Ravenna's Varsity Restaurant

Did someone just serve me a frozen TV dinner? This was an incredible dinner experience, NOT. For that matter, why did my eggs taste like pan spray?

A friend and I have had lunch here on a fairly regular basis (3 or 4 times a month) for the past five years or so. Every once in a while we go somewhere else just for a change, but we're always happy to come back. We're both especially fond of their Cobb salad and their French fries. The breakfast food is also consistently very good (though they do have a tendency to overcook their breakfast sausages). Delicious clam chowder too. I've also always been very happy with their coffee -- seems like a trivial thing perhaps, but even in Seattle it's becoming a rare experience to have a cup of drip coffee that doesn't taste burnt, sour, weak, or all three.

I was surprised to see such negative reviews here, as this is one of very few restaurants that I am willing to go to on a regular basis. Of course it is crowded and there is a wait on weekend mornings, the place is fantastically busy, but even so it's a shorter wait and a better experience for less money than, say, the Original Pancake House in Ballard... there just don't seem to be very many places to have a nice, casual, GOOD, inexpensive, and unpretentious breakfast in this area.

Come to Ravenna Varsity Inn any time during the week, and you'll discover that it's just about the best sit-and-chat spot in town. It seems that my friend and I are constantly asking for special 'tweaks' to our food, week after week (as in, can I get that burger on unbuttered rye, tartar sauce for my fries, a half-size salad on a full-size plate, bacon cooked nice and dark but not dry, etc), and not only are the servers always happy to go to bat for us, but the kitchen always seems to deliver right on target.

I've been to this restaurant a few times and have had a few different experiences. There's ALWAYS a pretty long wait to be seated because it's a small place. It's also across the street from an old-folks home so it's CRAWLING with old "regulars". These are the people who are getting the attention from the staff. Once you're seated, you're pretty much ignored for the next half hour. I saw a table actaully get up and leave after about 40 minutes today and NO ONE even noticed. The hostess just thought an open table suddenly appeared and just sat some new people. She didn't even bring new waters. In her defense, she was only about 10 years old. Why is there a 10-year-old working there, you ask? I have no idea. There were about 10 hostesses and bussers and only 2 waitresses. Someone finally came to take our order after I was throwing around the stink-eye for about 10 minutes. That was the last time we saw her. Someone else brought us our food, took our plates and brought us our bill. The 10-year-old rang us up. Sweet girl. :)

The food is pretty good. LOVE good breakfast food and good burgers and sandwiches. It's a good price too.

So if this place can GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER and start providing some good service to us "non-regulars", then I'd reccomend it. However, the service was so over-the-top crappy today, that I wouldn't feel right recommending this place to anyone unless they want to spend about 2 hours in a restaurant, being ignored. :)

We had horrible service for breakfast on a Saturday morning. Took at least 15-20 minutes to get our food after we ordered, and they messed up 2 of our 8 orders. No one ever came back to refill water and coffee, or to even check on how we were doing. When we had been sitting waiting for our bill for a while, we finally went up and got it ourselves. As we were waiting to pay, one of the other customers went behind the counter and started taking our leftovers off our plates! She was apparently collecting food for her dog, but seems like a health code violation to me. She said the employees let her go behing the counter and around to tables all the time to collect food scraps. Does the manager know about this? It looks very strange to other customers in the restaurant. We won't be going back there ever again. Too bad, it used to be a decent restaurant several years ago.

This place was waste of my time. Bland food with the unforgiveable : some replica ketchup (maybe watered down) in Heinz bottles ! Never again