Friendly’s

Good food. Good service. Excellent ice cream! Only complaint is that this location is in need of some TLC. A minor renovation is in order, especially the carpet. You can smell it if your seated in the area with carpet it is really off putting. At the very eat rip up the carpet and give the interior a fresh coat of paint.

Visited for breakfast while our daughter did her college tour and placement exam the local college (we’re from nyc). Took the hostess a minute to greet us and seat us. The restaurant smelled like bleach rags. I know because I worked in a restaurant before! We had a booth which was sticky and had crumbs on the floor but, this was the closest place for breakfast and we were starving. Our waitress was very sweet and prompt. She was really busy and seemed to be the only server at that hour (11am). I had eggs and fruit. Tasted fine. And lots of coffee. The other half had the triple slam (I think that’s the name?) and seemed satisfied. Nothing remarkable at all about the meal or service. Won’t go again when we visit there later this summer.

Disclosure: This is from awhile back. Also, I’ve never given a 1-​star rating or walked out of a restaurant.
My family arrived 2 hours prior to closing and there were 4 tables with customers. There were at least 4 women working out front and 1 working in back. We walked in and made eye contact with them. Not a single ‘hi’ ‘hello’ or smile. We stood there awkwardly and decided to seat ourselves after a while. No one acknowledged us for 5 minutes so we got the menus ourselves. Another 5 – 10 minutes went by without acknowledgement. As I was getting ready to ask them to take our order, another customer went up to the counter expressing her frustration with their horrible service. Apparently she just wanted to get ice cream for her toddler and pay her bill, but they kept putting her off. At that point we decided to leave for another restaurant. Again no acknowledgment. Worst customer service I’ve ever experience. If I had behaved that way at my last job (at a restaurant), I would have been fired. This was a pathetic excuse for a dining establishment.

Friendly’s on Triphammer always surpasses our expectations — on cool variety, total fun, and genuine, caring service.
My wife is a chef from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, but with 3 girls under 10 years old sometime you just want fun. This places seals the deal.
If you want candles and $ 30 entrees, the Heights Grill is 1 mile away and John Thomas is about 7. But that’s not any of us come to Friendly’s.
This is fun, tasty, non-​elitest surprises.
My 2 – 3 dinners on the road each week are usually $ 50+, but no lunch is as fun and wonderful than eating at Friendly’s with my daughters as they drink low-​fat mile from a curly straw, eat miniature cheeseburger sliders, and eat a mini-​monster sundae.
I first learned about Friendly’s when I was a single Professor at Dartmouth. My acid test as to whether someone was worth dating was whether they had fun if we went to Friendly’s.

While service isn’t the best, the waiters & waitresses are friendly and try hard. I believe they need to hire at least one more wait staff which makes it management’s severe problem, not the wait staff’s!
However I do have to say on the positive side the ice cream menu is to die for! Their ice cream is delicious!

Usually rate Friendlies as an upscale diner but was pleasantly surprised by the Pastrami Swiss sandwich today. Looking forward to trying other meat sandwiches like Reuben. Service is slack but the waitresses are nice, just not the most efficient so patience is a virtue.

All the reviews on here are pretty much spot on, except that I think you know what you are getting into when you are going to Friendly’s to eat. There are healthy options, but they are not known for their salads… The service is slow (i.e. they need to hire more people as I only noticed one server over the 1.5 hour period we were there), the staff was nice but not very attentive (not her fault I don’t think)…if they are going to close down all the other Friendly’s in the area, and make this the only option within an hour (+/​-​) of Ithaca, why not pay more attention to what would make this a nicer place to eat? The past 2 times we were here (my daughter loves Friendly’s ice cream) it was the same thing, so I don’t think it’s a fluke. Sorry to say we won’t be going back.

Slow service, bad build-​your-​own hamburger. Even 3 pieces of pickles charge for $ 0.39. Only three pieces! Taste no better than Mcdonalds.

Horrible, waited 10 min and no one ever came to table for drink or food order. There were three staff who were all too preoccupied to check on any of the customers. To hell with this place.