It’s pretty pathetic to be reviewing a Denny’s restaurant – indeed, it’s pretty pathetic to be eating at a Denny’s restaurant – but we were in our way to Lassen National Park, we were starving, and choices for food on that stretch of I-5 are all very poor. Willows offers you two alternatives, The Black Bear diner and Denny’s. We went to BB a few years ago and weren’t impressed, so Mike decided to give Denny’s a chance. I hadn’t been to a Denny’s in many, many years, and the experience was just as I remembered it: thoroughly mediocre.
The Willows’ Denny’s restaurant has a very short menu – and they didn’t have anything that really sounded appetizing. I might have gone for a burger, but they will only cook them to medium-well (I guess they can’t trust their own meat handling). Mike had their bacon burger ($9, I think) and he wasn’t impressed. The dryness of the meat wasn’t as much a problem as the tangy, strange steak sauce that came on the burger. He’d had preferred a regular BBQ sauce.
I had the Philly steak sandwich, and it was also OK. The chunks of meat had been pot roasted and they were very tender, they were covered with a mild cheese. The bread had a nice garlicky flavor, but there were pretty much no mushrooms to speak of. I ordered my sandwich with hash browns, which I quite enjoyed.
My favorite part about Denny’s are the kids prices. Yeah, the portions are tiny, but my kids never eat that much. Mika had the quesadilla ($2.90). The quesadilla was small and had some weird bright orange cheese, but Mika was happy with it. She had it with the veggies with ranch sauce – and I was impressed at the size of the portion. They made a meal into themselves. The carrots didn’t look very fresh, but they were crunchy and tasted fine.
Camila had the cheese pizza with apple slices ($3.50). The pizza was your standard microwaved thingy, but Camila enjoyed it.
We had cokes, which tasted fine, but you will want to avoid the tap water.
Probably the worst part of the dinner was the wait. We got there are 7 PM on a Friday night, and though the restaurant wasn’t very crowded, the kids food did not arrive to the table until 7:40 PM – ours came 10 minutes later. Service otherwise was fine.
In all, you could do worse than Denny’s – but I’m hoping sometime to find a better alternative along that stretch of road.
Denny’s
343 North Humboldt Avenue
Willows, CA
(530) 934-3231
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