The Kitchen and Bakery — Restaurant in Avon Lake

One of the worst breakfast experiences. So many people have said great things about The Kitchen so this review is more of a reality check from someone who is in the top 15% of restaurant reviewers on Google.

Updated: The response to this review accused me of being paid by Google. I am not an employee of Google and I am not paid by Google. No one is every paid by Google to leave reviews...

First, tables everywhere covered with dirty dishes. Upon leaving every table on the patio was covered in dirty dishes.

The paper menus were on cheap office copier paper and they were dirty. Please make enough copies to give each patron a new clean menu.

Update: The response claimed that menus are laminated. When I visited the restaurant they were not laminated and they were dirty. I can only comment on the state of the restaurant when I was there.

Second, neither the owner or manager was on site which is unacceptable for such a young establishment with young and inexperienced staff.

The restaurant claims "vegan" menu items. The staff and ownership do not understand what vegan actually is. There is one vegan menu item which is frozen pancakes. The frozen pancakes were not in stock... It is unacceptable for a breakfast restaurant to use anything other than fresh ingredients and made to order dishes. It takes longer to thaw frozen pancakes then it does to pour batter on the griddle.

Update: The response to my review claims they do not use frozen pancakes. Again, I can only comment on the state of the restaurant when I was there. The girl that took our order walked into the back and when she came back to our table she specifically said "We are out of vegan pancakes. They are frozen and we don't have any" I'm sorry if she wasn't being truthful but that's what we were told. Blaming staff doesn't reflect kindly on ownership.

I was served orange juice in a glass that had a large chip in the rim of the glass. I had to point this out and ask for a new glass. The orange juice was terrible and had a bitter after taste. Maybe the machine was dirty or the oranges were not ripe.

The tomato juice was watery and seemed like it had settled and wasn't shaken before poured.

I ordered the bowl of oats which took 15+ minutes to arrive at the table on the cold side of lukewarm.

Corned beef hash didn't resemble or taste like corned beef hash.

The decor is absolutely dreadful. There are large poorly placed picture of random food like something you would see in the old grocery stores. Public radio with commercials is played inside the restaurant which is repulsive.

Honestly, I have never left a review this bad. The entire vibe of this restaurant is first time inexperienced owners and management. "Hey I can make breakfast food let's open a restaurant" please don't compare this place to First Watch because it's disrespectful to First Watch.

Updated: After reading the response to my review it is clear that the ownership wants to blame staff for the failures. This re-enforces the unwillingness of the management or ownership to be on-site during business hours to ensure the restaurant operates in a professional manner. I'm absolutely not interested in ever returning to The Kitchen. I feel very sorry for the inexperienced staff that is blamed yet...

Food is great, however they have a big capacity issue. Orders can take more than hour and a half. Been there and they are slow too, should warned the customer of the waiting times. When I ordered online today the order took more than hour and a half. The driver waiting there losing money, I had a brunch with a friend which I couldnt fed. I ordered somewhere else. But you can't cancel an order on door dash. I lost my money and time. The place should not take door dash orders if they can make them in reasonable time. Not worth the hustle. Disrespectful. Do not own a place if you don't know how to drive proper operations. I am still waiting for the driver to pick up the food. He texted me again he has been told it will be ready soon. That has been since 10 30 am it is noon now. Unbelievable So bad the world we live now, I came back today 11/21 because I like to support local businesses and as I said food is good in this place. The lady in the kitchen was very rude because of my previous review. She doesn't want to serve my orders because I left an honest review that is not the only one, that doesn't solve the problem. Been understaffed is an issue but you can be honest with the waiting times to your customers and people can plan ahead or decide to wait or not. Today the place was empty tho. And it didn't seem understaffed. it is sad a restaurant with good food has that very bad management and very bad service. Some people don't understand how businesses work. I won't be surprised if I see this place closing down as many others. If she would have approached to me in a different way we could have talked about last experience and this time make it right and I could have delete the review and keep being a recurrent customer as I was. Been rude and yelling at someone it is not the way to solve issues. I felt sorry for that lady. I don't think she is happy there or with their life.

Stay away from this place, they don't deserve either...

I really wanted to give The Kitchen a fair shot, but this place lost me before I could even order.

When my wife and I walked in, the vibe was already a little off, but I tried to brush it aside. The host (a bald guy at the stand) didn’t acknowledge us for a solid five minutes because he was too busy entering what looked like employee info into the computer. Not exactly the best first impression.

When he finally decided to acknowledge us, he said, “Alright guys, follow me,” and started walking straight toward the kitchen. Naturally, we followed — only for him to literally laugh in our faces in front of the whole restaurant and say, “Nooo, not through the kitchen,” as if we were supposed to magically know the layout of a restaurant we’d never been to. (Plenty of restaurants do walk guests through the kitchen — Bucca di Beppo, for example.) If he didn’t want confusion, he could have just walked the way he expected us to go instead of setting us up for embarrassment.

To top it off, he acted annoyed that we weren’t keeping up with his rushed, speed-walk pace to the table. At that point, we were over it. We sat down for maybe 30 seconds, looked at each other, and decided to leave. Ended up going to Café Melissa’s instead — much better choice.

Oh, and by the way, they’re still charging an extra $1 on every menu item that includes eggs… which makes zero sense considering egg prices didn’t even spike much and have already gone back down.

Bottom line: rude service, unwelcoming atmosphere, and nickel-and-dime menu pricing. I wanted to give this place a chance, but The Kitchen blew it before I even had the chance to...