Mom's Cafe — Restaurant in Sooke

Recently moved to Sooke, my mom and brother are in town visiting and we decided to go out for dinner. We settled on Mom's cafe hoping for a quality home cooked meal AKA Comfort food :) I would like to say right off the bat that our waitress (Blond and very friendly) provided exceptional service and this review is in no way a negative reflection on her. That being said, we could see they were quite busy when we walked in and my mom let our waitress know that we weren't in any rush :) our drinks were brought promptly and our orders taken shortly thereafter. I ordered deep fried zucchini sticks to start and after debating over the special(grilled chicken breast with mushrooms and gravy, mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables) or the Grilled pork schnitzel (exactly the same description but with grilled seasoned breaded pork loin cutlets). My mom ordered the halibut fish and chips (hold the slaw and tartar sauce) and my brother ordered the Chainsaw burger 2 patties with Jack and Cheddar cheese, the regular fixings and onion rings. After 20-25 mins our waitress brought the zucchini sticks and my immediate thought was "wow they look borderline burnt" and my mom commented that they looked "over cooked". Despite their dark brown color I tried a bite and confirmed they had a burnt flavor. I waited about 3-5 mins for a chance to let the waitress know that they were over cooked and she promptly apologized and took it back to the kitchen. Another 5-10 mins passed and our meals came (followed by my zucchini sticks, which were only slightly lighter than the first time, but tasted much better : ) ) Unfortunately the meal continued downhill from there, my schnitzel's were hot but flavorless (like seriously bland even after I added salt) the steamed veggies were a cheap frozen California blend with no salt and the best part of the ($18) meal was the mashed potatoes and a decent gravy. My mom's fish and chips came with coleslaw and tartar sauce (oops). She thought she had asked for the corn meal batter but I'm pretty sure she forgot to mention it and ended up with the beer batter. The outside was quite dark, yet the inside of the batter was very squishy, the fish seemed to be cooked perfectly except that it tasted strongly of beer like the fish itself had been brined in beer? or maybe the beer batter not cooked through? Lastly my brothers burger consisted of 2 preformed patties that left lots to be desired. That being said he quite enjoyed the onion rings. When the waitress came to clear our plates she was very upset to hear that we found our meals in my own words "unfortunately horrible" and when she returned to give us our bill she again apologized profusely and told us that she had "promo'ed our whole bill" and apologized some more. All in all we were disappointed with the expectation/presentation vs. reality. We thought we picked homemade comfort food in a cool diner setting We got cheap store bought cooked from frozen in a cool diner setting. Thank goodness for the wonderful staff who treated us kindly from...

Mom's cafe used to be a great place to stop and eat as you go through Sooke. Unfortunately, my experience yesterday was just plain bad. Since we can see the cooks do their thing, it was very apparent they had no clue what they were doing and kept mixing orders up. The kitchen staff was a complete disaster.

Numerous tables waited an hour or more to get their orders and ours took over 70 minutes to receive 2 cheese burgers and salad. During our wait, our server was getting visibly upset with the kitchen because the orders were taking so long. We watched one table get up and leave, and our poor server broke down, saying that's the sixth table that has walked out on her, as she (understandably) had a mini-meltdown.

We finally get our burgers and what a disappointment. It was basically plain, tasteless frozen meat patties that was salted to death and plastered with generic processed cheese. The only thing that gave the burger any flavour was the tomato and whatever condiments the cooks put on it. The salad was just as bad with whatever cheap generic salad dressing they use.

The only positive experience from this was our server. I giver her a 5 out of 5 for her efforts. She makes a wicked chocolate shake and she did everything she could possibly do to make sure we got our food.

If it weren't for her efforts, I'd rate Mom's...

They have a nice selection. Not too expensive. I rated 4 only because I've had better burgers elsewhere. Where's the Beef? 🤔 Excellent desserts!

The next time we went there, last night, the previously frozen veggies on my plate were barely warm and soggy. I asked the waitress to please zap the whole plate in a microwave oven for 30 seconds. She took my plate away and brought it back 5 minutes later and everything was now a little colder. When it came time to pay she apologized and gave me some kind of discount. She was very nice. My wife had beef quesadillas and found them too spicey and ended up taking half the order home. This morning she was going to heat them up for breakfast but decided to take some of the jalapeños out first and she discovered the contents were 90% jalapeños! Almost no beef at all. Someone's idea of a joke I think. I had to write this review to let people know. We won't be going there again unless we hear it's back to how it was a couple of years back and forever before then. Mom's Café used to be excellent! Not anymore. 😕 Too...