The morning after homecoming, my boyfriend and I went out for brunch, as it seemed everyone else in West Chester was. We went to Nudy’s, but we found out it was a 45-minute wait, so we left. The corner next to Nudy’s had a cute little café called The Lunchbox Cafe.
On the menu in the outside window, we saw saw a sign for $2 lattés, so we wanted to check it out. We walked inside and there were about six or seven tables with a bar to sit at facing the window. My boyfriend and I only had to wait about 10 minutes to be seated.
While we were waiting, I overhead a girl complaining that she ordered eggs 30 minutes ago, and it still had not come out. A waiter ran out a few minutes later carrying her plates, which looked pretty good so I thought it would be worth it to stay.
When we were seated, no one came over to our table after a few minutes, so I got up and walked over to the espresso bar and picked up a few menus. There were only about four or five waiters and they all looked like they were in high school. It looked like there was no one actually running the place. Soon after, the waitress came over and took our drink orders.
My boyfriend ordered a milk, and I wanted to try their lattes so we ordered a French vanilla latte. I ordered a water also, but she forgot to bring it over with the drinks so I had to remind her again, and she brought it right over.
We looked around the rest of the restaurant and it seemed like no one was even eating, they were all just waiting for their food to come out.
We looked at the menu, and it looked really good. There were a lot of specials with eggs, bacon, and home fries. There were a few different omelettes, French toast, and pancakes. My boyfriend told me to hurry up and decide what I wanted because it looked like a long wait so he wanted to put our order in as soon as she came over. I decided on the Fat Boy which was a short stack of pancakes, toast, two eggs, and home fries. My boyfriend ordered the Peanut Butter and Banana French Toast.
She brought over the drinks and the latte was served in a wide mug with foam. It was really big and I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t too hot and not a strong cup of coffee which is exactly what I like.
After about 20 minutes, I asked my boyfriend if he had even seen any food come out of the kitchen since we had been seated, he told me he didn’t think he did.
About 30 minutes went by, and finally people were beginning to get served. The table behind me got their food and the waiter told me that our food would be out shortly. I really wanted to leave and go get food somewhere else but finally, after 45 minutes of waiting, our food came out.
My boyfriend’s French toast was six small slices of French toast with peanut butter spread on it with a slice of a banana on top of each slice. It was slightly above average.
The waiter also gave us some syrup with our food. I poured it onto my plate only to realize that it wasn’t the typical syrup restaurants usually serve. It was really thick and looked like chocolate syrup. It tasted like a combination of sweet soy sauce and molasses.
My breakfast was okay but my boyfriend and I agreed that we easily could have just made these exact meals at home, as it was nothing special. I was really disappointed because I thought if we had to wait so long for the food, it would have been something extravagant.
When we were finished, the waitress brought over the check. She never apologized for the wait during our meal, but she was very nice about getting us refills and making sure our food was okay.
To my surprise, the milk and latte was not on the check, she only charged us for our food. This may have been because of the long wait or she may have simply forgotten to add them on to our bill.
We decided the only reason we would ever go back there is to get a latte. I used to be a food runner at a restaurant in high school so I understand when things can sometimes get really crazy and wait awhile but not having food on most of the tables in the restaurant was differently weird.
I’m not sure if they were understaffed in the kitchen that day or what was going on but it was definitely not a good experience. Next time, I’ll wait the 45 minutes to eat at Nudy’s.
Lindsey Vernick is a second-year student majoring in communication studies. She can be reached at LV800761@wcupa.edu.