Ravenna Varsity Restaurant

Our family has been coming to this consistently excellent breakfast place for years. Look elsewhere for artisanal polenta and other hipster nonsense – Varsity Restaurant scores big on perfectly caramelized sea-​salt pecan sticky buns and the kind of hash browns you always craved as a kid. They have a diverse breakfast menu that miraculously includes vegetarian breakfast patties and Zoka’s Coffee, served up by the friendly owner and her equally kind staff. Tl;dr: Short on frills, but with affordable and ample portions – Varsity Inn is what our family thinks of when we think of breakfast.

A fantastic, down to earth neighborhood staple to stop by for a hearty breakfast. Wonderful omelettes, stunning sea salt and pecan cinnamon rolls, and a wide variety of vegetarian options. The service was warm and prompt. Will definitely come back again

Whenever I come back to Seattle, I love coming for breakfast at this warm neighborhood restaurant. They are always quick to refill the excellent Zoka’s coffee, and just take great care to offer friendly service. I recommend the corn beef hash Monday special but my vegetarian kids love the veggie breakfast sandwich.
Jonathan Singer

Ok, I can’t give the Varsity five stars. It’s a diner for crying out loud. It is a five star diner though!
I’ve been coming here for years. Like 30. Now I cross town to come here.
Get to know the wait staff. Sometimes you get served by a high school student who is learning how to work hard, sometimes it is the owner or one of her daughters… It is a bit of small town in the big city.
If you come by on a Friday say hi, I’ll be in my booth digging into my country Benedict.
And tell Sandy that Greg sent you!

So close to my apartment and open at 7 AM; both are bonus points for me when choosing a breakfast joint.
I have been here a couple of times, it is kind of a get together place for people who live close by, so there is always a line of neighborhood customers waiting to be seated and it is usually busy.
The staff are okay, I feel like they do their best, but tend to be overwhelmed on the busier hours of the day. The wait time to be served after you put in your order can get very long and there is not much you can do about it. The prices are a little bit high given the quality of the food and the service provided.
They close at 3 and serve both breakfast/​brunch and lunch.
Food is okay. A little bit greasy for my liking. I have had the eggs Benedict which was Okay, pancakes are huge and fluffy. Fruit bowl with Granola is okay. I have had the scrambled eggs here as well, while they were okay, they lacked the wow factor. I have not found one item here that stands out. But everything is within the acceptable range.
I have also tried a few of the lunch items and just like the brunch menu everything is okay.
I would come back here due to its proximity to my place.

I hate being the one to give 2 stars as I’m sure it was an off day. But 40 minutes waiting for our take out order to be ready after initially being told 15 minutes. Without so much as an apology or update as time went on is just inexcusable. They more seemed incredibly bothered that I had called for a pickup order. As I left another gentleman was walking out as well as the waitress chased him down with his finally finished breakfast. He politely declined and left.
I think it was probably due to the service that my food just was not even appetizing. It’s so unfortunate when you give a neighborhood spot a second chance and are left with so much frustration and curiously on how businesses such as this are still surviving. Too bad they can’t bring back the family run restaurant it once was.

Horrible service. Sat at the bar for 10 minutes without being greeted with 5 staff members standing behind the bar.

I hate to say this but this was a below average breakfast experience. I like to support small, venerable neighborhood places and all, but this was just okay food that I certainly could have made just as well or better at home, and for much cheaper too.
Service was attentive and friendly but also a bit disjointed (due in part to new waitstaff, probably – sitting at the counter gave me a front row seat to a number of errors and an overall uncoordinated feel).
Bottom line: for $ 22, a veggie breakfast burrito with juice and tea should be light years better than this was – unevenly heated and pretty bland except where I added salsa or sour cream. Cue sad trombone.

Very fast service! The benedict eggs are very lightly cooked that the whites are jelly but I’m sure other foods taste really good like what my boyfriend ordered.

The people here are always so sweet that I want to give a good review. But every time the service is slow and I watch the waiters stand around doing very little while coffee cups and water glasses are empty and people are ready to order. Today takes the cake though, after ordering their «famous» cinnamon rolls we found not one but two hairs. One in the frosting and one baked into the roll. We got an apology, asked if we would like another one. No thank you. And she took it off the bill. The cinnamon roll that we didn’t eat. Thank you for that. End of story. Very disappointed in the customer service. At the very least discount the bill. Just a little bit. As a make good. Sad that neighboring Patty’s Eggsnest next door closed. Ravenna could use a diner with better service. And fewer hairs in the food.

I decided to try this neighborhood restaurant which is a bit of an icon. It’s in a neat part of town on 65^th near U Village. The restaurant itself is a bit dingy. Could definitely use a facelift. The waitress was friendly but not very speedy. It was later in the day and not busy.
I ordered the veggie Benedict and my friend ordered the granola with yogurt and fresh fruit. We were underwhelmed. It felt like ihop food. Just kind of plain. No bells or whistles.

The service was great, our server was very friendly. Very family oriented restaurant. Came in for breakfast, my friend had the huevos rancheros, which she liked and I had the chicken fried steak. It was nice and crispy batter and good gravy. I would go back for breakfast if I’m ever in the area.

Good service, good food. What I ordered was very vanilla (er, not ACTUAL vanilla), scrambled eggs, wheat toast, etc. Satisfying, tasty, well cooked, as expected.

Meh. Mediocre food. Nothing original or unique. The service is over taxed, but not in terms of staffing, in terms of IQ. They can’t manage the floor. Service is haphazard, sloppy, slow, surly and south of McDonalds.
The table behind us had their order taken right before ours was served and had their bill before we saw food (which we never did). Our waitress, never checked in, but would occasionally glance over, see we had no food and then wander off to complain to her co-​workers how tired she was and how she had been sick last week. When the water girl comes around three times to refill water glasses and still no food has arrived, it should be a clue. When the lack of food and an inquiry was made of other staff, the issue wasn’t relayed to our waitress. This is a staff so poorly trained, so ignorant of their job that if they were cab drivers we’d have gone off a bridge while engulfed in flames.
It’s sad, actually, the place used to be simply mediocre. Half-​ass food at ¾ ass prices. But the food arrived. Now I can’t even get the crap I ordered. And, why, might you ask would I go here given my opinion of the food? Laziness. And maybe that air of laziness spread to the staff. Hard to say. But they won’t be saying it to me again. I can only put up with incompetent numbnuts serving food for so long. I guess it’s time for McDonald’s. Where the food is crappy, but at least it shows up.

Walked here on a sunny Sunday with a friend that lives in the area. We were starving, and diner food sounded perfect. Boy were we right!
Now, the service wasn’t super fast, but we understood we would probably have to wait a bit to get our food. (The place was packed.) So, the service seemed reasonable given that there were people ordering, eating and being seated all over the place. We took the chance to sit back and chat. (Like you do in a diner.)
I ordered the Eggs Benedict, and they were quite tasty! Nice and saucy hollandaise, with perfectly runny eggs. Add in a nice side of hashbrowns, and I was full and happy by the time we waddled back from whence we came.
Definitely would love to come back and try their sticky buns or french toast!

We’ve been going for a while and as a rule it’s been OK. However the service has traditionally been slowish. Yesterday took the cake though, half an hour for our order to be taken (yes, we did remind them), then over an our for food to show up. Kinda takes the edge off any satisfaction from going. Probably not going back. It is an alright diner, just don’t hope to ‘eat it and beat it’. BTW, we have an infant, so we don’t have the luxury of spending too long in any one place. The price you pay for parenthood, but even without our rug-​rat yesterday was just too slow. Sorry.

This is the second time I’ve been here. First time was ok the food is pretty good, service decent. Today service and food extremely slow. It took an hour to get our food, they seemed very disorganized today. Probably won’t come back.

RECOMMEND: country biscuits & gravy, french toast combo
Came back here again yesterday for some diner breakfast and I’m still a fan. I was experiencing a bit of a sweet tooth craving so I went with the French Toast combo and my boyfriend ordered the country biscuits and gravy.
FOOD — thumbs up
If I wasn’t afraid of gaining weight after eating the country biscuits and gravy I would definitely order it. He ordered it with over easy eggs and it’s definitely the way to go. There are two over easy eggs over two sausages over two biscuits and then covered in gravy with a side of hash browns. It’s pretty much the heaviest, most indulging, delicious breakfast entrée. If you like your hash browns crispy then you might want to ask for them extra crispy.
The french toast combo was simple, straightforward, and yummy. There were four slices of french toast (two wholes cut in half) with a side of eggs (which I asked for scrambled) and two slices of bacon (or sausage, if you prefer). Some places overcook the scramble eggs to which they come out a little rubbery, but the scrambled eggs were done to the perfect state. The bacon hit the spot. It was flat, cripsy, but still chewy (how that is possible, I don’t even know).
The serving sizes are big. I went home with two slices of french toast.
SERVICE — meh
Service was slow and we got charged coffee we didn’t order. So check your receipt!!!
Despite the coffee mishap, I’d still come back here. It’s a great place to get an all-​American diner breakfast.

I’m a sucker for a good breakfast and lunch spot. In this case, free wi-​fi, after I had just moved into the neighborhood and had to wait two weeks for internet at home (thanks, cable companies!), was a bonus. So when my roommates wanted to catch up on the happenings of the world over brunch, I sure wasn’t going to say no.
The restaurant itself isn’t terribly large and was pretty much full, but we were ignored for a solid five minutes just waiting to be seated. And then were ignored again after coffee was served and one of my roommates requested more cream. I was thrilled to see salmon benedict — my favorite — on the menu, but it was served with overcooked, flavorless (baked?) salmon. Gross. My roommate’s custom omelette was a little better (why she had it served covered (and I mean covered) in hollandaise is beyond me, but that was her decision), but the avocado on top was completely underripe. (And for a brief moment, I actually missed Southern California.)
We have wi-​fi now. So I’m free to go elsewhere for my brunching needs.

Every neighborhood should have a restaurant like the Varsity Inn. You know, the sort of place that is best visited with the morning paper neatly tucked under your arm. Endless cups of coffee and delicious and filling breakfasts to boot. For some 50 years, Ravenna’s Varsity Inn has been just that sort of joint. Growing up I remember going there with my dad and listening to him talk about eating there when he was a UW student. When a business has deep roots like that, it helps to define the neighborhood itself and so it is that no description of Ravenna would be complete without a mention of this establishment.
A random Sunday morning finds a continuous din of activity. At some points in the morning there is a decent wait, other times customers can come in and be seated immediately. The service is polite and casual. There are a few kids working and one gets the sense that this is truly a family restaurant. Certainly not everyone who works there is an actually part of the same family, but that doesn’t even matter, because it’s the family atmosphere that’s important.
The menu is dominated by breakfast. It’s no coincidence that their website declares the «Best Breakfast in Town.» While the Varsity Inn has burgers, hot sandwiches and other non-​breakfast items, it’s the breakfasts — served all day — which brings people in and keeps them coming back.
On the most recent morning I ate there, I had the vegetable omelet and substituted buttermilk pancakes instead of hash browns and toast. My wife had scrambled eggs, hash browns and toast. The food arrived at our table in a reasonable amount of time and while we were waiting our coffees and waters were refilled regularly.
Both of our plates were picked clean. It was a nice relaxing meal. Filling and wholly satisfying — a great way to start the day!
Health Department Report
I’ve decided to add records from the King County Department of Public Health to my restaurant reviews because most people don’t even know these records are available. The past three food safety inspections at the Ravenna Varsity have been very good and improving, with scores of 0, 15 and 10. It’s good to see that they have addressed the previous issues, resulting in that 0 score in Aug. 2012. Source:
. More information on what the scores mean here:
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