Sam’s Place

This place occupies a very unique spot in American cuisine that is incredibly difficult to find at the present– traditional dishes, that are made from scratch. Their turkey club is not made with lunch meat. The strawberry pancakes and waffles have fresh fruit. When they have city chicken on the menu, it is amazing. It serves the same dishes as a lot of restaurants around Detroit, but its use of fresh ingredients sets it apart. This is one of the best places I have found in the area for comfort food.

Not that great. Service is poor.

Went to Sam’s twice in the last week, once for breakfast the other for brunch, everything was fine. On our lunch visit we had spinach pie, reuben, chicken lemon rice soup, BLT and kids meals, all of these items were good, service was good. Breakfast they always do a reliable job. I go up and down with them but they were good these last two trips.

Yeah they now charge for soup or salad with a meal, have minimized the portions and have raised their prices. You can only have one refill on a smallish sized pop. The waitstaff has had a bunch of turnaround too. It was not stellar, just cheap, convenient and reliable. Yeah, I’m kinda done when I can eat at a really quality place with better portions and free soup/​salad for a mere few dollars more. Diners are a dime a dozen really. I may return for their cheap breakfast special once in awhile but nothing else. Sam, you broke my heart.

I love the place’s décor – it’s dated and charming.
The waitress was friendly but bad – really bad. Nothing quite worked. I was a bad waitress once, too, that’s okay. But she was. Really bad. Forgotten orders, wrong orders, missing sides, the works – and they weren’t busy. She was just distracted or over it, I guess.
The broasted chicken was disappointing. Tiny, tiny legs and thighs, out of mashed potatoes, but a baked potato was available. Confusing? Yes. Premade mashed potatoes are kind of a red flag. And the baked potato was microwaved.
Steer clear of the chicken gravy. It practically glows neon yellow under the florescent lights. I wish I was kidding or even being hyperbolic.
This place serves bad diner food. It’s. edible? But the place itself is cute. I don’t know. Pass.

I live in Belleville and have been ordering carry out breakfast for many years. I was always happy with the prices, food and portions. Once the ownership changed a few years ago, the food is still good, portions are large. Most of the waitstaff has been there for many years and most are very friendly. However, since the new owner took over, the prices have gone sky high. I have been overcharged several times. The food is good and I want to support a local business, but there have been so many discrepancies on my bill, I can no longer go there. What should be a simple adding of my bill results in many, many additional charges. One day I was charged $ 30 for two, carry out omelettes that should have been $ 15. Watch your bill.

My husband and I stopped by Sam’s Place in July 2014. We were disappointed. We like to patron small local restaurants when passing through on our motorcycles. It was a Sunday afternoon. There was only one other table being serviced.
The food was not fresh. The sauce over the cabbage roll tasted like ketchup. The dough of the perogi was not fully cooked and oily.
The bathroom, though it smelled like bleach, was dirty; i.e. the corners needed a scrub brush.
The staff, though caring, seem pre-​occupied. Perhaps with concerns that they might be out of job due to the place closing down? Especially, if the menu continues as scattered as it was.
I gave a 2 star rating due to the price. It was cheap. But, you get what you pay for. I’d gladly pay $ 10 – 15 per plate if the food is good. This was not.
I wish the owner good luck. He needs a professional chef to help him with the recipes, service and management. I will not be going back. I will advise other to avoid.

Seriously just wanna say you guys have the best chicken strips and fries & your ranch is the best. This is my favorite place to eat when I’m in need of a home like cooked meal.

I stopped for breakfast this morning and was very disappointed. I sat in the area to the right of the front door and it was EXTREMELY loud with noise from the kitchen. It sounded like they were throwing all the dishes and slamming every door. The waitresses were snapping at each other and I had the definite idea that some sort of argument was going on, especially in the kitchen. It made me so nervous, I was unable to finish my breakfast. My young waitress could not have cared less if I was happy or not, she was too busy snapping at another older waitress who had apparently irritated her. Now, on to what my breakfast was like… I ordered the spinach and feta omelet, but asked for swiss cheese instead of feta. I was very disappointed to find that the swiss cheese was processed swiss instead of real swiss. I really didn’t like the cheese, but other than that, the omelet was OK. The rye toast and hash browns were OK too. I couldn’t drink the coffee. It was too strong and didn’t taste fresh. When I mentioned the noisy kitchen to my waitress, she said «Yeah, they get that way sometimes», but didn’t try to have them quiet down. She came by and asked me if I wanted a warm up on my coffee. I told her «No, I can’t drink it. It’s not fresh.» She said «OK» and didn’t offer to bring me a fresh cup. Unbelievable! When I checked out, I told all this to the cashier, who also wasn’t interested. I told her I wouldn’t be back.

We went there as a family. The waitstaff was a little inattentive as a whole. They seemed to like to congregate by the front door and talk. Service was secondary.
The Food: Soup… OK. Spaghetti Nice flavor, a little on the spicy side (peppers) for my 5 year old (Bought on kids menu) Eggs were OK Salad OK and pricey. $ 5 for House salad.
The Place: Dirty floors unswept/vacuumed…walls had food splatter. Tables seemed clean but who knows.
There are better places to spend my money than here.

I wasnt impressed. It seemed to be a frozen reheated foods. The pie was definitely sysco. I wont be going back.

This used to be Red Apple — there was an ownership change to my understanding.
Breakfast — can’t beat it. The food is good. Portions are excellent. The price is great. One day me and my dad ate there — he had an omelet and I had a traditional breakfast — we both had coffee — the bill was barely over $ 10. We felt bad and tipped the staff really good. Felt like we jipped them or something. I usually stop in for breakfast once a month (on avg). We usually get a traditional breakfast or omelet. They know my 3 year old now and the staff is great with him. He always gets pancakes and the staff is very friendly with all of us — but particularly my son.
I had a dinner 1 time when the place was the Red Apple and it wasn’t ideal. Not the worst — but nothing I felt I would recommend or desire myself to go back to. The perk was (at the time) they chipped in a free desert ice cream which is good for the kids. But, the dinner was very routine and had a processed feel to it. So maybe that is different now since the change in ownership? I just haven’t desired to try it out again yet.
I give this place an average 3 star score. Some places have a niche and to me — it is their breakfast and morning environment. I can’t go to bat for them much beyond that. But, I will continue to say — support local business.

My favorite breakfast place. The mediterrean omelette is one of the best I’ve ever had, filled with spinach, feta, and gyro meat goodness. Waitstaff are polite and attentive.

Bagged, frozen, or processed you can get it here. Fresh homemade good will not be served here. If you care not what you pay for then this me be your place. Otherwise if its not eggs forget stopping here. Side note southern gravy does not Start with a powder in a mix pack. Mikes red apple is gone hopefully the next owner will respect its customers.

So this review is only for BREAKFAST.
Have been here about 10 times I can say that Sams has the BEST breakfast in the Belleville area. The french toast was so good, that I joined Unilocal just to write about it. Very, very buttery though. I’m sure its horrible for me but it really is excellent. Eggs, sausage are both also very good. Not so greasy like at other diners that I have been to.
So far Sams is one of the best restaurants in Belleville. A city that definitively needs one.

Stopped by here while in Michigan and was surprised to see Mikes Red Apple now replaced with Sam’s Place. The outside and inside remain pretty much the same but the close attachmen of the restaurant to the area now seems gone. Mike’s Red Apple was never a great restaurant but it tied in closely with local flavors and was a consistent place to stop.
The food is under casual diner fair. We ordered the polish plates and salads. The vinegar that came with the salad contained flies, unchecked by the waitress before bringing it out to our table. I ended up replacing it with ranch and unlike most diner ranch this tasted watery and stretched.
The polish food was OK. The pierogies were deep fried, was not expecting that. Not very traditional. The filling lacked any real flavor, they offer cheese, potato, and sauerkraut. The cabbage roll was similarly flavorless, with the sauce tasting like plain tomatoes as per Liz’s review. One party at our table had a hair in their pierogi — we let that one slide.
The cleanliness has gone downhill and the food is lacking in flavor. This location is geared towards the older crowd and probably fits that niche well. As for everyone else, skip it.

The coffee was very good and the service was friendly and extremely helpful. For these reasons, I don’t give them one star.
In my slow but unending quest for good breakfasts I decided to give this place a spin. I’d meant to try them when they were called Red Apple but never made it there.
The spinach & feta omelet I ordered had the spinach and feta mixed in with the eggs. This isn’t a crime, as far as my tummy is concerned. The spinach was fresh leaves, a bonus. The feta, however, was bland and tasteless. The accompanying hash browns and toast were ok, nothing special.
Part way through the omelet I bit into something crunchy. I assumed it was an eggshell, which usually squicks me right out, but I was hungry enough that I kept going. Then i got another crunchy bite. And another.
I flipped the omelet over to find the underside was burnt. Now, most of you would send it right back. And I thought about it, I really did. But then I realized, «What kind of kitchen would send out a burnt omelet in the first place?» There are mistakes like forgetting an ingredient change or removal, and then there’s just sloppy work.
I won’t be back.

Even before I lived in Belleville, my grandparents (also not from Belleville) would make a special trip w/​us to the city to go to Mike’s Red Apple. There’s was really no reason why they did, the Red Apple was nothing especially unique except that it was one of the few restaurants that really embodied a town, local color and all.
When we moved to Belleville later on, the Red Apple became our breakfast spot, known for it’s insanely low priced not listed on the menu breakfast special. It was a secret code for all us locals.
Now the Red Apple is gone, sad as we all are, we have Sam’s Place. It sounded familiar to me and then I realized a local Livonia coney was branching out. Almost nothing has changed except the menu and the prices. The food I ordered was very bland, coney island food tends to but usually there’s something there that makes it nice, the menu looked sparse and unoriginal. The staff, which looks new, needs to work on their friendliness. She wasn’t rude but wasn’t especially nice either.
We paid a little less than double what we would have paid at the Red Apple. The sign out front still says the Red Apple (that needs to change pronto) but sadly only a skeleton of the restaurant remains.