Cafe Berlin — Restaurant in Columbia Township

Some co-workers and I stopped here the other day on our lunch break and happened to catch their weekend brunch just before they closed! It wasn't until we sat down at our table that I looked them up on yelp and discovered they were to close in half an hour. I immediately felt awful that we were "those people". But I looked up and saw that the place was 100% packed. Every table was full and another party was seated just after us. Our waitress said this was pretty common, so they're obviously pretty friggin' popular!

I had already had a huge breakfast, so I opted to two sides - potatoes and breakfast sausage. The potatoes were very nicely seasoned and roasted, but they were cut in much larger chunks than most breakfast potatoes I've had. And the breakfast sausage wasn't seasoned quite enough for my tastes - they were on the bland side.

However, one of my coworkers ordered the Butch Jones and it was absolutely incredible!!! The menu describes this dish as a "smaller pancake" topped with a half order of apples and sausage. This pancake was by no means small. AND it was filled with scrambled eggs and strips of bacon!! The apples were cooked to perfection and the sauce it created was caramel-ly and sweet. This was the perfect sweetness to soak into the pancake and balance the kick of spice from the andouille sausage. My dear co-worker let me try a bite and I about died - it was absolutely everything you want in a breakfast dish. You got the salty, the sweet, the meat, a punch of flavor, not to mention the perfect layer of textures - the fluffy eggs and pancakes, the crispy bacon and the chewy sausage.

I felt bad for my other coworker. He was on the fence about what to get. All he knew was that he was really hungry. So he ordered a couple things - a pancake topped with the apples and sausage, a side of eggs and a side of bacon. Obviously, once our food arrived we realized this was silly because he could've gotten the exact same things by simply ordering the Butch Jones. But the menu didn't mention the eggs and bacon and the waitress failed to point that out. So he basically got the exact same dish but paid more because of ordering everything separately. Not cool.

One other positive I will note - great selection of music! I constantly noticed, "Hey, I love this song!" And the music was never too loud as to make conversation a challenge.

But now that I know my way around the menu, I will absolutely make the two hour drive back to Columbia as soon as I can so that I can have a Butch Jones all...

Today I told my wife, let's give Cafe Berlin a second chance. About a year ago we visited and where very dissatisfied with the food after being told how great it was by many locals. Today was no different.

I ordered the Union, which is two eggs with red potatoes and a meat side and then a half or whole order of biscuits and gravy, and a pancake on the side.

Before I continue I must give the caveat that breakfast is my favorite meal of the day because I seldom get the opportunity to make and enjoy it. Going out for this meal is somewhat of a treat and I hold professional cooks to a standard that I hold my own breakfast cooking, not being a professional.

The eggs were cooked how I asked, over easy, but the edges of the white were overdone and crusty. The kind of crusty that can't be chewed. The potatoes had good flavor and he bacon was much better than the first time I visited.

On to the main reason I decided to leave a review: the Biscuit n Gravy. The gravy was not gravy. The texture was gelatinous and was literally tasteless. It reminded me of coagulated fat with a small amount of milk and flour added. I wish I would have taken a picture for proof or a video of me letting it plop off my spoon. Just terrible. So unforgivable for a professional kitchen to put out such fundamentally BAD FOOD.

The buttermilk pancake also not very flavorful and the texture was spongy rather than fluffy and light.

The presentation even had no thought put into it. Just food thrown on a plate with no thought of how it looks and how that will effect the overall experience.

If your looking for a place to just fill your basic food need and not an overall experience then by all means Cafe Berlin deserves this one star. But if you go out to eat for a food experience then if I could I would give zero stars.

Last complaint that absolutely NEEDS attention from management is the bathroom situation. The hallway leading to the bathroom was cluttered with odds and ends and had the appearance of being dirty. The bathroom itself WAS dirty. So as Anthony Bourdain wrote in Kitchen Confidential: if the bathrooms are dirty then you can guess what the kitchen looks like where your food is being prepared.

Sorry but there will not be a...

I hate to leave such a negative review because I'm sincerely always rooting for the success of local restaurants, but I could not have been more disappointed in my recent experience with the management here.

To keep a long story as short as possible, I was hoping to get catering for a larger event I was in charge of organizing. We reached out more than a month in advance to explore possibilities while respecting their timelines, and everything seemed destined for success at first. A week before the event, I called three times and left multiple voicemails but never got a response. Days later I finally got a response from a kind lady who answered the phone and optimistically said she would have a manager call me back, but that never happened.

The day before the event, I made one last hopeful phone call and finally got ahold of a manager. When I asked about the order, I was rudely told they wouldn't be able to accommodate our event. Confused, I gently asked if there was anything I could have done better in the process to prevent any miscommunication from happening again (because I was genuinely interesting in working with them in the future), and I was told (again in an extremely rude tone of voice) that they were too busy. Not only did I feel extremely disrespected, but I was forced to find other accommodations for my event in less than 24 hours.

If you're just looking to grab a quick meal, the food is certainly delicious and I have had a handful of great dishes there. There's no disputing that. It's a very cool, local vibe, and the service staff has always been kind to me. I'm not here to speak poorly of their food. I'll even say that the breakfast burrito is delicious, and I think it's cool that they offer tempeh for people looking to eat plant-based. I love that.

But I can't in good faith support a place whose management is blatantly rude to the people that have kept them in business over the years. As a person who also works in the customer service industry, that's just not how you should treat people in my opinion.

They likely won't be getting another dime out...