Cafe1 bistro — Restaurant in Epsom and Ewell

What if you want to support local business but that business is terrible?

I have been coming to this cafe since I was born and my family have been going since before even then. Sadly we won’t anymore.

The service has been getting gradually worse with each visit but now it’s finally awful. There’s about 8 people working but no one seems to know what they’re doing and no one seems to be steering the ship. The front of house all congregate awkwardly around the till and they don’t seem to know who’s waiting to be seated and who’s waiting to pay. When you do get to ordering the staff seem extremely nervous as well as confrontational.

Then of course there’s the rebrand. A confused yassification of a fairly simple concept; a greasy spoon. It’s supposed to be a cozy spot for families and friends to have a full English and a coffee. Who on earth is asking for a pornstar martini at 10 in the morning? Why are there cans of beer next to the fruit shoots? Why are there neon lights everywhere like it’s a vape shop? Why are there hideous fake flowers everywhere that half conceal the kitchen? There’s no connection between anything, no unifying theme.

The staff need training. The manager needs to be hands on, delegating. There should be one menu, not three. The food should be stripped back to basics and stop trying to do a hundred things averagely. Do a few things and...

Visited this cafe with high hopes, the food was absolutely delicious filled with flavour and amazing drinks. At one point me and my partner felt extremely uncomfortable when we were eating by the disgusting man who was working there we assume he’s the manager maybe? He was wearing a red T-shirt and black trousers and looked really unhygienic and dirty. He was so loud, filled with anger and was so passive aggressive speaking to the poor girls that were working there and was very rude. We couldn’t believe how he was speaking with them it made us feel very uncomfortable, we rushed our meal and left. Never have we ever heard a man speak like that it was absolutely disgusting, maybe back home it’s acceptable but in England it isn’t! I’ll be reporting this matter further and getting HMRC involved no one should be mistreated in the work place like this!!...

Three of us went in, my partner and I and our little girl. We were greeted and seated, the cafe looked lovely and had definitely changed since we went in last. We were excited to go back as we used to be regular visitors. We sat down and the stench of urine was disgusting and overwhelming. We thought it may have been a person sat inside so continued to sit where we were but when the person that we thought it was left, they stench stayed!

We ordered 2 panini’s one slice of ham, tiny amount of mozzarella. Could have made it better at home.. oh and the chips we ordered for our daughter never came.. only to find out at the till the waitress never added them on. My daughter ate half my panini anyway as I wasn’t interested in it so was fine but she Evan repeated after us when we ordered.

We won’t be back. Shame it used...