Just Fred's
 Youngstown, Ohio        Date of Visit  04/28/13         Facebook Page

This is the first time I have been to Just Fred’s but I have been here a number of times before. Just Fred’s comes with it’s own soap opera. The sign outside still says “Page’s New Ages Diner” the name under which I have had a number of breakfasts. The Page’s haven’t been involved for quite a while. If I remember correctly they had to move on after some family tragedy. Sometime afterward it has been run under the same name by a husband and wife team. The team isn’t together anymore.
 

The Soap Plays Out On The Signs Out Front
 

He got the house, she the restaurant. I don’t pretend to know what happened since then…but as the sign says…Fred is back. I’ll take the sign out front as a sign of how amicable the divorce is.

The interior is the same minus apparently anything his ex had put up on the walls making it more stark but less cluttered. It’s more empty customer-wise as well, than I am accustomed for a place which tends to serve a passable and sturdy breakfast. We ordered five different versions of said breakfast two omelets (feta/ham & feta/shroom), two overeasy eggs with sausage, two scrambled and three kiddo pancakes. All but the pancakes come with home fries and toast (well nearly all). The pancakes were much larger than I would have expected for a kids version and one of them disappeared without complaint. The breakfasts were just what I expected, sturdy and passable, the cook is back in the kitchen afterall. What is missing is the ex-front of the house commander, and she was missing today.
 

If I have to guess, our server might have been on team ex-wife more so than team ex-husband. That, or Fred cares as much about the front of the house as our server appears to. Fluctuating seamlessly between bad attitude and sweetness or incompetence and service it was hard to tell what the next moment would bring. What stuck with me most was the atrocious attitude she flung in my brothers face when he asked to try the sausage instead of the bacon he initially ordered. That, and the fact that she dropped my toast on the table in the wet spot from our “squish up your straw paper and drip some water on it growing snake entertainment” and either not notice or care. I was going to reorder some and maybe try the sausage patty that got my brother the look followed by the hard turn on the heels and stomp away since it looked house made and pretty tasty but she didn’t seem interested. And I quickly lost interest.

Fred might want to train the front of the house, or weed out any split loyalties or the only thing at Just Fred’s might be Just Fred.