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Name Of Establishment	Los Banos Drug Company Soda Fountain & Lunch Counter
Address:	601 J Street Los Banos Calif. 93635
Phone Number:	209-826-5834
Website:	Unknown
Prices:	Low
Date Of Review:	June 3, 2006
Check out the Official Merced County Health Inspection of this Restaurant - If that link isn't working try this link (note: these links are slow to load)
Our Overall Numeric Rating
Summation Opinion:

We recently took our family out for a special lunch that the kids exclaimed over and we adults thoroughly enjoyed. It was almost like a peek into the past. It's not often that you can find a real, old-fashioned soda fountain and lunch counter, but Los Banos has a ticket to good-times-past at the Los Banos Drug Company on J street.

The atmosphere at Los Banos Drug's lunch counter is well... like eating lunch in a drug store. If you fondly remember the 50s or if you don't personally remember them but like the laid back and homey atmosphere offered by local businesses that have their own flair and special aplomb then you will enjoy this experience as we did.

Los Banos Drugs is an old style pharmacy with delivery and emergency services. It's not often you can find a modern store that will bring you your medications to your home for free or open things up in the middle of the night for an emergency prescription. It's also no longer common to find a nice place to go to that serves REAL ice cream milkshakes or soda fountain sodas along with a menu of breakfast and lunch served at a counter complete with bar stools.

Breakfasts range from items like waffles, donuts and English muffins to other traditional items such as eggs, bacon sausage and hash browns. Lunch is a variety of sandwiches: ham & cheese, liverwurst, turkey, tuna, grilled cheese, deviled egg and so on as well as a choice of salads and soups. The grill closes around 2:30 or so, but even after the grill goes cold you can still have your sandwiches toasted.

The prices at Los Banos Drugs are reasonable. The sandwiches range from $3.00 to $5.75 with the average being in the $4.00 range. You can also order your food to go. Ice cream treats (shakes, freezes, sodas, sundaes and more) range from 1.50 to 4.75 (for a banana split).

On our visit we all ended up selecting the turkey special sandwich (turkey, Swiss and bacon on sourdough), except for our youngest son who wanted a ham & cheese. The sandwiches were served with a side of pickles and a bag of chips. They were really tasty and everyone was more than satisfied. We also shared a macaroni salad that tasted homemade and was very much liked.

My husband ordered a strawberry milkshake with his lunch and our daughter had a root beer float. Both were of excellent quality. The kids particularly enjoyed watching the shakes being made on the old style mixer. The shakes are served 'old style' that is they bring the shake in a glass and you are also given the mixing tin so you can spoon out any leftovers that did not fit into the glass.

Our oldest son decided to try a cherry phosphate (hand-mixed soda with a cherry on top!) and we all had to have a taste. It was terrific; a real old-fashioned treat. I regretted my Dr. Pepper at the first sip of my son's soda and wished I had ordered a cherry phosphate too!

The service was friendly and prompt. The woman behind the counter chatted with us amiably and talked to us about local matters. She was not only a good cook but was very personable and easy to like. This is the kind of place to park yourself and not only get some old-fashioned good food or ice cream, but old fashioned good service and conversation too!

After eating we wandered around the store a little and took a look at the variety of goods (and some kids toys) that they have there.

We had a wonderful family afternoon outing at Los Banos Drugs Soda Fountain & Lunch Counter. We enjoyed a great lunch that was fun and came complete with a peek into how simple and less plasticy things were in the past. We really enjoyed ourselves and think it's likely that you will too. If you have any kids, bring them in to see how things "used to be" and if you don't, enjoy a good meal with good people.

Specific Opinions By Reviewer One
Overall Rating :
Food:	Ice cream shakes etc. would rate a 5!
Service:
Decor:	I like the old fashioned soda fountain feel.
Price/Value:
Bathroom Cleanliness:		Not Observed
Romance Factor:	In it's old fashioned way this place IS romantic... others may NOT agree
Family Friendliness:

Specific Opinions By Reviewer Two
Overall Rating :
Food:	Fountain / ice-cream selections are excellent and rate a 5
Service:
Decor:
Price/Value:
Bathroom Cleanliness:		Not Observed
Romance Factor:
Family Friendliness:

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Reviews in this section are simply personal opinions. We are sharing these, our experiences and opinions as a means to further discussion in our Los Banos Forums section not to promote or discommend any particular business. In fact we absolutely encourage our readers to make a personal visit to each of the restaurants we review and form your own opinion which (if it is respectful and honest) you are encouraged to post on the Los Banos Bulletin Boards where you are also welcome to discus OUR reviews.

More About Our Los Banos Restaurant Reviews

In this section, the staff of Our Los Banos .com shares our personal opinions on the restaurants that we patronize in the City of Los Banos. We would like to stress that we are not professional reviewers, that we have had little or no training in the food arts, and that we are simply expressing our own personal views and opinions on particular visits that we made to the establishments under consideration.

Subjectivity. We make no pretense of the fact that we are not objective. As with art, food is a subjective experience subject to personal opinion and even whim. Some people love a particular artist's work while others can not stand what is put on canvas. Picasso comes to mind. Similarly people's appreciation for a particular chef's abilities are uniquely their own. While our tastes are very eclectic and we enjoy a tremendous variety of different types of food, we do not expect our readers will agree with all of our opinions and views. We DO encourage our readers to try each of the places that we have reviewed and then you can discuss (politely and in a positive fashion) your experiences and opinion of our review in the Los Banos Forum section.

Merced County Health Food Facility Inspections Site

Finally, we strongly encourage our readers to make use of a truly wonderful online resource we discovered last year. Merced County has put together a very cool Food Facility Inspection website which discloses the results of the County Health Department's last few inspections of each restaurant. The results are sometimes quite fascinating and are always interesting. Beware however you may not want to eat at certain places once you read some of the more dramatic entries. We at Our Los Banos .com very much appreciate and support the county of Merced putting these Department of Health food facility inspections online for the public to see.

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