Café Carmel — Restaurant in Carmel-by-the-Sea

You know, when I rate places, I take it extremely seriously. I consider everything, the service, price, the people working, spacing of seats, decor, parking, atmosphere, accessibility, options; the whole shebang. But in the end it comes down to one only: how was my experience? Obviously, my experience is extrememly localized, which is I try and visit a place several times before making a decision. But every so often, there is an experience so universally hated by all the customers, only one visited is needed to know the truth.

The coffee, food, and pricing are nothing of particular misfortune, I can say without a doubt this is lowest experience one can dread when going out in public. Dealing with the obnoxious behavior of the public is already a hard pill to swallow, so the idea of spending my hard earn money, just to be further disappointed and bombarded by the obstacles I try and avoid most in life is beyond me.

The quick of it, it's ten women sitting behind a cramped counter all wearing a single airpod in their ears, screaming out coffee orders, giving horrible service, in crammed hallway of a coffee shop, blasting horrible music over it all. They don't want to be their as much as the customers regret going there. I don't know what causes them to have such disregard for human decency and professionalism, and ultimately subject themselves to a meaningless job serving coffee that they clearly take no joy in, but it beyond all else makes me sad to see.

I hope they one day they can escape this life and existences they clearly loathe, just as I wish to escape this coffee shop now.

⭐ May the curse of my one star bring an end to this awful plague of an...

Service from one of the staff members terrible. She seemed completely bothered by us being there, and several other guests after us (as we waited for our food). The website said the close time was 9pm. We went in at 5:45 to order some items for take out dinner. I was told the oven was already turned off, so none of the hot food on their menu was available. When I was trying to order a turkey wrap, I was told that turkey is considered hot because they have to cook it. The nice staff person making the food corrected the person taking our order. Next I ordered a roast beef sandwich, and again was told it was hot food because they have to cook the roast beef. The nice staff person again corrected the woman taking our order, telling her that they are all cold cuts, and don’t have to be cooked. I could see they were ready to close down, and hoping no one else would come in. There were, however, other guests who were also (in my opinion) treated as if they were an inconvenience. The staff person was cleaning the espresso machine, and instead of a “welcome in! I’ll be right with you” gave out a “give me a second, ok?” to the guest waiting to order. Bad service, especially for Carmel. I’m a local, and likely...

The service is awful. Cashier was rude, unwilling to help to take an order. Back male cook was laughing after several customers complained and walked out from the register. I will never come back to this place. So sad for a charming town like Carmel. Employ better staff, if you wear a mask, place it above your nose, and for the cashier's long nails, touching food and money at the same time as you're poiting every customer who expresses a grievance out the door, you should not be working in any service job. As you said to us "OKAY, BYE". *

Replying here since it won't let me on the platform: Thank you for acknowledging this review. My husband and I stopped by today around 12pm you had a long line of costumers (we waited 15 min in line), 3 others walked out and a lady heard and saw the cashier throw her fingers at us out the door and said they are very rude here, and went back to say something to the cashier. I've never had this level of disrespect, the cashier and the male cook clearly don't need jobs for one to laugh and another to not only be vulgar in her way of speech but to show absolute disrespect to...