Nickelby’s Restaurant & Lounge

The food was extremely good. The service was a little slow and could have been better but they were pretty busy so we understood. Defiantly recommend it for Sunday mornin breakfast :)

Great place. This is not an upscale «you are a special star» diner, so if you’re a hipster, just reign it in and enjoy the pancakes. This is a place you drop into for good food at decent prices, and a clean room. Been here a few times for breakfast, and it’s exactly what I wanted. Menu is simple and food is hot and fresh.
Going to try the lounge and Dinner menu in the future.

If ever a place was a solid one star, this is it. The décor is stuck in the 60s and the menu is stuck in the 80s. It’s like a Dennys without the charm or attentive staff. I have been exactly once and felt no reason to come back. You can do the same quality for cheaper or better for the same price almost anywhere else. This is mediocre food topped with apathy.

Used to come here about 9 years ago to drink and karaōke. I used to love Nickleby’s I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. Well I was hanging out with my dad and we decided to redo the old times by coming to this place for all the great memories we used to have but he did warn me that they had a complete renovation. When I walked in I didn’t even recognize the place on top of it it looks bad it actually looked good 9 years ago I don’t know why you would do a renovation to make it look worse? It makes me feel sad honestly couldn’t recognize even where I was standing in the bar from what it was nine years ago my dad had to show me around then try to jog my memory because it looks so different. Looks run down the reason I give it more than one star it’s because the nachos were really good and bartender was nice but I’m not sure if that was just because she really likes my dad since he’s a regular for the last 10 years. Anyways I wish they never renovated this place it was perfect the way it was before just kind of seems like it’s gone downhill :-(I miss the old Nickleby’s

The food was great but the service was sloooooooooooooooooooooooow. We went around 1pm on a Thursday afternoon. I got the Tower of London cheeseburger which was huge and delicious. My dining companion got the club and enjoyed it, although she said the potato salad was bland.

I ordered salmon and I got sushi I will never go there again. The waitress was nice and apologetic and very attentive. But after the raw fish on my plate there is no way I was going to let them cook anything else for me. I was sick to my stomach when I left the restaurant. My recommendation is to go anywhere else but there.

We had breakfast and it was very good.
there again when back in top water. The chicken fried steak wasyummy.

If I could leave zero stars I would. Disgusting food rude staff. Needs to be shut down

My company goes here for breakfast once per month. We all love the food and the waitress knows us and has our table ready for us after only a couple of months. She does a great job of getting our orders out without too much interruption, which hasn’t been the case everywhere. The place doesn’t look very welcoming, but the people sure are. We also are all from around here so maybe that’s why we love the breakfasts — we’re small town folks. Good sized, portions, home made, delivered hot, with a smile. Yep, that’s how we like it!

Wow. We stopped here for dinner on a road trip thinking we’d get some home cooked diner food– what a bad choice.
From the schizophrenic menu (curry, pork chops, lasagna?) we chose French dip and pork shops– ugh. French dip looked like it was a frozen sandwich from 7 – 11, soup was canned, and my husband couldn’t even get through the dry chewy pork chops even with a pool of gravy on it.
Staff was friendly but abandoned us half way through the meal-​we got out of there asap.
Just wanted to post this as a warning– move to the next exit if you’re looking for a good stop on I5. And Nickelbys– please get help!

This place is really something else. I don’t come here often, actually haven’t been here since I moved back to Tumwater. I remembered now why I don’t come here. They run out of well vodka at 5:45 with about 20 people in the place. What kind of bar is this!!! Their next cheapest option is twice the price. This place is a total disaster and I’m guessing extremely poorly run… well I know it’s poorly run after today’s experience. I knew I should have gone to the Brick!

My brother had been down this way a while back and brought me some of their yummy homemade biscuits. We stopped by on our way home yesterday. both had the Monte Cristo with potato salad. Now a couple things you have to know they ROAST THEIR OWN TURKEY and BEEF. it is rare that you can find a place that STILL roasts their own meat. They had thick slices of turkey in the Devine Monte Cristo. And the homemade potato salad was PERFECT. Our server was VERY attentive and yes the place is a throwback to older style diners, but I would want to go to this type of place any day over some chain restaurant. I am glad we found this gem and will stop by again if passing by

This country style restaurant has decent food. Some of the execution of the dishes is pretty unremarkable but their chicken Alexander is very tasty and moist. Lots of carbs are included with the meal. Service was friendly but a bit slow. A decent choice for stopping on the road.

My wife and I stopped here one night, and it was one night too many.
We both ordered dishes with taco meat, and the meat wasn’t seasoned very well: Taco Bell does a better job with seasoning. My wife’s dinner came with «cottage cheese with fresh fruit.» Fresh to them apparently means canned mandarin oranges.
Simply put, we were unimpressed, and will not be going back.

Hadn’t been here in twenty years and they’ve remodeled since then. Clean tables, friendly staff, and nice servings for breakfast. Not the most inventive menu, but it’s fairly priced food.

Real down home. The food is tasty. The atmosphere could be the start of a scary movie involving creepy locals. However, i go there all the time and love the food and service. Just an old shabby place where old shabby people frequent.

Where do I begin? I created a Unilocal account just so I could write a negative review about this place. If I could give it zero stars, I would.
Atmosphere: I came here for a late lunch with my mother and 1 year old son. When we walked in there were about five other people eating, and it was dead quiet within. I felt like I had just walked into a library, where I was expected to keep my son silent for the next hour.
Not Family-​Friendly: I asked for a high chair to put my son in and 5 minutes later someone finally arrived with something straight out of the 1950’s, with a seran-​wrapped tray. The thing was very rickety and made me worried that my very active child would topple over at any moment. Also, they did not provide a kids menu so I spent $ 8 for a grilled cheese sandwich & $ 2 for a cup of milk – $ 10 for one year old. Not so great.
Food: My mom ordered chicken fried steak with eggs, hashbrowns, and a biscuit and said everything tasted great. I was not so lucky. I ordered Eggs Benedict with hashbrowns. The hollandaise sauce was lumpy and broken from being cooked incorrectly & there was a massive puddle of it covering everything on the plate, the English muffins weren’t toasted and became a soggy, gelatinous mess, and cheap deli style ham was used in place of good ham steak. The hashbrowns were good, probably the kind you can buy in the freezer section at the grocery store, and browned well. I forced myself to eat half of the Eggs Benedict because I was starving and my stomach started to hurt as I was eating. Not a good sign of things to come. Oh, and my son’s grilled cheese was alright, despite being made with one sad slice of processed cheese and burnt on one side.
Service: Awful. Like I said, there were only a handful of other people there when we arrived, but the service was painfully slow. I told our server that there was no toilet paper in the restroom and she shortly finished my sentence for me. If you know there’s no toilet paper, why don’t you take care of it? I told her (politely) how god-​awful my food was and she responded with a flat, «oh» and squared her shoulders as if she was used to people complaining. No apologies or offers to make something else were made. She bickered openly with the cooks, barking at them to «throw it in the microwave» when they forgot my mom’s biscuit.
The icing on the cake? After we waited ten minutes for our check (squawking toddler in tow) we finally decided to get up and stand by the register. As I put my son in the car our server told my mom all about how she missed her two-​year-​old grandson – who was murdered earlier this year. Nice warm impression to leave us with, don’t you think?
In short: Don’t waste your time. Your stomach and your pocketbook will thank you. Black Bear Diner or Hawk’s Prairie offer much better food for the same price, if not cheaper.

When you are traveling and need a meal and a place to work or do a conference call for a couple of hours. One day on this trip, I stopped at three restaurants before I found one with wireless. It’s pot luck to find the following requirements:
1. No loud music — or you can’t hear the phone call.
2. Not too packed — or you will annoy the folks around you with your call.
3. This is a situation where slow service is a good thing, except when you need to pay your tab.
4. In a neighborhood where you aren’t afraid to get out of your car.
5. Wireless access.
6. Notice, I didn’t actually say much about the food. My main requirement here is that I don’t do fast food. I will go to a grocery store first.
So, I’m headed to Olympia, WA, and I needed to do a two hour conference call and was wondering how many stops it would take. I turned off the Tumwater exit to the first place off the highway. I really didn’t think they would have wireless. The place looked like a dated small town restaurant. You would be surprised at how many places I’ve stopped where the hostess doesn’t even know whether they have wireless. And, the parking lot was almost empty at 5:00 pm, which isn’t a good sign, but it did meet requirement 2.
It was indeed a very dated local restaurant, but to my surprise they did have wireless — and strong wireless at that. And, I did not have to ask them to reboot the wireless to get it to work. I asked the server to put me in a corner where I wouldn’t irritate anyone with a call. Even better, their booths have a glass partition between them. So, even as the restaurant filled, I did not need to feel that I was bothering anyone.
The service was very cordial and thoughtful, if not polished. Personally, if I owned a restaurant, I would steal that server because she has the makings of a great server. It was indeed slow, but don’t know whether it was because the server was giving me room to work.
The food was probably cutting edge in the 1960s. But, people enjoyed food back then too. It wasn’t bad; it wasn’t great. The salad was cheap diner style. The mashed potatoes were real, and the skins were mashed into the potatoes, which I guess is probably a little more modern than 1960! We recognize the nutrition value of the skins. The gravy wasn’t great. The salmon was cooked just right for me, if very plain.
But, they had exactly the type of work space I needed!

Not awful, but also not great. A menu that is trying to do too much, honestly, and the prices seem high for what you get. Probably will never stop in again.

Long on the pour, short on the bill.

Nickelby’s has seen better days. When I arrived there was several men outside the bar hanging out and very loud. There was almost no one in the restaurant when I arrived at around 7PM. The single waitress was very pleasant seated us and brought menus and water. The order was fast and the food very good
I had a Chicken Fried Steak and my son the Nickelby Cheese burger. The food was very good, but as the other reviewers state getting the bill took forever.
It would appear this is headed to shutdown.