Scoops Restaurant Breakfast & Lunch
8123 Lundy’s Lane
Food: 7/10
Space: 3/10
Price: 8/10
Total: 18/30
We love a good greasy spoon, and the hard-working blue-collar folks of Niagara Falls are no different. There’s no shortage of excellent diners in the city, even though several have shuttered in recent years—apparently it’s hard to keep afloat a famously low-cost food genre with no expectation of healthy options. But nobody eats bacon, eggs and toast for the health benefits. You eat them because they’re fun, filling and delicious. Scoops is definitely filling; it is not particularly delicious.
So let’s start there: the food itself. The coffee is fine and bottomless; indeed, the kind waitresses never let me even finish my cup before refilling it. That is perhaps the definition of “bottomless” as it pertains to diner coffee.
We ordered several breakfast plates, including potatoes, sausage, an omelet and fruit. None of it was outstanding. The home fries, sliced into wildly uneven chunks, were (predictably) unevenly cooked, ranging from “mushy” to “crunchy and raw”. The omelet lacked the heft and fillings of other competitor diners in the city, while the Texas sausage was fine and spicy, but ultimately small and unremarkable.
Nonetheless, the food is just fine; it’s nothing to go out of your way for. Decent portions, friendly service and $10 meal options help a lot.
But then you look up and see those beige, boring, strip plaza walls, and think… bleh.
I mean, sure, they don’t have to break the bank to decorate. But it’s just a remarkably boring blace. Compared to what we consider the great diners of the city, all of which make dining out an experience—whether it’s a genuinely old-school vibe (Basell’s) or a recently renovated throwback (Hi-Lite)—Scoops is just so painfully mediocre in so many ways.
