Ria's Bluebird — Restaurant in Atlanta

On searching for a breakfast spot I came across Ria's. I was in a pancake mood and the pics looked great so we decided to try.

We expected a wait, so no issue there, the patio area was nice and with a fan to keep the air fresh.

I had the fat stack of pancakes and my partner the Early Bird breakfast with scrambled eggs, biscuit and grits. As well as a side of gravy.

Pancakes were on the mark, lots of whipped butter and a small container of sweet water disguised as syrup? The sweet water was absorbed quickly before the halfway mark leaving the second half dry.

Was told it was an extra 2$ for more (sweet water) because it was expensive. Totally doubt that and decided to take the other half home.

Early Bird was ok, the chef's version of scrambled is to make a plain omelette on the grill and chop it up with the flipper instead of grabbing a small pan and taking an extra second to do a proper job. The sausage patty was over spiced and the grits were way too gritty, no excuse for that in Atlanta. The side of gravy was mediocre at best.

Based on the above alone I might have given a 4, but here's why it's a three.

The Entitlement of adding on a forced 20% gratuity to all bills, with the reasoning to give your staff less stress and a living wage? Really?

Tipping must always be optional & based on how the customer feels things went. We regularly tip 20% when the service and experience warrants, but it must be optional.

If you make it mandatory, Georgia law states you should be displaying it as a service charge and be taxing it. You should change it to comply with the law.

Plus, when staff already knows they are getting 20% regardless, they just do not go the extra mile to earn that level of tip and it was evident here today.

Having spent part of my life in the industry both serving and cooking, I know it's not the easiest job and although the place was busy, the staff were not over worked and had time to chat periodically as opposed to roaming and giving more time and attention to patrons.

For example, as you can see in one photo, the condensation from the glasses of water, pools everywhere. Since you don't supply napkins other than cloth, the busser or wait staff should be mopping it up every time they stop at or pass by the table.

The empty paper butter cups and gravy container also could have been removed out of our way and any other debris wiped away as well.

These are the kind of things expected to earn a 20% tip.

The staff, although pleasant enough, went through the motions doing the minimum required and from what I could see, it was the same with the other tables as well.

With the amount of customers frequently coming in and the reasonable prices, if the staff wasn't pulling in 20% without the policy and were stressed from getting less, then perhaps the quality of service needed improvement?

If your goal is to give your employees a living wage, then don't take the easy way out and instead, start adjusting your prices to improve your profit margins and pay them more from your end, not supplement it with a forced service charge. You're running a business, not a non profit organization.

Adjust some of your other costs as well, like water for example, serve it only when requested. Especially if the staff don't clean up the mess it causes. The savings on water costs alone would go a long way towards being able to increase their wages.

Plus take a serious look at the quality of some of your dishes, ingredients and condiments.

Your pancakes alone have more than enough markup to allow extra poor quality "syrup" without nickel and diming the customer.

Your other dishes could all easily be raised a minimum $1 without losing people, or ease up on portion size a bit.

It's tough to be an owner and I get the fear of upping prices and it may seem easier to take the lazy way out with the forced tip and extra charges, but these things along with the average service and lack of quality on things like the "syrup", grits and eggs will unfortunately keep us from returning or...

I'm going to have to flip myself upside down or inside out to write this review, because frankly I'm pretty impressed in spite of my inclinations.

My wife and I went here today around 11am to have a late breakfast/brunch.

Now, normally I'm a real basic kind of breakfast guy, very particular about my morning chow, and when I say that I like good eggs, good meat (bacon/ham/sausage, etc.), good GRITS (yes all in CAPS 'cause I yelled it) and good biscuits, and I want alot of it and I want it cheap!

So coming here for breakfast was a chancy thing for me because I had previously looked at menu online and figured the prices were a little higher than my usual breakfast joints. (I eat at Home Grown down the road or other smaller "mom and pop" local type places usually)

So we went in, not too busy, sat at the counter bar, and within a very few minutes a polite staff member took our order.

I had the Early Bird breakfast; 2 eggs over medium for me, sausage, fruit cup, and a biscuit, and on the side I had to try the pancakes with pecans and caramelized bananas. That was a lot of food. I ATE ALL OF IT.

Everything was good. The eggs were perfectly over-medium and fresh, the sausage was exquisite with a smoky/spicy almost Italian sausage taste (they make the sausage there onsite), the biscuit was a square and almost looked like cornbread...so fresh and not dry at all with a great slightly buttery taste, the fruit cup was fresh - strawberries, grapes, cantaloupe, blueberries, and I think Crenshaw melon, and pineapple. After I ate all that I attacked the pancakes; now I'm not a big pancake guy because I don't normally like sweet stuff for my breakfast but their pancakes were so good I almost slapped myself off the barstool. The pancakes themselves were large, moist, fluffy and tasty by themselves without any syrup or jam or anything, and the sprinkled pecans and caramelized bananas were the bees knees ( ha! He said bees knees!). A MUST try for anyone (my wife also not big pancake fan but she liked it so much she finished slapping me off the barstool!) My wife had the grilled chicken BLT and she loved it. Chicken was tender and moist, the bacon and lettuce and tomatoes were fresh; I took a bite and liked it so much I returned the favor and slapped her off her barstool! (LOL jk, of course). For her side she had the squash with curry soup. It was delicious but not very spicy. No one got slapped eating that.

I washed my meal down with a fresh cup of coffee which was also fresh and the right strength.

They have all kinds of different creamers so you're not stuck with just half and half like I did.

So after all the gluttonous gorging and pretend violence, we paid our tab and left.

Summary:

Location: Great, right off Memorial Drive across from Oakland Cemetery. Parking: Typical downtown - cramped and hideous but you can find ample parking around the joint. Service: Above par for area; everyone was local-ish and friendly enough. Food: Stoooopid good food. I could eat there daily. Prices: a bit pricey for my usual breakfast, we paid about $50 (20% standard gratuity added in). Prices are on par with other local eateries. Overall definitely a 5 star experience for a breakfast/brunch/lunch place.

Highly recommend and will return. No more slapping allowed...

I came, I ate, and I won’t be back. I was sat at the bar because I was a single party. I really don’t like when host just assume that because you’re single party you should or want to sit at the bar. But I did it her way. When I got to the bar the bartender greeted me dryly and got me a cup of water snd said he’d be back. However, didn’t leave me with a menu, ask me if this was my first time in or not, nor introduce himself. So as I watched him put in his friend’s order who was sitting next to me, I waited with no menu twiddling my thumbs. Eventually a woman, maybe a mgr or waitress noticed and gave me a menu. I was very turned off at this point with my service and contemplated asking for a table top or leaving but I forced myself to stay and ride this experience out. I ordered biscuits and gravy, one egg over easy, and sausage patty. It came out fairly timely and was decent. Nothing to call home about. The gravy was bland and needed seasoning but the biscuit was good and you can’t mess up an egg and a sausage patty. I asked for syrup and the bartender told me it would be an upcharge. I said fine, now normally I would ask because staff typically don’t offer to share but I figured breakfast syrup would be .75-$1.00. HOWEVER, if they serve breakfast I don’t see why it would be a charge at all.

I ended up not even using the syrup because apparently there was a jar of jam as a part of the condiments on the bar but again he didn’t mention that or even offer that information. I was ready for my check and saw the upcharge for this 2oz ramekin of syrup was actually $2.50. The price of a beverage anywhere else, that was a complete scam and though I wanted to ask them to take it off my tab, I paid full price for a ramekin of cheap fructose corn syrup. On top of their “included” 20% gratuity. My grand total $22.22 for (1) egg, (1) sausage patty, (1) tiny ramekin of bland gravy and (2) biscuits. This is the price of an actual filling entree at a real restaurant but here we are. Service was a 2 Value was a 1 Food was a 3 My Experience- Never coming back. Mercury must still be in retrograde because good service has been...