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| - Charming place in the old Caribou coffee joint. Staff are very friendly and work hard - food comes out in just a few minutes. I've been three times now for lunch during the week.
I have three problems with this place (or, as consultants like to call them, "opportunities"):
1) Value. The price paid for what you receive doesn't fare that great compared to their lunchtime competitors on East Blvd or elsewhere. Fairly steep for a sandwich and a few pieces of broccoli and raisins.
2) Taste. I love chicken salad. Really. It could be it's own food group with me. I really want this place to be successful. All of their chicken salads I've tried (about 5 of them) are dry. Really dry. Mayo based or non-mayo based. All dry. Their best chicken salad I've tried is a special (BBQ chicken salad - really unique flavors with cinnamon!) and it was still dry. Their bread - dry. It's hard to decipher if the bread is just old or it's fresh and just lacks moisture. Broccoli salad tastes great, but see above.....portion size of broccoli is somewhere between 5 and 7 pieces the two times I've ordered it.
3) The details. Their pricing is a little weird. If you order a sandwich and a side, it's $8.95. Add cheese to your sandwich for $0.50 more. Total $9.45. Or, you can order a "melt" and a side, which is a sandwich with cheese that just happens to be melted, for $8.95. Huh? If you place a take out order, they give you this tiny cheap plastic fork, no spoon, no knife. Most of the time, that would be ok, except when your ordered side salad comes with large pieces of lettuce. That fork's not cutting anything. Inside the restaurant, like I wrote above, the decor is charming and the staff are great, but nothing flows well from the guest's perspective. Speed is fine, but standing in line to order you have wait staff walking through you. You walk past the counter area to place your order then back the opposite direction to get your drinks and then a different direction to sit down or wait for your order.
None of these things are earth-shattering, "stay away from this place"-type faults. With a few small changes, this place has the location, the great front porch, the unfulfilled niche, the staff etc to be successful. I wish them well.
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