Reviews for Dinos

11/23/2023 - MenuPix User

04/25/2015 - Al Swearengen
I've been a loyal customer of Dino's for over 14 years now but this patronage has come to an end today after a very negative experience at the Snelling Avenue location.

To summarize, I was treated very disrespectfully by a member of the staff and then was given reason to suspect that my food was being tampered with out of spite. This last part came as a complete shock as I had never even fathomed this being a possibly before today. As I had already paid and was not willing to make a scene, I just decided to walk out and cut my losses, but my day was ruined, and my experience of Dino's forever tainted. I will not be returning.

Here's what happened:

I was having a very nice Saturday, enjoying the first days of warm Minnesota spring, and decided to walk into Dino's for a quick bite before meeting some friends to spend the evening later. As usual, I walked up to the counter and politely ordered a Gyros plate with salad, and was surprised to hear the person taking my order spit a "what?" in what sounded like a confrontational tone to me. He was a young gentleman I had never seen before, with dark hair and very overweight. He didn't look very friendly but I tend not to judge expressions of people I have just met as they tend to be deceiving. Thinking that perhaps I was reading too much into it, I softly repeated my order and was shocked to witness how, after a briefly tense pause, he pointedly snarled "You mean the GEEros plate?" as if I had mispronounced the first syllable in Gyros (which is quite possible, as I am not a native Greek speaker, but seemed unwarranted since my conduct was nothing short of amiable, if at this point a little startled).

I repeated my order for a third time, again, in a friendly tone to make sure I was not imagining things, and confirmed, once again, the profound disgust with which the clerk was taking my order. He tossed a number card in the counter in front of me and with a tone of contempt informed that my food would be taken to my table and that I should have a seat. Smarting from the shock and still having trouble believing what was happening I made my way to a table, and as I sat and looked towards the counter noticed how the clerk was relieved by another member of the staff after a few quiet word between them. The clerk that had attended me walked back towards the kitchen and, as he did so, muttered something to the cooks in the back . Two of them reacted by smirking and looking up in my direction which at this point made me feel extremely uncomfortable and start to think that my food very possibly could be tampered with by these strangers who, through no apparent provocation, seemed to dislike me so intensely. I've heard stories before about horrible things kitchen staff do to food of clients they dislike but never in my life had I thought it could happen to me, or in Dinos of all places, until today. Noticing that I did not recognize a single face among the staff from all of my (frequent ) previous visits, and noting that I could not predict, or understand their animosity towards me, I decided not to create a scene and just walk out and try to salvage the rest of what had been a very nice day up until this awful experience brought it to a screeching halt. I will miss Dinos but I know that never again will I be able to take single piece of food to my mouth served there after what happened today. I hope management looks into whatever it is going on over there, or their hiring practices and how they screen candidates. because no customer, loyal or casual, deserves to be treated like that.