Friendly’s (Liverpool)
3837 NY-31The drive to Lake Placid continues.
We left early Saturday morning to start the drive to upstate New York for a figure skating competition. We made a quick stop for lunch at Taps Brewhouse in Niagara Falls, ON then headed over to the falls to check that out before heading back in to the US.
We made it as far as Syracuse before stopping for the night. When we ate lunch in Niagara Falls, I asked they kids if they wanted brewery or diner for lunch. They both chose brewery because I said I had an idea for diner later that night.
When we got to the hotel, J and B weren’t really hungry so we didn’t go out for a big meal. L and I got sandwiches from Sammy’s NYC Deli & Grill in North Syracuse and we made plans to hit a diner for breakfast on the way out of town the next morning.
The diner that I had in mind is part of a large chain the northeast. It’s not something we can find back home in Michigan so I gave myself a pass on eating at a chain restaurant.
Friendly’s is an almost 100 year chain of family restaurants with just over 100 locations all along the east coast. We chose the Friendly’s in Liverpool, NY on New York 31 in a highly commercialized area just to the west of the New York 481 interchange. The restaurant is on the end of a shopping plaza in front of a Target. It was a little hard to find coming from the east because the building faces west. We didn’t actually see it until the GPS pulled us right up in front of the store.
Friendly’s has all the makings of a chain restaurant. Everything feels kind of generic but also on theme. The chain is more of a lunch/dinner spot alongside a soda fountain. Breakfast isn’t available at all locations and at this location, it’s only available on weekends.
The restaurant was pretty empty when we walked in a little after 9 AM. The lone waitress showed us to a booth in the front portion of the dining room. There are a lot of tables and it’s pretty big place that felt empty this early on a weekend. There is a mixture of booths and tables of different sizes for different size groups. The space is kind of dark with hanging lamps and can lights doing most of the heavy lifting. There was quite a bit of natural light near the front of the space coming from the large windows that look out in to the parking lot.
Our goal here was to get breakfast and get back on the road. We looked at the menu ahead of time and there was something that everyone was excited about.
I ordered the Breakfast Sliders. This meal is two sandwiches with scrambled eggs, American cheese, and bacon on tiny brioche buns. The sandwiches were pretty classic BEC sandwiches and the brioche bun they were served on was delicious. The sliders came with crispy American fries on the side. They tasted almost more like French fries. They were so crispy and delicious. They definitely tasted and looked more like they were deep fried over pan fried.
J’s pick was the Morning Super Melt. This is another take in the BEC breakfast sandwich genre served between slices of buttery, toasted sourdough. It’s a pretty simple sandwich but she said it was really good. It looked really good and it was my second choice but I figured J and I should get something different so I have something else to write about. If you’re looking for a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese sandwich, either option is really tasty. The bread is what is going to make the difference between the Sliders and Super Melt. Her sandwich also came with the super crispy American fries.
L kept things simple and ordered a stack of pancakes and bacon. She got three fluffy pancakes with whipped butter and syrup plus three slices of really crispy bacon. She ate two of the pancakes and all of the bacon. It was a lot of food and she walked away from the table stuffed and ready to take a nap on the car ride north.
B got super excited when he saw the Tie Dye Pancakes on the kids’ menu. This plate is a pancake with M&M’s, a large dollop of whipped cream, butter, and syrup. He also added on a side of bacon. I got the pancakes cut up for him and he took a couple of bites and asked if he could be done. I was a little annoyed at first but then I took a bite of the pancakes and oooohhh boy are they sweet. Like really, really sweet. He’s not a big sweets guy as it is and even without the syrup these pancakes are the kind of sweet that will give you diabetes just looking at them. We asked him to eat the bacon so he’d get some protein and then offered up the rest of L’s pancakes but he wasn’t interested. These pancakes are a fun idea but you really have to like sweet to enjoy them.
The cost for our meal was right around $55.
Like I mentioned earlier, our goal was to eat breakfast and get on the road…but that took a lot longer than it should have. There were only three or four tables max the whole time we were in there but there was only one waitress and she wasn’t great at multitasking. At one point, she walked towards our table, check in hand, but then detoured to another table to take drink orders without setting the check down. We waited another ten minutes while she got drink, took the order, walked back to the kitchen to put it in then finally came over to hand us the check. We should have been out of there about 20 minutes quicker than we actually were which is frustrating when there’s only a couple of tables being used. She was a very nice, sweet lady but she got distracted a little too easily. When we do breakfast, we really expect it to be a 30 minute thing…tops. Breakfast doesn’t take that long. This meal was way closer to an hour than we wanted it to be.
Other than that, our first Friendly’s trip was a tasty one. Three of us enjoyed the meal. It was a little chain-ish and a little too polished but that was fine. We knew what we were getting in to. Could we have found a local place with a little more charm? Absolutely, but we had never been to a Friendly’s before and I wanted to knock it off my list. Mission accomplished there.
SW Michigan Dining 