Critic's Review
If you live in Fort Lauderdale, every once in a while you go to Denny's. Nothing on SE17th interested me today, so I stopped in for a late breakfast.
Nobody around at 2:15pm. Lots of booths available.
Service crawls. I ordered coffee while I scanned the menu for new items. 5 minutes later; nothing. A dude yells "did you get this guy's beverage order". She comes out; "Coffee is brewing". They don't have coffee ready at Denny's at 2pm.
I order the "Hearty Breakfast Skillet" ($7.49) with Rye Toast ($.99 up charge). Finally the coffee comes out, piping hot.
Wow, is this bad coffee. I'm so used to my $11/lb freshly ground coffee at home. This stuff just doesn't measure up.
Music is blaring "Why Geogia", Blondie and KD Lang. The skillet comes out without much delay.
Frankly, all of the skillets are about the same. There's like 1 or 2 different ingredients. This one was sizzling hot; you have to be careful eating it. I burned my tongue more than once on this. It's a lot of food.
No butter for the bread came out initially; The big chains always bring out a boatload when you ask for extra or on the side.
Wheat bread. Not sure if she got it wrong or if they just don't have rye; I did ask if they had rye when I ordered.
I was long done and no server. She was hovering in the back with her back to me. She brought out some shakes for another table, but didn't look over as I tried to flag her down. Finally I waved my arms wildly and the cook saw me and notified my server.
One troubling trend is the new-fangled POS systems; they have a Square Stand system, which is VERY odd for a big chain since Square discounts aren't very good. Square is now cutting deals with large vendors, so we might be seeing more of these. I don't like them; I don't want to touch a screen that's been touched by employees and other customers. Another issue is that you have to tell your server how much tip you're leaving. As she did a crappy job, I have to tell her to her face that I'm leaving a bad tip.
Get a Stylus People. Don't make customers sign a screen with their finger.
Review 12/22/12
This Denny's recently got a badly needed facelift, so it's not nearly as bad as some of the other run down iHOP/Denny type places. It's a pretty big room; but they do have the slow, sloth-like service typical of these places. On a Saturday afternoon the place was fairly deserted, so I grabbed a nice big booth in the back.
The first annoyance is that they have tiny coffee cups, which means you'll need to get a few refills. They give you a little pitcher with half and half so at least you don't have to deal with the little containers. The small cups are more of an issue here than a real diner because of the slow-moving servers.
They always have a few new items; you can always construct a "slam", but I never do. Currently they're doing some sort of promotion with "The Hobbit", and the picture of the Hobbit skillet looked pretty good, with a big ole sausage, potatoes, peppers onions and cheese. I ordered that with rye toast (a 99 cent add on).
This skillet wasn't as hot as the last one, where everything was so hot that I couldn't eat it for a while. There's a lot of good stuff in here; it's too bad that it looks like it was made by someone with limited cooking skills. The sausage was dense and dominated by sage; not very greasy or juicy. The toast, while buttered, was barely buttered, so I had to ask for extra. Seconds on coffee were a struggle to get; but that's to be expected here.
An interesting menu items that could have been better if everything had been cooked less randomly.
Facelift or not, it's still Denny's on the inside. You know that you get here.
