Avalon Cafe and Kitchen — Restaurant in Ann Arbor

This just happened. My friend and I have been loyal customers for ONE WHOLE YEAR, meeting at Avalon weekly, so Avalon will miss out on valuable business. They DOUBLED my friend's bill with faulty rationale, lied about what was said (there are 3 of us to vouch for what was said. We NEVER complain about anything, so when we do it means something), and refused to give us our money back. We asked for food to be sent back to the kitchen because it was cold, OUT-OF-THE-FRIDGE cold. The server took away the food telling us "she would see what could be done," WITHOUT telling us that we would be charged for a replacement. If we had known that we would be charged, we would have just kept the fridge-cold food. It is NORMAL restaurant policy that if the food is cold/something is wrong with it, it can be sent back with no charge-- but that is not the "company policy" here. The company policy is that if something is wrong, the customer has to pay for the mistake. We weren't even asking for a new dish, but for it to be reheated. And if it can neither be reheated/we will be charged for the sendback, WE SHOULD BE NOTIFIED. We were not notified (there are 3 of us to vouch for this, you may be able to find my friends' reviews too) that the plate could not be reheated and that we would be charged for the sendback. Then the server (who was also the manager) LIED after the fact that she did notify us. At the time of the bill, we noticed that we were charged twice and asked for a refund but she argued with us over the matter of MINUTES. On top of lying about notifying us, she said that because our friend was not sitting at the table when the food was served (who literally arrived within minutes of the food being served. For CERTAIN under 5 minutes), it was OUR FAULT that the food was cold. But food does not turn fridge-cold within 5 minutes! If it does, it means that the food was not heated properly in the first place. We all had a bite of it and agreed it was cold. Why would you argue with your customer on the matter of minutes, not notify them about the double charge, not notify them that it could not be reheated, and then LIE about all of the above! This is truly unacceptable from someone who used to be a server herself. I do not always side with the customer but this is ridiculous. The LYING part and not notifying part are the MAIN ISSUES. In addition, some of us do not have a lot of money at our disposal, so getting double charged means we have to work extra to make up for the restaurant's mistake. My friends and I built amazing memories here but sadly we cannot give our business to Avalon anymore.

BTW, we left a VERY GENEROUS tip of $13.42 for the kind of service...

What happened?!

My wife and I went to the old location and loved it a few months ago. This morning we decided to go and were happy to explore their new location. This is where things got weird.

Their new location is a portion of Pretzel Bell which seems to have recently been renovated, and when we arrived there were several open tables, but we were instead taken inside the other portion of the restaurant which was just Pretzel Bell. We didn't get the Avalon menu, but were told the Pretzel Bell menu was the same - fair enough. I ordered the French Toast and a side of sausage and my wife ordered the Potato Tacos. I got the sausage because when I asked if the bacon was chewy or crispy the server didn't know - just that it was cooked "good". The tacos were really nice and had a great slaw & sauce with it. The french toast however, was very dry on the inside and didn't seem to have been soaked in anything (especially not the custard that the menu claimed). Really nice flavor still with some pretty good eggs and ~a tablespoon of berries.

The sausages however were completely pink on the inside. I don't know if this is how they are supposed to be, but something about pink ground meat seems wrong. I waited for our sever to come back and ultimately needed to walk to the back of the Avalon side (after we finished the rest of our food) in order to find someone to talk to about them. When I asked if they were supposed to be pink inside they said "Well I don't think so" and quickly took them so I could get a new order. The new order came and again, completely pink inside. Maybe this is how it's supposed to be, but none of the waitstaff seemed very knowledgeable about the food they were selling, and I didn't want to risk getting sick. Between the under-battered french toast and the seemingly raw sausage I had some opinions about the prices they were charging (they also add a 'non gratuity' surcharge to all checks) and the inattentive service. It seems like this transition to the new location still has some issues to work out.

We only saw our server for ordering and for the check - so we were never offered any refills on coffee or asked how our food was. Overall a big disappointment from what was one of our favorite locations in Ann Arbor. Maybe something got lost in translation in the move, but for the price of the food (averaging about 16 to 20 a plate, and 6 for a side of sausage/bacon) it doesn't seem worth the time or money to give...

My daughter wanted to go here for the avocado toast, she said the reviews were great. I’ve been to the Avalon Bakery in midtown Detroit and liked the baked goods a lot. I really wanted to love this place. My daughter ordered the avocado toast first, and it fulfilled all her avocado toast dreams. It was huge, mounded with thinly shaved cucumber on crusty bread, very photogenic. She said it was the best avocado toast she’d ever had, and we were excited to try more from the menu. I ordered what sounded like a delicious burger with raclette cheese, bacon, and onion jam, and she got the bacon and onion quiche. They sounded great in the description, but when they arrived, they didn’t come close to matching in quality. The burger, aside from being very well done rather than the medium I had ordered, looked and tasted like a preformed frozen patty, which I wasn’t expecting at all. It had a thick slab of completely unmelted cheese on the top. The point of raclette is that it’s a great melting cheese, a hard slice is pretty unappetizing. My guess was that they put the cheese on too late to melt it and had to take it off before the burger burned, since it was already well past medium. Honestly, they’d have done better to microwave it at that point, so at least the cheese would have melted, as it was already overdone. The bacon and jam gave some flavor, but the patty by itself was super dry and tasteless, like a fast food burger. I considered mentioning it, but I really hate sending food back and I figured I didn’t have enough time to wait for another order anyway. My daughter’s quiche okay, but dry, and was inexplicably surrounded by some mixed greens that we couldn’t figure out if were intended to be an exceptionally large garnish, or a salad that they forgot to dress. It was just a pile of miscellaneous dry lettuces, no oil or vinegar or anything else in it. The service was okay; friendly, but our appetizer plates were never cleared until we were getting ready to leave. I’d planned to try one of the desserts, the bread pudding or the warm cookies, but we ran out of time and were already a bit disillusioned by the drastic drop in food quality. I would consider returning some time, but I’d skip the dining area and just stick with the avocado toast or baked goods in the cafe bakery area next time, the actual meals tasted like...