New Moon Cafe — Restaurant in Augusta

Came in for coffee and pastries on a Sunday morning with my husband and our 2 year old, my sister, and my mom to celebrate my mom’s birthday as she is visiting from out of state. She has celebrated her birthday breakfast here for the past two years and had glowing reviews of her experience last year, when she and my sister were both served lemonades for her birthday even though the cafe was closed when they went. My husband and I have also been eager to try out New Moon since we moved to Augusta last spring, so it was a highly anticipated trip.

The Augusta style grits bowl and jalapeño sourdough toast were delicious, as were the Butterbeer latte and lavender blueberry lemonade. We sat and ate, enjoying the food and the fun atmosphere. My husband and I even began planning to come back regularly. At one point my sister got up to ask for two water cups, and one of the baristas curtly dismissed her to take a seat again, saying someone would bring them to us. Understandably there was a line to the door for almost our entire visit, as is expected for a downtown breakfast spot on a Sunday morning. We waited about 15 minutes before receiving only one water cup, which we had to share between the 5 of us.

My mom then got up once more to order another sourdough toast for the table, and after about 20 additional minutes of waiting, we decided to wrap things up and cancel the extra toast. My sister approached another barista and politely let them know we wanted to cancel it, but did not request a refund. The barista grabbed the receipt, extremely flustered, and said flatly “I sincerely hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day” before storming back to the kitchen. Up to this point, the only remotely pleasant service we had received was when we ordered our food at the counter; any additional requests (i.e. two water cups) seemed to throw the workers into confusion and disarray, which made for extremely uncomfortable interactions with staff. As we were heading out the door, another worker shouted loudly to the entire restaurant: “Hey, if you have something to do in the next 30 to 45 minutes, maybe don’t order here.”

In addition to being completely unnecessary, I think loudly announcing that it is unreasonable for your customers to expect a piece of toast to come out in under 45 minutes is a greater testament to your staff’s inefficiency and disorganization than it is to the customer being demanding. As someone who has worked in the service industry for 8 years, from managing an Italian restaurant in Austin to a Starbucks in Atlanta, I have seen more business than this on a Tuesday evening and would never even FATHOM speaking to a customer this way, let alone shouting at the entire restaurant. Having read through some of the owner responses to the negative reviews, I can tell that this feedback will most likely fall on deaf ears and be met with arrogance and defensiveness; however, I would be remiss if I did not call out the abysmal service and poor customer skills. Perhaps if you work at a breakfast cafe downtown and you find it exceedingly difficult to adapt to/accommodate small requests during a weekend breakfast rush, it may be time for you to find a non-customer facing career.

Such a shame that an attempt to be considerate was met with such unprofessionalism, as the four of us will no longer be frequenting this establishment.

Good...

I would avoid this establishment! The front was chaos and the girl at the register didn't seem to know what she was doing and was very unorganized and slow. We put in our order and waited for over twenty minutes. All we got were two simple sandwiches, yet people who came in after us were getting served. We went and checked on the food and the girl at the register said she didn't know what was going on. Came back a few minutes later and she was just as confused. A guy who more looked like he knew what he was doing said they ran out of the chicken salad that has been ordered and they had to make more.

I don't know why they never told us this had occurred so we could decide to change our order, wait, or leave. There was zero communication all around.The other problem is that my other sandwich was not chicken salad, so why didn't they bring out half of the order? They just left us hanging!

The only good things I have to say is the apple Chai tea was pretty good and the coffee was OK, but tasted old. The guy who gave us our money back wasn't overly apologetic, but did give us our money back for the food without much protesting.

The food looked like it might be pretty good, but was a little basic for what it's supposed to be. And the presentation of the menu on the boards and tiny papers around the register were a bit distracting and confusing. The place was also hot, kinda dirty, cluttered with junky decor, and there was not sufficient seating outside. There were tons of people camped out on computers not eating anything during a busy lunch hour.

Like most other super trendy places in the area, it doesn't live up to the hype. I'm honestly unsure how this place has pretty good reviews, I think it's overrated. As for the pastries that everyone raves about, all I saw were a few measly, melting cupcakes by the register.

Bottom line: I wouldn't go here if you like to enjoy your...

I was there over the weekend and has a very good egg sandwich, but didn’t care for the banana chocolate chip muffin, that I was told by their employee was just “banana”. So, I went back yesterday, during the week, and ordered an egg sandwich and a strawberry muffin. I got home and bit into it, and not only did it have those hard little chocolate chips that have a texture resembling the tops of golf tees (who puts chocolate chips in a strawberry muffin?) it was underbaked and the inside was gooey from uncooked dough - which, depending on the ingredients, can be a food-poisoning risk. Also, when you put ingredients in something no one would expect, you increase the risk of an allergic reaction from a customer, and thus your liability risk. So, I felt I should let them know, not only because I was scammed out of about four bucks. I called and was told a manager would follow up with me for a refund, and that person never did. My solution now to the issue is easy - I won’t ever go back to this restaurant.

Update: I had not seen the refund in my account before I wrote the review, and I have since seen it appear in my account. However, I did not receive a call from the GM. I am staying near downtown temporarily, and that muffin was to be my midday snack. As Old Town is a food desert, it is not like I could easily step out during a 30 minute lunch break from work to get more food for the day. From the reply, it appears the concerns I raised about the baked goods are being...