Memory Lanes & The Flashback Cafe

I ate here the other day, I had a burger which was a frozen, throw on the grill patty.  The burger was OK but nothing great.  They had several TVs off and lights off like they are afraid the electric bill will be too high.  Even the coke or Pepsi that I had tasted bad.  I know I sound like a complainer.  The waitress I had seemed nice and friendly but several employees to include one loud mouth employee was talking stuff about the upper management or owners and she went on and on.  She was very loud, animated and even sitting at the bar and slamming her hands on the bar while yelling one of her many rants.  I not only found it disturbing but very unprofessional.  On my way out I overheard he talking to someone and called herself a Manager.  Not in my eyes, she wasn't.  She would go into the kitchen and come out again to do more ranting.  I don't know her name but she seems like the type of person that you could easily identify just by the loud behavior.  What a turn off.

I have to preface this review by admitting that I don't really enjoy bowling that much at all. With that in mind, Memory Lanes is definitely a four-five star place. They have 20+ bowling lanes. Whenever I've been there, we've had to wait for a lane. If it is a longer wait, we sit in the bar and order dinner. The food is pretty good and the menu is vegetarian friendly. I've had the portabella sandwich and appetizers. My boyfriend has had the pizza, which he liked.

The bar has a good variety of beers on tap and then more bottled selections as well. One time they dropped a breadstick on the way out, so they offered us a free shot. That might have made bowling more fun for me that night. The bar/Flashback Cafe has a lot of seating. It does get pretty busy, especially on the weekends, but we've always managed to find somewhere to sit.

They have a lot of bowling discounts but I don't think any of them apply Fri-Sat, so bowling always seems expensive to me. Servers come to your lane and ask if you want food or drink there as well, so you can also order while your bowling and not just at the restaurant. Last time we were there we finished up bowling but were still waiting for our food and drink bill. We were kicked out of the lane to make room for people on the waitlist. I understand this, but since we weren't sitting there to pass time, we were waiting for our check, it was a little annoying.

Overall, fun experience if you're bored!

I've been here a few times, but I'm not sure that I've ever actually gotten to bowl? Their website isn't totally clear on when open bowling is available, so that's frustrating. The league bowlers seem to dominate this place. The bowling area is actually pretty nice. It's clean and well-lit while still feeling retro-y. After my last few attempts. it's not somewhere I'll just walk in for on-a-whim bowling because it seems to be difficult to get a lane.

The bar and dining area could use some work. The beer is cheap and comes in big pints - I like that. But the atmosphere in the bar/restaurant is dingy and could use some updating. The food is really, really basic. They have waffle fries, which are solid. I don't have much else to say about the menu, except that there's a "hormel" logo on it? Not sure why, but I found that slightly off-putting. Service was friendly but mildly spacy, not a huge deal.

The largest negative of this place was the man next to me at the bar blatantly spitting tobacco into a plastic cup that he kept setting right next to my drink... el yuckyo. (I recognize that the establishment probably couldn't do anything to prevent this, but it still made me gag and force my friends to move across the room...)