Oswego Tea Company Cafe and Bakery — Restaurant in City of Oswego

I was there over the weekend but needed to wait until I got home to a computer because it was too much to type on my phone.

A friend wanted to take another friend there for his birthday breakfast, and I was being stashed there ahead of time as a surprise. I was not acknowledged when I walked in, and a party who came in after me was seated before me. I made eye contact with the girl at the counter (who had auburn hair and a bad lily tattoo on her chest that looked like she drew it on herself with a Sharpie) and she stayed at the opposite end of the counter. I often have a hard time walking in the morning because of a neuromuscular issue, and she watched me limp all the way down to the other end of the counter (which goes most of the length of the restaurant). So now not only do we have a bad waitress, but a bad human being.

I asked if I could get the table before the others got there because the restaurant was now filling up fast. She very lamely told me that I could grab one of the empty tables but never came over to see if I wanted water, coffee, a menu, or anything else while I waited. I tried to make eye contact with her several other times and was ignored.

Another girl (I learned her name was Sarah) appeared after my being there for ten or fifteen minutes, and came right over with my first attempt at eye contact. I asked for coffee and she said she went to get it right away, but Bad Tattoo Girl pulled her aside and whispered something to her, after which they both glanced back toward me. Seriously? What was that about? If I wasn't meeting people, and if it hadn't been someone else's choice to go to this restaurant, I would have been out of there.

It took several more minutes to get my coffee, but Sarah was very nice. The rest of my party showed up a couple minutes later. Since I was surprising the birthday boy, there was a lot of movement and chatter when he arrived and saw me, and the entire restaurant knew the rest of my party was there... seemingly everyone except the wait staff. It took another fifteen minutes and some flagging down to get their drink orders. We learned that the information on the menu was out of date (we all wanted to order the one thing that was a seasonal item that was no longer being offered).

When we did eventually get our food, my Eggs Benedict were closer to hard boiled than poached, one friend got his side dish toward the end of the meal and the other never got it at all. When I asked for a refill on my coffee, they brought the pot around to every table around us and then started to walk away until I called out. By then there were three girls waiting tables, so the problem with service wasn't about staff-to-patron ratio.

We went to Wade's the next morning, which isn't as pretty but the service was fast and friendly, and the food was cooked exactly to order. Combine with that the fact that Wade's is half the price, I'll stick to going there when...

In April 2016, I had a gathering for my daughter's Christening with 35 people attending. After meeting with Lisa, my husband and I decided on having the brunch menu available to the guests, including coffee/tea/OJ and we were going to have raisin bread toast put out to enjoy with their coffee prior to ordering their main entrees. The communication with Lisa at the beginning was poor at best, my husband kept saying, its a bad sign, but I went ahead because it was set and ready to go. I did work a bit with Liz who was great. Lisa on the other hand was very difficult to work with, she quoted me a per person price, which I thought included what we discussed and then add tax and gratuity. That wasn't the case the day of the event, my husband stayed back and settled the bill, as we had guests coming back to our home, after reviewing the bill she charged us ala carte for everything and gave NO discount for bringing 35+ people. After reviewing the bill I asked to discuss with her, she called me and was rude, condescending, lied, and was beyond arrogant. The mistakes I made, I shouldn't have trusted what she said, I should have had it written out in black and white (only vague emails were exchanged) I trusted a small business owner and I shouldn't have. There were complaints the day of the party from my guests that said she was rude (she was the only one taking orders) while her wait staff seemed stuck behind the counter. When I asked where the OJ was she said 'you didn't ask me for it' when clearly it was discussed because it was on the original piece of paper she gave me from our initial meeting, she never put out the raisin bread toast, I never said anything because the last thing I wanted to do was to get upset on such a beautiful day.... She also made the snide comment to me that my guests 'showed up 20 minutes early' , since when is it not 'normal' to show up early for an event. She was unprepared and not ready and seemed agitated by the guests standing around. She was VERY unprofessional. If you decide to have a party here, get EVERYTHING in writing, do NOT trust what she says she will do, because you will be disappointed. It was an easy fix, she could of apologized for the confusion and we could of sorted it out, unfortunately that wasn't the case. She blamed her employee Liz for her mistakes and then refused to make it right by making excuses for her...

I wouldn't recommend this place to anybody. Their name suggest a decent selection of teas at the very least. This place only serves Tazo tea (which you can buy at the grocery store), and their coffee is from Starbucks (bad sign). Their menu looked descent, and they even had a couple of things for vegetarians. The service is horrendous. We actually decided to leave the place without placing an order. It was our first time at this place. When we arrived, there were around 5 tables busy and 5 empty. We were told to wait until they can clear a table for us (all the empty tables were cleared and clean). After the two couple ahead of us were seated, they gave us our table (took 5 mins, pretty good). A lady approaches us, asking if we wanted something to drink, and then stops herself and ask us who seated us, and then says that somebody else will come to take our order. After 15 mins, we stopped the same lady and asked if she could at least take our drink orders, she did. I ordered a single espresso (average), and they asked me if I wanted it small, medium, or large, which I didn't know how to answer that. I told her, just a single shot, and with a confused face, agreed. After 15-20min, we see another waitress holding what we think is our order but not knowing where to take it. She looked like she's been running a marathon. My partner's latte had a hair in it! She said she'll be back to take our order. Another 10 minutes go by and we've now decided to just leave, we just wanted to pay for our hairy coffee. When she came back to take our order, we wanted to ask for the check but she didn't let us speak, and then realized she forgot her pen, and left again for another 5 minutes. We eventually were able to leave. We're not coming back. They might have amazing food, but with over 45 minutes waiting just to take our order, getting hair in our coffee, and running the place in such a hectic way when they're just at half capacity, and not even having a real tea selection, we're not recommending...