{"id":9875,"date":"2014-08-18T14:07:05","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T18:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=9875"},"modified":"2014-08-18T14:11:28","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T18:11:28","slug":"review-danvilles-nicks-grill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/08\/18\/review-danvilles-nicks-grill\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Danville’s “Nick’s Grill”"},"content":{"rendered":"

We haven’t had a restaurant review in a long time, so let’s remedy that by checking out Nick’s Grill on Memorial Drive in Danville.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Nick’s Grill is located in the former Blackwell Dodge building (544 Memorial Drive) on the outskirts of downtown Danville. The place has been open for a few months now so it’s time to check them out for a Friday lunch.<\/p>\n

This building was the office building of Blackwell Dodge so a lot of remodeling had to be done to make it into a restaurant. Unfortunately, the remodeling that has been done makes it a very cramped atmosphere. There’s only 5 tables for dine-in and that’s just not enough. I overheard the employees and owner saying that they were going to add extra seating but based on the building’s configuration, it’s going to have to be outdoor seating or adding on to the building. I don’t see that happening.<\/p>\n

The place looks to be still under construction with a drive-thru with 2 windows is being installed. Or supposedly, because it looks half-finished and there were no signs of any recent activity there. A drive-thru is nice, but this restaurant has much higher priorities for construction. Two big window air conditioners kept the place at a comfortable temperature, but generated a pretty good crosswind that could send napkins flying.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that’s the looks. Now to the ordering and food. I was looking forward to trying the promised middle eastern foods and all that they had on the menu was butter chicken and gyros. Boo. It gets worse as an elderly woman came in asking about some Tabouleh salad, and the order taker said “What’s That?” Facepalm. Then she asked the cooks had they ever heard of it and got a “No” reply. Double Facepalm. Ok, fine. Other people are getting the Philly cheesesteak so I’ll go for that as a combo. It’s all hamburgers, chicken and fish. No real middle eastern foods on the menu.<\/p>\n

Two people are doing the cooking from a clearly visible kitchen, and they’re hustling. They’re outnumbered by the multiple orders and it’s 18 minutes from order until I get my food. I’m OK with that, but that’s not going to work for people with a limited time for lunch. It’s definitely not going to work for a drive-thru. There needs to be more than two people in the kitchen and a lot more prep work done for the lunch rush. The drink machine is behind the counter and drinks are served in very small cups. Bleah. Self-service would have been better.<\/p>\n

The cheesesteak is very good (not quite up to the level that the defunct Phi-lly Cheesesteaks used to have, but still good) and served hot. The fries are OK, but got better as the meal went along. The five table problem rears up again as multiple customers simply have no place to sit and have to wait for others to leave. Dessert is ice cream, but I had no idea that their ice cream freezer had anything in it because it was all covered up with cardboard.<\/p>\n

Time to leave and I look for a place to dump my trash and there’s no trash can. As soon as I stand up, the order-taker flies out to wipe down the table as the next person gets lucky and gets a table.<\/p>\n

Ok, let’s go to the numbers!<\/p>\n

Service<\/strong>:\u00a0 The cooks are overwhelmed by the lunch rush. The order taker is friendly but now knowledgeable of the middle eastern foods that were promised to be on the menu by now. the owner arrived at near the end of the lunch rush and pitched in to help, but the lace needs at least 2 more people to get it to speed. No followup by the staff once you got your food. Score: 76 (C)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Food<\/strong>:\u00a0 What I wanted wasn’t on the menu. People were promised the middle eastern foods and they haven’t delivered on that yet. It’s clearly not good when you have customers leaving your restaurant with nothing. The food I did get was mostly good, but there’s a lot of room for improvement on the menu. I can go lots of places to get a cheeseburger combo. Score: 84 (B)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Atmosphere<\/strong>: It’s um… “there”. It still looks like an office building just with a\u00a0 kitchen area in the middle. Five tables are clearly not enough and that should be the place’s highest priority to fix. No decorations. The giant doors where the used to push cars in and out were weird-looking. There’s nothing special at all nor anything eye-catching. Score: 74 (C)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Intangibles<\/strong>:\u00a0 The place is located at a busy enough intersection ,but the lack of eye-catching signage can make you not notice the place until you’ve passed it. There’s not any “buzz” about this place around town yet and the lack of the promised food items that would make this place special just hasn’t happened. It’s just a generic restaurant. Score: 75 (C)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overall<\/strong>: I was a “number” when I walked into a “generic restaurant” and I got my food after hovering around for a table to become vacant. Eight weeks after opening is enough time for a restaurant to find its groove. It’s also enough time for the ownership\/management to become self-aware on the shortcomings and start to fix them quickly. Sure, I’ll try Nick’s Grill again and let my readers know about the next visit and I’m going to suggest that you give the place a try when you can. Nick’s Grill has potential, but I thought that the restaurant would be much farther along then where they’re at now.<\/p>\n

Overall Grade<\/strong>:\u00a0 79 (C+)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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We haven’t had a restaurant review in a long time, so let’s remedy that by checking out Nick’s Grill on Memorial Drive in Danville.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[58,9,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-danville","category-foodcentral","category-opinioncentral","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-2zh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6693,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2010\/04\/03\/danvilles-cruise-in-season-begins-tonight\/","url_meta":{"origin":9875,"position":0},"title":"UPDATED: Danville’s Cruise-In season begins tonight!","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"April 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"(Updated to add photo slideshow link) Make your way to Downtown Danville tonight from 6PM to 9PM. 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