Today my mom, husband and I went to the Covered Bridge Cafe for my birthday breakfast. We had read and heard so many great reviews including from my mom who had been there before with friends.
As soon as we walked in the door, we noticed how cold it was in the restaurant. No biggie, we were seated and thought the cold would subside, but it didn't. We were absolutely freezing. My mom jokingly said something to one of the employees asking them if they were also cold and they said," yeah kind of."
Now, keep in mind, it's been warm during the late afternoons here, but not at 10:30 in the morning. I see that all but 1 or 2 customers are elderly and they all have sweaters and jackets on.
When we got our food, my mom asked the server if the air could be turned down and the server responded with,"no, my boss won't let us."
I am all for the servers comfort since they're the ones doing all of the leg work but, this was crazy.
While we were eating our food hoping to be distracted from the cold, I over heard other customers being asked if they were too cold and if they wanted to move to another seat. Apparently our comfort was not as important as the regulars.
I had ordered the French toast, country potatoes and bacon. The first slice of the French toast was fairly descent but the two after that were so incredibly soggy and seemed to be undercooked.
I would have told a server but we weren't asked how our food was until we were about done. I didn't want to interrupt any of the severs friendly conversations with the locals which seemed to be a priority over the outsiders.
When we were finally asked if everything was ok, the server did offer to get me new French toast but I had eaten the very outer edges that weren't as undercooked along with my underwhelming country potatoes and very good bacon. She did remove the French toast from the bill.
We waited outside, in the sun while my mom paid the bill where she once again said something about how cold it was in there and again was given the excuse of,"our boss won't let us turn it down."
It had to have been 65° inside and the restaurant closes at 2pm, so I'm not sure why they needed to keep the temperature at the level of a morgue during the coolest part of the day. Also, with such quick responses with what seemed to be the go to answer, obviously we're not the only ones who have complained about this.
We will never return to this restaurant as we did not feel welcome and the food was sub-par and made me feel nauseous after we ate. We drove from Salem to try this restaurant which was a waste of time, gasoline and money. read more