Café Cilantro is not a place to go if you're looking for a quick breakfast. Or a quick lunch. Or indeed, any meal if you're a bit pressed for time. Whilst the food they serve is always fresh and mostly delicious, I've always found their service to be a bit lackadaisical at best. Indeed, it just feels like they don't know how to run their kitchen so that people can get their food in a decent amount of time. There have been times when I've had to wait up to 20 minutes for a cup of tea, and 45 minutes for a simple quesadilla, both of which were presented with just a mere shrug of the shoulders by the waitress instead of a proper apology.
It's a shame that the service here is so poor because it has all the key ingredients to become a great little vegetarian cafe. Their breakfasts are incredibly tasty (I highly recommend the pancakes with maple syrup), and they even do a half decent vegetarian black pudding - which is no mean feat when you remember that the key ingredient of black pudding is a fair amount of pigs blood.
Cafe Cilantro really just needs someone to come onboard and shake it up a bit so it becomes something really special. Even staff who knew how to get food out quickly and efficiently would help. At the moment, it's just 'meh' - and when you consider how many great eateries there are on Beech Road, 'meh' really just isn't good enough. read more