Tommy's Cafe — Restaurant in Davenport

THINGS TO NOTE: Cash only! No credit or debit cards. No WiFi! Don't come here with your laptop & expect to connect to the internet.

That said. It's a great little restaurant. Classic Americana, no frills to speak of really, but fills the belly. Well & cheaply.

When I stepped inside, I saw why I had trouble parking. Seems all of Davenport comes here to eat (good sign). I saw rich people, poor people, black & white & arab. They eat side by side at Tommy's. It was a cross-section of the Midwest melting pot America, beautiful to see.

I got a coffee. It was Folgers or Folgers equivalent, nothing exceptional but it was does the job & I must say it was brewed at proper strength, served piping hot, and was not burned. Kudos. 👍🏻 Half-n-half, Sweet & Low, and sugar were on the table. Didn't need it, but that's what they had.

I ate the "Wreck", just your classic hodgepodge of breakfast ingredients covered in cheese. I ordered the potatoes "extra crisp", but this didn't really happen...I wasn't surprised. They tried! They crisped up the outside of the hashbrowns but the inside was soft & white. A lot of places & white people & northern restaurants do this. They're called hashBROWNS, not hashWHITES. You gotta work over the whole mass of potatoes. Other than that, the meal was just pretty good & filling.

A funny little sidenote, I noticed a white powder on my sourdough toast. ^^ How odd!! It's either powdered sugar or cocaine, so it's going to be sweet or a bonus, right? ¯(ツ)_/¯ Gave it a lick. Powdered sugar. Like the parking situation, I actually consider a little slop in the cooking to be a GOOD thing. They're busy, right? Practically every table was full, all the time. They're cranking out orders well & quickly. I've been to absolutely immaculate & pristine clean restaurants...that have bland & tasteless food. Not so at Tommy's. So a little powdered sugar found its way onto my toast. So what? I can deal.

Also funny, I took pictures of the menu: breakfast is served anytime! Burgers & sandwiches, ALSO served just any old time! Very accommodating, but I noticed they DO draw the line at dinner. That is not served anytime.

Service was prompt & the men's restroom was very, very clean. Smelled clean, they had a little air freshener working. Everything was stocked & the door worked well, could lock.

All the waitresses were kind. Classic chatty Cathys, just engaging in friendly banter with their locals. Tommy was running register & was professional, kind. I bought a gift certificate to force my friends to eat here, because I'm that kind of guy.

Suggestions to Tommy's, take them for what you will: cook those potatoes to crisp when asked! Cook them all, thoroughly. This will put you above a lot of other diners out there. It would be great to put a motion sensor control on the bathroom light, exhaust fan so it kicks on only as needed for 10, 15 minute intervals. It might save you electricity & your heating/cooling bill, and it's one less thing to turn off at the end of your day. And last but not least, those S&P shakers...I've seen a lot of restaurants do well by switching to GRINDERS. Not only is it more health code compliant (because it is self-contained & doesn't need to be serviced by waitstaff daily), but it's a delicious & fresh complement to your good food. You'll have to weigh the time savings, possible 'shrinkage' (will you have people stealing them? Could you mark them?), etc. But I like it!! Could test it out with 4 or 5 tables well within your view, see how it goes.

GOOD JOB, TOMMY!...

I made it into West Davenport via a trip down to the Freight House Farmer's Market this morning. After getting a bit of Kombucha and hanging around, I needed some lunch. A quick review of the places nearby led me to Tommy's Cafe. Seemed like a nice place to try out.

I'm glad I decided on Tommy's this morning. It's an experience in and of itself, at least for me as someone living well away from west Davenport. The diner is a true hole in the wall. The floors have that tile characteristic of nearly every building built in the 80s or 90s and the booths are that light pink I stereotypically envision every diner has. In keeping with their story, it's plainly obvious that one half of the restaurant was the original space (wood paneling walls) and the other half was an expansion (normal looking cream colored drywall). There's nothing wrong with this - it's a neat feature of the space that highlights its history.

Hungry for lunch, I ended up getting a burger and fries, both of which were out to me within 10 minutes. Both were solid - the burger was filling and exactly what I'd expect a diner burger to be. The fries still had small bits of oil on them sizzling ever so slightly. They had the right combination of crispy and fluffy that crinkle cut fries should have. Truly, this place is a greasy spoon worth visiting.

I need to come back at least one more time to try their donuts and/or other baked goods. They are prominently featured, but I was too full upon leaving to consider them. At any rate, if you're in this part of Davenport, you should stop into Tommy's at some point. Get a good meal from a local institution and hang out for a while....

Use to be one of our favorite breakfast spots. A couple years ago we started seeing the roaches. Now I work in a service trade and have seen a lot of kitchens. Not many places don't have roaches. But the ones we seen at Tommy's were huge and crawling around the dinning area. So we quit going.

Fast forward to this morning and our current breakfast spot was swamped with an hour wait time to be seated So we decided what the heck, let's give Tommy's a try again. We walked in and was told the round booth was just cleaned and to have a seat there. We started to walk over to it and it was piled with dirty dishes. So then they sit us at the booth by the door. The waitress was quick to take our drink order and to take our food order. 45 minutes later after seeing a group of 4 and a group of 2 seated after us and served there food before us. We asked our waitress if our food was coming soon. She replied with attitude, "you are the 2nd ticket". They hadn't even started our food yet. We left a $5 bill for the drinks and left.

Also while we were waiting for our food, a lady came out to consolidate the donut trays. She touched every single donut with her bare hands.

At least we didn't see any roaches. We...