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| - I recently brunched here with Yelp's own delightful and insightful Angela B. We arrived around noon and were seated right away. Caffe Mona has a very welcoming décor, with tiny tables, light wood tones, and a beautiful exposed brick wall. The layout itself is very cozy, and delicious smells overwhelmed me as our friendly server handed us our menus. We both decided to go for the prix fixe brunch selection, which included soup, salad or a fruit plate to start. We both chose the fruit which was a decent selection of sliced apples, pears and bananas. Nothing super special, but perfect for nibbling while waiting for our second course. I ordered the fig and apple French toast, which was supposed to be served with fig jam, Brie cheese and Granny Smith apples. I was told by our server that they were all out of fig jam, and my heart sunk a little. He offered a substitute of apricot jam, which I accepted, although it didn't sound nearly as amazing. It was a yummy dish, the Brie was melty, creamy and gooey, the apples (even though I had just had some with my fruit plate) were a tart and crisp contrast to the sweetness of the apricot jam. I ate every bite with content. The third course consisted of a crepe with either strawberry or apricot preserves. I got strawberry, as I had already sampled the apricot. The crepe was a little crisper than I would expect a traditional crepe to be. Stiff, almost. The strawberry preserves were nice, however, and by this point I was full anyway. All in all, a pleasant meal and would certainly go back to try other menu items.
So why only 3 stars? The music was simply awful! It was unnecessarily loud, it was difficult to hear my dining companion because we were seated underneath a speaker. The loudness might not have been such an issue if they had played something that didn't make me cringe. It was like some created a Dave Matthews Band Pandora station and just kept hitting "like". Well, we didn't enjoy the onslaught of Mumford & Sons, Jack Johnson and DMB that polluted our lovely brunch. I'd be happy to make Caffe Mona some more appropriate playlists...trust me, they need the help. This is very important for an enjoyable dining experience!
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