Famous Toastery — Restaurant in Cary

Finally went in with my wife to check this place out for a late breakfast/brunch after having passed by it a few times. Based on a cursory glance of other reviews for this place, Famous Toastery is definitely a hit or miss depending on when you go. This means there is no consistency in the service. Overall, my visit to Famous Toastery left a lot to be desired; the food was cold and the service could have been better.

What I ordered:

1. 1x Breakfast Combo (1 Flapjack, 2 eggs scrambled, with thick-cut bacon on the side). 1x Iced latte with vanilla

2. 1x Stuffed French toast with Nutella and banana.

The food came out not too long after we ordered which was nice, but could be expected as it was a Wednesday morning and not very busy; This may have been a warning sign for what was to come. The main issue is that all the food was cold when it arrived.

Both the Flapjack and the bread portion of the Stuffed French toast was undercooked/underdone. For the French Toast, it felt like the Nutella and banana were just spread on two pieces of untoasted/uncooked bread; normally the heat from cooking the French toast and melting the Nutella and banana is a winning combination, but this was not the case in our situation. The scrambled eggs were also cold (but fully cooked) and, along with an iced latte that did not taste like it had any coffee, made for a very poor experience.

This was a situation where I ate more than I wanted to because I was hungry, not because it tasted good. Even then, we did not eat all the food.

A disclaimer about our experience: we did not speak to our server about the issues with the food. Since there were issues with all the dishes we ordered, this gives the impression that there is a bigger issue with how the food is prepared and felt that it would not be worth the time or effort to bring this to their attention. To be frank, the staff missed out on the opportunity to catch this as they did not check in on us after the food had arrived.

The experience was so underwhelming we left the place...

The food is NOT SPECIAL and is kin to what you'd get at a Waffle House, a Dennys, Eggs Up Grill, or an IHOP. You can't normally (and they don't) fry bacon or eggs any differently than in those other locations, but here, Famous Toastery will charge you two times the price. The fact is you're paying exorbitant costs for a place that thinks one fried egg should be $4 compared to other restaurants still holding around $2 and some change as of August 2023. The egg isn't fried in any expensive Truffle butter or laid upon Saffron-infused Jasmine rice with parsley flakes. It's just a fried egg, cooked in the cheapest edible cooking oil they could afford. I could get the same thing at a McDonalds or Bojangles for a dollar. So why am I paying $4 here? Order a to-go meal, and like others have stated - utensils, butters, honey, jams is all up in the air. Maybe you'll get something. Maybe you won't. 50% of the time, they won't come with your meal even when you ask for them. But I bet you they won't forget to ask you for a tip out the door when all the host did was hand you a poorly prepared to-go bag with nothing in it, and give you a glare WHEN IT WAS A TO-GO ORDER and no one served you at a table, filled your drinks. Provided you anything as far as condiments and expects a tip for it.

And then you get home and wonder how this POS omelet for $17 after taxes, barely the size or thickness of a toilet paper roll with no toilet paper on it, is supposed to fill you. And the home fries were sprinkled in like expensive pieces of gold, so you got like 7 or 8 bite-sized chunks of potatoes. After "breakfast," you're scouring the house for something else to eat because the ALDI/LIDL brand El Cheapo toast they used was too hard & dry with no butter or jam - to choke it down. This place is way, way overrated. At least at fast-food restaurants, we've come to expect garbage service, but we make the tradeoff for the cheaper costs. Here, you'll pay exorbitant costs and still get lackluster quality and...

I went here for a book club meeting with a friend. We had to wait about 40 minutes to be seated because it was really busy. This was probably because it was a Saturday and the place was actually quite small when you go further in so it doesn't look like it can hold many people like a more commercial breakfast place.

They also had a sign saying that they were short staffed but it was all the way in the bathroom and I never went to the bathroom until after we were finished eating so it would've been nice to have that sign up front so everyone knew what was going on and why service might/would be slow. Some of the staff also said it was up front for some time but it was now moved by the time they were closing.

The service was okay, but they all looked ready to go home, which would make sense due to it almost being closing time (we came around 1:30/1:40 pm and weren't seated til about 2:20 pm) and them being short staffed so that is obviously not where the rate/score is coming from because I had good conversation with some of the staff in the bathroom.

My main gripe was the food. The good thing was that I was really hungry so I did eat most of it. I ordered the buffalo chicken wrap with the breakfast potatoes. The potatoes weren't seasoned at all and they could have been cooked a bit more as well as the chicken in the wrap. Some of the pieces were a bit hard and chewy and might not have been cooked all the way either. The sauce in the wrap was good though but they maybe could have put a bit more in there and also seasoned the chicken a bit more as well. I also got the creamsicle mimosa which you can't mess up or go wrong with.

My friend just got the French toast and an iced coffee which she ate completely, so maybe the actual breakfast food is good because I do what to give this place another try on a day that whey are hopefully fully staffed and possibly at an earlier time now that I know what the deal is...