Lou's Restaurant
73 Webster Street, North Tonawanda, NY 14120
(716) 694-6025
Lou's is a little restaurant tucked next to the historic Riviera Theater in North Tonawanda, NY. Just a few tables and counter service, there's one cook and a couple of waitresses. Open from 7am until 7pm seven days each week, Lou's offers breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The Tonawanda Restaurant Examiner and companion have eaten at Lou's before for both breakfast and lunch and have found the food good, filling, homey and affordable. In the past you could score a pretty good three egg bacon, cheese and mushroom omelet with homefries and toast for about $7.50+ tax and tip. The omelets weren't overcooked, the homefries were well done, and the service was pretty good. The companion would tend to disagree, finding the older waitress a little annoying with her comments and "honeys", but it was all part of the schtick. Whenever we arrived at Lou's we always found it packed, mainly with senior citizens dining and laughing in large groups. Everyone in the place seemed to know each other.
Planning on doing a little shopping at The Paperback Swap and finding it closed, we wandered down to Lou's to grab some grub. There was a change in the air, our regular waitress was nowhere to be found. This Examiner thinks the companion may have been a little relieved by that!
Taking our seats in a booth, our waitress presented our menus to us, and we noticed a change. New waitress, new menu? And the companion's foot was stepped on as the waitress walked away from the table. This did not set a pleasent tone for our meal.
The companion decided on his favorite three egg bacon, cheese and mushroom omelet with Italian toast, but was surprised to find that Lou's now charged $1 extra for homefries, and he decided to skip them.
This Examiner ordered a fried bolonga and cheese hoagie with grilled onions and fries, asking for mustard on the side. It wasn't too long before our food arrived and we dug in. Finding my hoagie a bit off, I asked the companion about his omelet. He muttered something and kept picking apart his omelet. Taking a few more bites of my hoagie I discovered the cheese wasn't melted, the bolonga was barely warm, let alone "fried" and the waitress had forgotten to bring mustard. At least the fries were hot and tasty. Looking over at the companion, I noticed he was becoming agitated and still digging at his omelet, and had it flayed on his plate. "Look at this!", he said. "It's raw inside!" After a bit of discussion and finding that our waitress had "gone on a break", the companion took his plate up to the counter. Disappointingly, they did not make a new one, the slapped that one back on the flat top for a minute or two.
We are not quite certain if Lou's has changed ownership, but the staff has certainly changed, and they messed with a formula that worked.
All in all, a rather unpleasant experince, and sadly probably our last time dining at Lou's Restaurant. The price is right, the food was wrong.
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