Meli Cafe — Restaurant in Chicago

Although it's a nice place to catch up with a friend, I was disappointed by the food and the service. I initially ordered the chicken & waffles thinking it's a southern staple, how can you go wrong? Well, the waffles are made out of a batter infused with chives, which I did not know until I had them that I really, really do not like them. I ate less than half of one waffle (comes with two), but simply could not get beyond the flavor. It tasted like soap. The chicken, however, was really good. I politely sent that meal back and tried a traditional pancake sampler instead (came with eggs, bacon, & hash browns). There was some funky flavoring in the pancakes, too, but not nearly as bad as the waffles, so I decided to finish it.

This restaurant/cafe is very posh - i believe it's French themed - and so, in my opinion, it is also overpriced. Everything on the menu here is $3-5 more than it would be at a regular diner/IHOP type of place.

Also, I had to flag the servers down each time i needed something. It did not seem like they were in the habit of periodically stopping by the tables to check on customers. They also did not seem to look up while they were working to see if any customer needed anything. I practically had to dance a jig or send up an S.O.S. flare to get their attention. However, once they did respond, they fulfilled my request right away.

It's a fine place if you'd like a new diner experience, but it seemed like the chef was doing too much with the flavor profiles and the staff could use a reminder to pay a bit attention to their customers.

The friend I met up with enjoyed it very much. She got the avocado wrap (meat free) and had no complaints, but she'd also eaten at another location before and knew...

Overall very disappointing food and service. As someone who has worked in service I was surprised at how busy this place was today considering the quality of food and service were so low. My boyfriend and I were seated and then we sat at our table with just drinks (water and coffee) for a good 20-25 minutes. When our waiter took our order things seemed fine. The interaction was very quick so I figured it was just a busy morning and he had other tables to wait on. I ordered the challah French toast with an apple compote and a side of bacon and my partner ordered the all American breakfast with no toast and a side of bacon as well. We are 100% certain our food was microwaved. My French toast was dry and the apple compote on top was cold in some places and warm in others which is a telling sign of a microwaved dish. Our bacon also came out cold. My boyfriend’s scrambled eggs and hash browns were bland. So my entire meal was cold and microwaved ish and my boyfriends was partially microwaved and flavorless. I would have mentioned this to the server but after dropping off the food he never came back. We decided to leave and my boyfriend went to go get the car. I flagged down a busser so he could let our server know I’d like to pay the check and I ended up waiting an additional 15 minutes or more at my table alone with my coat on. No one approached the table so I had to get up and ask a random server if I could pay the check. She was then able to get our server and I paid and left. The check was in total $46 and some change which I understand is not expensive in Chicago. However if I wanted a microwaved meal I could have just stayed home and saved my money. Truly I’m...

I went to Meli cafe twice with friends over the weekend. Saturday was a great experience so we decided to go again on Sunday. On Sunday our waitress was visibly ill. We saw her going to the restroom covering her mouth multiple times during our visit. We didnt get served after being seated for 30 minutes so we tried to ask the manager what was going on all he said was that the server would be back in a minute. Finally after the sick waitress came back we ordered.The waitress seemed to be struggling with ringing in our order and it took her about 10 minutes to get it in. We watched her talking to what looked like management and it seemed as though they would not allow her to leave. We were uncomfortable with the fact that they were allowing a sick person to serve food so we asked another waitress to bring out our food. When the food came out my friends order was wrong and when we got the bill the waitress rang it up wrong. We had to wait about 10 minutes for her to fix it. The manager came over while we were waiting and we explained what happened he said "well did you try to split the bill 5 ways?" Which had nothing to do with the problem... We know that it is not the waitresses fault that she was sick but we do not think the situation wasn't handled properly. No one once gave us an apology for the situation. Very very poor service but decent food. No one should be working while they are ill it puts...