UPDATE: People, if you want to try this place, knock yourselves out. But whatever you do, don't leave a negative review on Yelp! I had just posted my two-star review (below) when the owner came out and asked me, loudly and sharply, why I was trying to kill his business. He told me to leave and never come back unless I edited my review to three stars. WTF?? The conversation escalated as he ranted about how hard he works, "for [me] to come in and leave a bad review, just over milk." I told him I had worked for an immigrant-family-owned cafe, and I knew EXACTLY how hard he worked. I also told him that they (my previous employers) would Never have talked to a customer as he just had. Holy mackerel, if this is the way they treat someone for a bad review (of which not a Single Word was an untruth or an exaggeration), it's no wonder the place is empty on a day when any Starbucks is overflowing from open to close. I will never be back here. Ever. Below is my original review:
Wow. After reading such great reviews I was prepared to love this place. I was looking for a coffee joint, not too busy, where I could hang out and knit and/or sketch. I should have turned on my heel as soon as I saw that the place was EMPTY at 10:15 on a Sunday morning.
I hope it's just that Sunday if not their best day, traffic-wise, so they have their third-string working the counter. A dull-witted high school kid looked and acted as if she could not have cared less whether I stayed or left. I ordered a jalapeño kolache and a cup of coffee. When I asked for half and half in my coffee, she looked at me like I was telling her about my recent trip to Mars. "Oh, we don't have *that.*" I asked incredulously, "you don't have cream for the coffee?" Her response: "just what's over there," waving her hand in the general direction of my right shoulder. I was, um, dismayed to see that the only whitener they had was Coffee-Mate pods. Is this a bakery or a police station?? There was worse to come. I opened up two of the pods, dumped them into the battery acid they call coffee, only to find that it was French Vanilla-flavored Coffee-Mate. UGHHHH.
She was fairly gracious but unapologetic as she poured me a fresh cup of coffee.
For a "bakery," their pastry case is disappointing. Three flavors of croissants, a few cake pops and eclairs, and two lonely kolaches in the bottom of the case, of which I ordered the jalapeño version. She didn't ask me if I wanted any condiments with it, so I figured mustard packets were on the same counter as the sugar and whitener and I just hadn't noticed. Nope. I asked her if they had mustard and she said yes, then disappeared into the kitchen for a few seconds then came out with a little plastic cup, opened up their sandwich-fixin's case, only to find that the mustard was empty. By the time I got my mustard the kolache had had time to cool off and the grease rise to prominence on the skin of the sausage. Flavor was great, grease not so much.
As I have been writing this, a couple small groups of people have come in, which is heartening. The girl behind the counter was very chatty with the first group (who were also here for the first time); she gave them menus (wait, you have menus?? Not just "the stuff in the pastry case," as I had been told), told them about the place, that it had been here a year and a half, and it was owned by her parents, who were from Belgium.
A few minutes after I finished my kolache, the owner came out and asked about my experience eating there. He seemed a nice man, but I had to be honest... only way to improve is to know what's wrong, right?
I gave him the Cliff Notes version of the above experience, and he seemed genuinely concerned, especially about the coffee mate, saying they would work on having actual milk or cream for the coffee.
I ended by telling him that I would give it another try. He later came over to ask if I needed internet access, which I did, but instead of giving me the password for patrons, he took my laptop to type in the password, which didn't actually work. *sigh* read more