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| - I have loved Morning Glory cafe for YEARS. The grounds are beautiful and while I've eaten at all three of the restaurants at the Farm I love the Morning Glory Cafe most of all because I can sit in the grass nearby while I wait for a table to become available (yes, there will be a wait, especially on weekends) and I feel like I'm not in the dusty Arizona desert anymore.
I've also come to MGC for Mother's Day for two of the past three years and it's almost become a tradition for me and my daughter. However, this last Mother's Day really (really) disappointed me.
When I arrived we were told there was an hour wait. OK... No problem. I was expecting that (at least) and any other decent place would have a similar wait on Mother's Day. However, the issue was bigger than just the hour wait - the hostess who was calling people's names off the waiting list had such a faint voice that I couldn't hear her call my name - even though we were sitting right in front of her and I had gone up to ask her 10minutes prior if our table was ready. (You would think she would recognize me if I had just gone to talk to her and was sitting right in front of her but she seemed either clueless or overwhelmed). As a result - we were passed up and FOUR other tables were seated before us. After figuring out we had been passed up I went back again and asked if our table was ready and the hostess didn't even apologize. I'm sorry but when you have over 50 people waiting at a time for their table, you can't put someone with the voice of a 9 year old in charge of calling names. I understand it's a farm and a loudspeaker would kill the ambiance but at least get a better system in place for making sure people get seated after they've waited so long for a table.
Finally we were seated, and drinks were self serve so we immediately got water/coffee. The wait staff was completely frazzled at this point in the morning. They were stopping at tables for no longer than 2min at a time and making beelines between tables and the kitchen so you couldn't even get their attention without causing a scene.
We ordered a good 15min after being seated even though we knew exactly what we wanted to order. An HOUR later we still didn't have our food and my 5 year old daughter (who normally has to be bribed to eat) started crying. I asked her what was the matter and she said "I'm so hungry!" Not exactly the kind of thing a mom wants to be dealing with on Mother's Day. It was so sad the table next to us started offering us food off of their plates to give to my daughter (how embarrassing). The waitress walked by a few times and I said "Is our food almost ready? We've been waiting over an hour." Her response was "Yeah, so has everyone else" and walked away.
Finally I called our waitress back and I said "We ordered a cup of fruit. Can you at least bring that? My daughter needs to eat something." She came back with the fruit cup which my daughter inhaled and about 15min later we had our actual breakfasts (which were very good and well-made as always. Food never disappoints here). I will say, that to "make up" for the wait, they gave us a complimentary dessert which was a nice gesture in the end but the whole experience has made me question whether I will go back for any special occasions.
Reason being - I've noticed the Farm grow in popularity over the years but there hasn't been any real improvements to their service. They still run the place as though they are getting the same amount of traffic as 5 years ago and that is obviously not the case anymore.
They could have done a better of job of getting us seated at the right time - or of getting a snack for my daughter if they knew the main breakfast was going to take longer than normal - or of telling us when we put our name on the list: "it's an hour wait for a table and another hour wait for food to be served" - so we could make a better decision as to whether we should stick around.
They need to find a way to keep it low key and quaint without putting people through the kind of experience we went through. Maybe a reservation system is needed for breakfast? Limit the number of guests? Idk, but they certainly shouldn't just leave people to wait over 2.5 hours to have their first meal of the day - especially when the majority of patrons in the mornings are families with young kids.
Again, isolated incident, but can't say that their seating system or wait staff are any more organized on other days of the year. Wait times for a table can be up to 30-45min on any weekend but normally food does NOT take over an hour to arrive.
Note: they have a separate Mother's Day brunch that you can purchase advance tickets for, and those have scheduled seating times. I have never taken that option because my daughter typically doesn't eat a lot and it would be a huge waste.
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