Merika Cafe & Restaurant — Restaurant in Melbourne

The first challenge of this odd and wonderful cafe is finding the entrance - through a 7/11 servo and then up a driveway. But once you are there it is a great - if slightly offbeat - experience.

I believe the cafe is a chain started in the UAE specialising in chimney cakes (and other food), a Hungarian dish. The owner's musings about life are denoted on every second page of the menu.

The cafe does breakfast, lunch and dinner, with a mix of traditional australian-style dishes and some international standards. Chimney cakes are a reoccuring theme - why? - who the heck knows, but they have specialist chimney making equipment, so they make the cakes on the spot. Essentially a cake batter is dipped around a metal rolling pin, which is heated and turned to cook the batter, which is then rolled in your selection of toppings - sugar, nuts etc. You can also have it filled with homemade icecream.

I had a smashed avo and a cake, my friends had fish and chips, and a Hungarian mushroom goualsh -reflecting the eclectic menu.

The cafe is sunny with big windows and fairly quiet -so a perfect place to catch up and talk.

The staff were very attentive and the service was wonderful - a much classier experience then the menu prices would seem to warrant, but very welcome.

The food was reasonably priced, considering the quality and service.

Thanks Merika...

I recently visited Merika Cafe for the first time for a brunch with high expectations, but unfortunately, it fell short in many ways. Despite its high Google rating, we were the only customers on Sunday, which was very surprising. The cafe demanded card details for a reservation, which seemed unnecessary.

The food was overpriced for a basic meal for three and underwhelming. The napoli pasta for my child was broken, the sourdough bread portions were tiny, and the additional charges for simple add-ons like avocado and tomato were excessive. Even the coffee was disappointing with a stale cookie on the side. tomatoes taste like stale oil

At the end they gave us a 20% voucher for a future visit that felt odd, and the lack of other customers ,even for a take away coffee, during our stay was too surprising!! The overall experience was unsatisfactory. I wouldn’t recommend Merika Cafe based on our visit

• Most surprising of all, I later discovered how dismissive and unprofessional their responses to negative reviews were. It’s disappointing to see a business react to feedback with such lack of grace and...

This restaurant is far from what we were expecting after making a booking for what was meant to be an enjoyable mothers day brunch.

As we arrived we were told that half the food on the menu wasn't available to even order, including a simple eggs on toast.

We ordered Milkshakes for the kids only for the waiter to return and notify us that they had run out of the milkshake flavours we requested.

Our food then came out missing avacado and Bacon so the waiter ran back to grab the missing items & returned with two tiny pieces of Bacon (not even a whole rasher) which cost another 6 odd dollars.

As we were eating, we noticed the mains we ordered were also missing the cheese even though our dishes were described as being cheesy.

Lastly, we were rushed off out table for another booking even though the restaurant was far from busy.

Will never be returning to this restaurant and will not be a...