O'Briens Café — Restaurant in The Municipal District of East Cork

You'd think that in these times of covid, uncertainty and supposed cleanliness, that an establishment such as O'Briens would have strict cleaning and social distancing protocols in place. This doesn't seem to be the case in the Midleton branch who don't seem to know that we are recovering from a pandemic. My wife, 5 year old daughter and I entered and ordered coffee and cookies after seeing a sign advertising an exterior "terrace". The terrace turned out to be a room off the main building, three meter walls on each side and the roof mostly covered by transparent plastic sheeting, save for a small bit towards the end of this room, sorry "terrace" that was left uncovered. In other words O'Briens are in effect trading and allowing indoor dining. This wouldn't have been a major issue in itself, had the spaces between the tables not been so minimal that my 5 year old daughter couldn't get her chair back enough without bumping the patron sitting behind her. It was at that point that I smelled cigarette smoke and on scanning the packed room, saw an elderly lady start puffing away on a cancer stick not five feet from our table. The final straw was when I looked at the table that I was about to sit at and realised that it was covered in stains and crumbs from the previous patrons! The table had not been wiped clean after the last occupants, let alone sanitised. I decided at this point that I wasn't going to subject my family to such unsanitary conditions and went to the counter to advise the waitress who was still preparing the coffee. Her answer was simply "So you want the order to go then??' speechless and shocked that O'Briens have sunk to the that level of hygiene...

Experience here was horrible. The blonde manager was awful rude and dismissive to myself and my boyfriend when we came for breakfast last week. On our arrival she ignored us completely and upon finally taking our order, she made us feel like a nuisance creating such an unpleasant and unwelcoming atmosphere. We sat at the far end of the cafe and even so we could hear her publicly shouting and shaming a poor young staff member. Service aside I wouldn’t recommend the food either. My boyfriend got a toastie which was only okay. I got the tuna melt shambo and spent the remaining week suffering from food poisoning. Overall completely unpleasant experience from service to food. Completely unprofessional, negligent and inconsiderate attitude of staff. Considering how they treated a customer, I can’t imagine their attitude towards their own staff, food quality and...

My first time of visiting the city cork we decided to have our breakfast outside the hotel because we didn’t wake-up on time for the hotel breakfast so we decided to have breakfast around and we found the ÓBriens Cafe around the street and we decided to eat there and we are so dissatisfied and disappointed with The scrabble 🍳 eggs we were offered the egg was dry and cold no taste at all could not eat it even my partner that has no issue in which ever ways eggs are prepared, he could not eat his as well. Black tea was served instead of green tee very disappointing. The younger Waitress got some attitude problem she was not in the mood to attend to costumers. The cappuccino was okay, atmosphere...