Food Review - Mike and Ronda's The Place

Food Review – Mike and Ronda’s The Place

4925 W Bell Rd
Glendale, AZ 85308
(602) 896-9929

Don't forget to read the Yelp reviews, too!
http://bit.ly/f6Cn7B

Mike and Ronda’s “The Place” is a charmingly named diner originally based in Flagstaff, Arizona.  I believe that they have only opened two locations.  The “East” location, which is actually the one located in Deer Valley Arizona, off of Bell Road, and the “West” location which is located in northern Flagstaff off of Route 66.  This particular review will be for the location off of Bell Road in Deer Valley (Phoenix) since I have never been at the location in Flagstaff.

Just as a cool piece of trivia information:  It’s popular rumor that Mike and Ronda are part of a friendly motorcycle gang that likes to don leathers and ride through the valley of the sun.  This might explain why a lot of the local crowd there consists of bikers.  Nothing to complain about, but worth noting if anyone has unwarranted concerns against tattoos and leather.

The Menu

The Place has a very large comprehensive menu.  The restaurant is only open for breakfast, lunch, and brunch, so there is no dinner menu (as far as I know) – but trust me when I say that this does not hold them back from including a lot of different items.

The Place Menu

The menu itself is a bit too large to display here, but perhaps I can get a tricky photograph in another review I write for The Place.  It is bordered within a series of interesting advertisements for local businesses with the food items separated into categories containing most of what one could expect from standard diner food.

The Place takes all of the standard diner foods and adds things such as combos (eggs, meat, pancakes, etc) or just al a carte items such as a single order of French toast.  This is essential on occasions…there is such a thing as getting “too much” food and The Place makes it their specialty.

The prices range from $1.99 for some sides up to I believe about $13.99 for the most outrageous breakfast combo platters including an entire T-Bone breakfast steak.

Are there healthy items on The Place menu?  Absolutely.  Oatmeal with granola, egg whites, etc can be found on the menu.

Location

The Place has (as far as I know) two main locations.  The original location located off of Route 66 in Flagstaff and the more centralized location in Deer Valley (Phoenix) off Bell road right near 51^st ave.  The Place sits in the corner of a strip mall next to a discount bread store and shares a parking lot with another good place I will review (Freddy’s Steak Burgers) and a local club.  Nothing special or fancy about the exterior of The Place.

Interior / Ambiance:

Here is where The Place comes to life.  The interior is very standard, nothing special – just a typical diner setup (think Dennys…but cleaner).  Plain wooden tables, booths, a cash register and chairs for folks to wait for seating near a large gumball machine.  There actually used to be a sign hanging from the gumball machine with an amusing typo (we do have a picture of that which I will try to find).  Always busy, always packed, it seems that there is always a wait for a table.  Sometimes 10-25 people are waiting for tables at The Place, though I believe the longest we have ever waited was 15 minutes.  One very neat thing that they do is have open seating at their bar.  This provides two very awesome advantages to anyone choosing to sit at the bar: 

1. The wait for seating is severely reduced.  A 25 minute wait can turn into a 2 minute wait if a spot or two open at the bar. 
2. It's a front row seat to the biggest hustle ever witnessed.  Which brings my original point.  The liveliness.

The Service:

The liveliness of The Place is intense.  Servers are bouncing around, sliding between each other, juggling plates of four, sometimes five or six, several cups of coffee and practically with a sugar bowl on their head.  I would say that I have eaten at The Place several dozen times and have yet to see anyone drop anything or knock anyone over, etc.  There is a certain “finesse” the servers have as they glide through the restaurant.

Each experience that we have at The Place has usually been very pleasant.  The servers aren’t sweet and cuddly – but they are fast and attentive.  They take orders accurately and deliver them quickly and efficiently.

There has been only one occasion that we had terrible, almost downright outrageous service and I feel that I need to share that experience.  Keep in mind, we have eaten here over a dozen times and only once we have had poor service, so we don't think much of it.


We went to The Place with a friend of ours who met us there.  She had already acquired a table, so we arrived at the restaurant and quickly spotted her and took our seats in the booth.  I proceeded to order a coffee and my wife ordered a milk.  Seven, ten, fifteen minutes later, we finally got our drinks.  In fact, we ordered our food before the drinks even came out.  Then I received my coffee…no creamer.  We requested the creamer, never got it.  Finally, our food came out so we made another request for creamer and we got the dreaded eye roll!  Oh no!  She rolled her eyes, sighed, and walked…no…trudged back to the kitchen to get me some creamer.  After that…it just continued downhill.  She must have been having a bad morning.

The Food:

The Place serves some of the biggest portions of breakfast food I have ever seen.  The quality of the food is always average to above average.  It’s nothing amazing – not even consistently excellent quality similar to somewhere like Mimi’s Café.  The portions definitely make up for that.  I usually order the same thing:  Meat and Eggs, which all consists of the following:

• 2 Strips of maple smoked bacon
• 2 eggs prepared to order
• A pile of potatoes
• 2 buttermilk pancakes
• One cup of EPIC coffee

Two "Hubcap Pancakes," Potatoes, Scrambled Eggs, Crispy Bacon

The bacon is very good.  Tasty, sweet with hints of maple and savory thick pieces of delicious bacon.  Very rarely burned, and never undercooked.  The eggs are decent, prepared to order (I like mine scrambled rough) and the potatoes are actually surprisingly tasty, crispy and have a spice to them.  The pancakes are ridiculous.  They are almost the size of hubcaps…sometimes they are too big.  It’s hard to get the butter spread evenly on them because they are so big and thick!  The pancakes are served with two types of syrup:  Maple and Blueberry. 

The problem with such a bountiful feast is that I usually can’t finish all of this so I am forced to start picking and choosing like a selective fat pigeon, and I usually just giving up on everything.

One thing I wanted to take a special moment to mention is the coffee.  Usually I don’t find it necessary to showcase a specific drink (unless it’s exceptional) and believe me when I say, this coffee is…epic.

EPIC The Place Coffee - +50 To All Stats

I one time asked our server what the coffee (brand) is, so that I could procure it for my own sinister intentions but I was told that it is sold only in 5lb bags and is some sort of unusual brand flavor.  I want to say it is called “Royale” by Sara Lee, diner brand or something...but don't quote me on that.  I was appreciative of the server telling me the brand and everything but I started to think to myself:  If I had access to this amazing coffee ALL the time, it would make going to The Place less special.

My wife orders almost exclusively the French Toast with extra powdered sugar and a side of hash browns.  I have had the pleasure of trying both her hash browns and her French toast and I find them both to be very good for the value.  The hash browns are crispy and delicious, served on a plate the size of a brick.   The French Toast comes in a giant pile of 6 pieces (what is that, half a loaf?) and has never been too soggy or undercooked.

French Toast Stack (prior to "the dusting")

French Toast Stack (after "the dusting")

 You may notice that these are two different plate colors.  That's because these finite details usually don't enter our minds when we are photographing our food.  Generally, we're too hungry and we start making mistakes.

The Price:

The prices at The Place are surprisingly reasonable.  The combo I mentioned earlier is only around $6.79 which really isn’t that much for such a feast of food.  As I mentioned earlier, things on the menu range from as cheap as $1.99 for some sides up to around $12.99 for some of the more extravagant combos.  My wife and I have rarely spent more than $20.00 for breakfast, including the drinks and tip.

• Breakfast or Lunch – including drinks (coffee, milk, juice, etc) is around $15-20

The Verdict:
The Place is one of those joints that becomes addicting.  It doesn’t get much better than the  idea of sleeping in and enjoying a large breakfast at The Place after a lazy snooze on the weekend.  There aren’t many times that we go out for breakfast on the weekends but when we do we have the list narrowed down:  Einstein Bagels?  Mmm, sure.  IHOP?  Maybe...it's close to home.  The Place?  Yeah…The Place.  Let's go there.

Seriously though, their coffee is like +500 to awesome.