Billy's in Princeton

We went to Western Half Yearly Meeting last weekend and decided to take an extra few days to visit some friends in the interior. The longer trip took us through Princeton, a very nice small interior town that is worth visiting if you get the chance. We were hitting town at lunch time and we had to go somewhere for the meal. The first place that came to mind was Billy's.

 The restaurant is nothing fancy, but for a roadside diner it is just about perfect.

It is located right at the bottom of the hill when you come into town from the west.   It has been there since the 1970s and sits on the site of the former Princeton Brewing Company which for many years used a cave to cool their beer.   There is still one back wall of the brewery left against the hillside.  

Many restaurants call themselves family friendly, but Billy's goes that extra mile.   This is not a few crappy crayons and some lame page to colour, they bring a whole box of toys.  One of the toys was a puzzle like thing and was interesting enough for our 14 year old to play around with it.

The food is diner food done well.   The hamburgers were on soft fresh buns, they had fresh non-iceberg lettuce on them.   The patties were hand formed and about as good as I can make at home.

The fries were hot and plentiful.   They may have been hand cut on site, but if they were not they have a high quality supplier.   The gravy I got with the fries was not some generic brown powder mixed with hot water.   I think it may actually have been made in house from real meat.

The coffee was decent and not the weak brown water that you get in so many interior BC diners.   My cup was being refilled about as fast as I could drink it.   In general the service was fast, attentive and friendly.

The price was about what one would expect for a diner.   The shakes looked expensive and was more than we wanted for lunch so we did not have any.  I could see a proper machine in the restaurant and I suspect they do those classic thick ones where you get the metal container it was made in along with the shake in your glass.

For burger and fries, they did as well as I could have done at home, certainly much better than I can do camping.  They lived up to everything I remembered of them from past trips through town.