Katrina's Café — Restaurant in Auburn

For some reason I'd never heard of Katrina's Cafe before and I come to Auburn for breakfast semi regularly. Someone told me they have the best biscuits and gravy in the foothills so I had to investigate. I'm not a huge biscuit fan, that's my wife's thing, but I am in to gravy. We were greeted and seated very quickly. The server was friendly and she got even more friendly once she found out we were newbs.

The server gave us several suggestions and my wife ordered the Lemon Yogurt Pancakes. I ordered the Chicken Fried Steak. She loved her pancakes and even offered me a bite, they tasted great. The CFS tasted great even without the gravy, which it not usually the case. Starting with a 9/10 steak and then putting 9/10 gravy on it #chefskiss. The chicken fried steak was excellent. Unfortunately the potatoes were dry and unflavorful except for salt. Even the gravy couldn't help the potatoes. The toast was dry and room temp like it sat out too long.

They were slammed so I'm not going to dock the service for having empty coffee cups for over 15 minutes. I didn't see much coordination between the servers, it didn't seem like they weren't helping each other but again it could have just been a busy day. I'll update the review after...

I don't want to blast a place over a bad experience, but I would like to offer some thoughts (and I would not recommend Katrina's to anyone).

It says on the door to go inside and check with host. There is no identifying signage of where this is, so I went to the register area. 3 people who worked there actively ignored us for about 4 minutes. Finally, someone asked what I needed.

The ambiance is a TIGHT fit and inside is noisy, but that's ok. The outside was nice, spacious, and quiet. We ended up inside, but that was ok. Plenty of cafes are cozy and noisy.

But then we waited...and waited...well over 20 minutes, while the server acknowledged us enough to say she'd be right with us, but then proceeded to make small talk and laughed with 2 other tables...for a ridiculous amount of time. We ended up leaving without so much as receiving waters.

It's a bummer, because we've heard good things about the food...but we will not be back. We ended up at Awful Annies, got drinks immediately and our food well before 20 minutes. Drinks and food in less time than Katrina's could even ask us if we'd like waters. And the drinks and food at Awful Annies was...

We ordered at about 8 am. There was no one else in there yet and it still took 45 mins to get our food. During that time we had to get the other server to refill our coffee and tea and bring the waters we had ordered. I ordered the special, blackberry pancakes, and 3-4 of the blackberries had mold on them. I let our server know and she took them without any compensation. Which was fine until after we left I was looking at the receipt and saw we were over charged by $5.25 for the blackberry pancakes. This is why I’m leaving a review b/c the pancakes were $15.50 according to the daily specials menu. Which was surprising as it was since it doesn’t come with eggs or bacon or fruit or anything. Just 2 pancakes. However, on our receipt she rang it up as buttermilk pancakes for $14.50 then added a berries charge for $5.25. $19.75 for 2 pancakes. It’s unfortunate b/c I’ve been here before and didn’t have anything like this happen. But I don’t think we’ll going back. It’s too expensive for that kind...