The Rise and Fall of a Restaurant
When the Lonestar Steakhouse located on Route 46 in Wayne, New Jersey opened, it was a happening place. Besides the great food, the environment was a very friendly and exciting experience. About every 90 minutes, they would raise the volume of the country music and the waiters and waitresses would start dancing for everybody. It really made for an enjoyable dinner out with the family. Unfortunately those days are long gone and forgotten for some reason.
We decided to go out to Lonestar one Friday evening with the kids, and we were expecting it to be extremely crowded and a long wait just to sit down and order our food; however when we go there, it was shocking.
There were maybe 5 tables in the entire establishment with people eating. While we were waiting for someone to take our drink order, I took a look around the restaurant. There were several tables that had not been cleared yet and had dishes all piled up on them. Looking around some more I counted 10 waiters and waitresses standing around and talking with each other. I even noticed the manager walking around as well, noticing the dirty tables, and not doing a single thing about it. At one point, a customer picked up all of this dishes and walked them up to one of the waitresses. I figured she would apologize for not cleaning them up, but when he handed them to her, she replied, "Thank you." The man walks back to his table in complete disgust.
Skip forward about 10 minutes... Somebody has still not taken our drink order, and the kids are now getting a little crazy because they are just sitting there with nothing to eat or drink. My wife and I are doing our best to keep them busy. We played throw the crayon off the table and Mommy and Daddy will pick them up. That amused them for about another 10 minutes and finally a waiter came to take our drink order. With all the time we had waited, we gave him our entire order. After about 10 more minutes of "throw whatever you can find off the table and Mommy and Daddy will pick it up" our drinks arrive and our appetizers arrive. Now everyone at the table is happy.
After all this waiting, my oldest needed to go to the bathroom. This bathroom was worse than one you would have seen in the Port Authority Bus terminal in NYC back in 1980. I glanced at the cleaning log that they keep on the door, and the last time the bathroom was cleaned was in the early morning. I had to hold the door to the bathroom stall closed because all of the locks on them were broken, and appear to have been broken for quite a while.
Skip forward about 20 minutes... A waitress finally shows up to clean off the one table that has had dirty dishes on it since we first arrived. As she was cleaning up, two forks fell on the floor and were left there. I figured she would get them once she cleaned off the rest of the table. When she walked away I glanced at the floor and noticed those two forks still there on the floor. The waiterss came back a few minutes later with a broom and a dustpan and proceeded to sweep up the food on the floor around the table. When she got near the forks, she just swept them up into the dustpan and threw them away.
It has been over an hour since we first arrived and our food finally came. Since the kids were going crazy because we're lucky if they can sit in one spot for 15 minutes, we ate as much as we could, and had the rest wrapped up and we left.
After this experience, it was no surprise to me why there were so little customers in the entire place. I can't see this place staying opened for much longer at this point but we will see.
