired, and hungry, we wagered when we would get our coffee.  Nick guess 12:00.  I thought that it was a bold guess, that surely they would come before then, but with our waitress completely oblivious to the existence of her patrons, 12:00 came and went.  When it did come, over 17 minutes after ordering it, our waitress actually put down an orange juice and an ice water and started to leave… and I had to say, “We.. didn’t order orange juice or ice water.”  Our waitress, from what I could tell, had 3 other tables, and as far as I could see, none of them had ordered that either.  But regardless, she referred back to her notebook as if to prove me wrong, and upon seeing that — yes, we only ordered coffee — she gave us our coffees and left.

The coffee wasn’t horrible for a greasy spoon.  Actually, it was good for a diner.  Goldstar Diner, on West Boylston St., has horrible coffee, some of the worst coffee in America, but you give it a free pass because it is cheap, the waitress refills you every 5 seconds, and at least it is hot.  While Goldstar’s coffee is humorously bad, coffee at Diner 122 wasn’t the worst.  It was hot, tasted fine, and was more than drinkable.

Our food came at about 12:25, oh, about an hour after walking in the door.  I immediately asked for another coffee, knowing that it would be quite a while.  Nick asked me, “when do you bet we’ll get this refill?”  I replied, honestly, “never, it will never come.”  The omelet was good, it was big, cheesy, full of good stuff, everything was cooked well, hot, and filled us up.  My wheat toast was well buttered, the potatoes were hot, crispy, and tasted good.  Nick said his bacon/egg/cheese was good.  By all accounts, the food was really solid, good diner food.  We wondered when the phantom refill would come, and it wasn’t until the waitress delivered our bill that she remembered to bring us a refill (I wasn’t going to say anything).  So, we waited a few more minutes, maybe five, for that refill to come, but then finally just put down our money and left.

It is common for new restaurants to have bad service, but nothing has quite approached this experience for me.  I can reasonably say that this is the worst service that I have had in at least three years.  Compounding the issue is that it wasn’t even very busy, our waitress had a handful of tables, maybe four total, with three of them sat, no large parties.  Other tables with our waitress suffered, but you could tell that the other two waitresses also were not delivering stellar service either: the tables behind Nick and I grumbled as juices, coffees, and more were forgotten or delivered late.  I will try Diner 122 again one day, maybe in six months, but I’m hoping they will have had enough time to separate the wheat from the chaffe and get their service acts together.  You can’t open a diner in Worcester county that takes an hour and a half to get customers in and out.

Tagged as: bad service, Diners, Holden