Cafe Metropole — Restaurant in Avalon

My friend and I dined here for lunch expecting a great experience considering the 4.5 star review. We were poorly mistaken. First of all, when I was ordering I tried to order a smoothie and they said they were out of ALL of them except two of them. That was the first red flag. But I order a turkey and avocado sandwich as normal, skipping the drink. We ordered and paid by 1:03pm and take a seat at a table in the outside seating area. 1:27pm comes around and we’re wondering where our food is at as it’s been almost 30mins. I walk in to check and find there is a group who ordered after us eating their food. That’s the second red flag. I ask the person taking orders for an update and she says it’s being prepared, so I go back to sit outside. 10 minutes later, the same person comes out and says they’ve run out of turkey… Could someone tell me why I was I even allowed to order a sandwich and the main part of the sandwich has completely run out??? And to find this out after over 40 minutes of waiting for it is ridiculous to say the least. But I say fine, replace it with ham. I receive my order 10 minutes later and it’s… a completely different menu item…. That costs less than the item I ordered on the menu😂😂 So NOW they have me paying more for LESS! I asked for the difference back but I should’ve just requested a refund. On top of that, the person I was with ordered right before me and didn’t even get their food before mine. So she goes in and asks for an update and it takes another 10 minutes, which means they weren’t even preparing the order before then. Crazy. And we received not a single apology from the staff of course because why should they be sorry for keeping us waiting for an extended period of time without communication, serving others before us who ordered after and, finally, serving the completely WRONG menu item… never again. The sandwich...

Quick Summary Very impressed by their food and drinks here. It's a bit pricier than the average cafe, but worth the quality they present. They were a bit busy, so service was a bit slow and frantic since it seemed they were short-handed during opening

Food- 5 stars Ordered the breakfast burrito and tropical mango smoothie. Both of them were very good, light, and tasted like they were made to order. Breakfast burrito was placed in a panini press and all ingredients were prepared with minimal grease to perfection. The smoothie also tasted like fresh fruit getting mixed. Very impressed by the food quality

Service- 3 stars Caveat that this was around the first few days when LA issued another round of pandemic lockdowns, so the service was slow and it seemed like they were short-handed. But that's the reason why I docked it down 1 star

Value- 3 stars It's a bit pricier than most cafes, even in Catalina, but well worth it with the quality of each bite!

Bottom Line I can argue that it's the best breakfast / cafe food on the island. Definitely worth a stop when you're...

Cute cafe with a lot of potential. The food was really nice and I found myself coming back, but overall experience felt pretty disorganized. The full menu is up outside all day, but only certain sections are available at different times (which aren't labelled). I was pretty disappointed to find their smoothies were not available for lunch. When you walk inside the menu on the wall only has names (very vague) and no descriptions, and there are no full menus available so you need to walk back out to check what you want. There are also no prices on most menu items, And drinks etc are displayed on random sheets on the wall in no particular order. It just felt like a lot of effort to order something very simple. I was also pretty disappointed by the variety on the breakfast menu - three kinds of avocado toast and one sweet banana on toast. If you're not into avocado or super sweet things for breakfast you'll have to...