The Buttermilk Cafe — Restaurant in Cobourg

I, like many other Cobourgians, have made the Buttermilk my main breakfast go to spot for at least the past 15 years. It's been a Cobourg landmark for nearly two decades now and has been a beloved spot to gather since it opened. One could say that I'm a regular. They had the winning formula in my opinion-great value, homeade food, down to the dinner rolls, bread and desserts, cozy atmosphere, amazing wait staff and solid, if not very inventive cooking. You could count in always having an enjoyable meal there with family and friends. Today however, that has changed.

When I heard the owners were selling, I was a bit ambivalent and nervous that things would change with the new ownership and today I realized that my worst fears had happened. Same atmosphere, same quick and friendly service but the food? Here's what ended up on my plate. I'm a purist. I make hollandaise from scratch and eggs Benedict is my favourite so this morning I ordered my usual-vegetarian eggs Benny. Someone decided to change the hollandaise recipe and where it looked the same, it did NOT taste the same. Faintly reminiscent of a chicken soup bullion cube, I was thoroughly disappointed with the 'new' offering. It was weird and not palatable. Previously, they had poached tomatoes in a lovely balsamic so the flavours were mature, robust with a decidedly sweet after taste. Today's dish tasted like the tomatoes were sauted in straight up vinegar. I ate one but was unable to finish the majority of the second. Even the toast was thinner. Things have changed, and not for the better as I had previously feared.

To the new owner. You were sitting on a goldmine here and your returning customers know why they always returned-great food, great price, good quantity served with a smile from capable staff that always seemed happy, even at its busiest times. You're loosing us all with these changes. You're cheaping out and it shows. You may think that cutting corners during the summer months will be fine but winter is coming and if you lose your base, as you're doing by compromising the quality of the food you're serving, you're ultimately going to lose your business. Your repeat customers will not tolerate bad hollandaise or vinegary tomatoes. Skinny toast is cutting corners and will not sustain you throughout the winter months after the summer crowds leave. You clearly do not understand the community in which your business is located in nor do you seemingly care. The business could have run itself if you would have left it alone to function as it always has. Your base is an older population who cling to tradition and who do not welcome change to something the community has grown to love over the years. Substituting poor quality food is going to sink your business. I suggest you rethink these changes before it's too late as this is a small town and everybody talks. Your reputation, one that the Mars family spent the better part of two decades perfecting, is failing and unless you want to loose your investments, change now and rethink your position. Look at the previous business model and just do that.

We will not be back and I know we aren't the only ones who...

Went for breakfast yesterday, it doesn’t seem the same as it was for previous visits. People love consistency, that’s what keeps customers loyal.. unfortunately this visit was not consistent.

We got sat right away, which is great but ended up having to wait quite a while to order, it’s busy. We get, no worries! We also observed many other tables that seemed to be waiting for things like ketchup, coffee cream and other fixings.

When our food arrived it was lukewarm at best, the hollandaise sauce tasted different than it always has, the potatoes were all different sizes which resulted in the smaller ones being cooked through and the large ones being raw.

Other things to note, it was a different server walking the food, which in theory is fine! Help your fellow servers! If you have time to talk, you have time to walk… But this mixed with the lukewarm food tells me that our food was sitting there for some time because our sever was too busy getting sat the entire patio and half of the dining room at the same time.. who likes being quadruple sat?

I had a very brief chance to chat with the server at the end of our meal and I asked… why are you serving the patio and half the dining room? She told me that there are only two servers who open in the morning and other servers trickle in throughout the morning.

As someone who worked as a server, bartender and hostess for several years, this was baffling to me! Two servers on a Saturday morning of a long weekend? No wonder she seemed frantic.

I suggest you speak with your veteran servers to come up with a better game plan - they probably know what’s best for the restaurant more than the new* owners do.. ask them what is and is not working, consider split shifts if you don’t already have them and consider smaller sections so your servers don’t have to be 40 places at once.. especially until the newer servers can get caught up to the hustle and bustle.

All of that being said, our server was amazing as always, just far too busy for the abysmal...

My friend and I had a very negative experience at the buttermilk today. I have lived in Cobourg my whole life and always had positive experiences here. Today it was raining and the only tables available were not covered by their tent. They asked us if we minded sitting outside the tent, we said sure but we asked that if one of the tables under the tent left, we could move to that table. They said yes. After sitting we saw that one of the tables was packing up so we asked our server (Jennifer) if we could move to that table. She then super rudely told us no that wasn’t possible. We told her politely that the lady who sat us had told us we could. She said it didn’t matter because there was a line waiting for tables and if we wanted one we would have to go to the back of the line. In the end we wound up taking to her boss because she was being so rude to us (walked away from us without saying anything after we said we didn’t understand why the story changed, gave us the “talk to the hand” hand motion, then finally when we asked her boss if we could get a different server because we didn’t feel comfortable dealing with her anymore she said “good, I don’t want them anyways!”). We ended up leaving without ordering. The rain was one thing, although they handled the table situation poorly, it was obviously a miscommunication problem between staff, we can forgive that. But oh my god. Jennifer, if you’re reading this, you were a very bad server today, with a very bad attitude. Thank god we left and went to the Symposium Cafe, where we were delighted by the staff there, Jason, if you’re reading this, you really took care of us today,...