***2 1/2 stars***
I…read morethink I've officially aged out of gimmicky, influencer-targeted establishments. I came here for a latte and light bite yesterday morning with one of my top-tier chums. Hearth is literally just a few blocks away from where I live, so unlike a lot of people who were in there on our visit, I organically discovered it during my day to day. My go-to coffee place around here is one town over in Cedar Grove, Cedar Beans. So that's the local standard and this unfortunately didn't match up.
Little Falls isn't the best with public parking - there's a handful of spaces right on Main, but your best bet if you're not within walking distance is to park off of Main in one of the public municipal lots, which are fairly accessible but I'm honestly not sure how noticeable or obvious they are to outsiders. My chum picked me up as a courtesy and I directed her to the lot directly behind the building; I'm absolutely sure she wouldn't have found it otherwise. And it was pretty packed for a Sunday, so I'm assuming the vast majority of those spots were Hearth & Honey customers.
The minute you walk in, you get who the demo is. The interior is designed to go viral, with some pretty obvious homages to Harry Potter. There's a very cool "living" portrait on the wall to the right, and a lot of gothic-y magical touches throughout. The problem though? The overall layout is badly designed. This place is very popular, which means that there was a long, loud, distracting line the entire time we were there going from the counter in the very back all the way to the entrance in the front. That line was bumping up onto the edge of the dining area, which is where we were, so it felt chaotic, congested and just generally uncomfortable. I'm kind of mystified at how many parents brought their young kids - many just toddlers - to this to simply stand in line for over 20 minutes, but that was also pretty annoying; one distracted kid was playing with his toys in line, one of which bumped against my leg. If literally a quarter of your business is taken up by a crowd of people? Something isn't right. Either separate these areas better or move the counter area. There has to be a better option than what they're doing now, and there's no way they're not seeing this issue every day firsthand.
The food and drink options were a little uneven but ultimately a positive. I ordered the hot honey lavender latte, a slice of banana bread and the Morning Ritual sandwich. The banana bread was a total miss - based on the taste/texture, I think it was vegan or gluten-free, which is definitely not my thing. Pretty tasteless, and something I wouldn't have wasted the money on if they'd noted on the accompanying sign that it WAS vegan, etc. We threw out most of it. Cedar Beans has a much better banana bread that I would strongly recommend. The latte was fine; the flavoring was decent. I prefer skim but that didn't seem to be an option (I also didn't ask so that's at least partially on me). No issues in that regard though.
The star of the show unquestionably was the Morning Ritual. This was a breakfast wrap with eggs, potatoes, bacon, cheddar and maple siracha syrup. DELICIOUS. That syrup really makes the difference and gives the overall savory entree a real nip. I wasn't insanely hungry going in and just unapologetically devoured this. A little sticky for obvious reasons, but if we can suffer through that indignity when it comes to s'mores, there's no reason we can't do that here.
The service unfortunately wasn't great either. Everyone was perfectly nice, but our meals came out at VERY different times - my friend was literally eating her last bite when my wrap finally showed up. That kind of disorganization doesn't speak well of the management here, and it wasn't great that the server didn't even acknowledge the issue. We also saw the same problem at other tables as well, so it's really something they need to address ASAP if they're going to keep the sit-down clientele here. Who wants to come to a place with someone to essentially eat their meals completely separately?
It's not like there aren't selling points here, but based on our experience, the obvious play is to order a wrap online to go. I wouldn't waste your time dealing with the chaos and mismanagement that comes with eating here, which unfortunately makes the edgy Hogwarts interior kind of moot. A shame.