Cafe Bernardo — Restaurant in Davis

Food and vibe are fine but the “serve yourself” service is awful. I want to be seated, not scout hopelessly through the restaurant looking for a table. I don’t want to scan a QR code or view a digital menu, especially when the cellular reception is poor here and there’s no immediately apparent wifi provided. Nor do I want to be prompted to tip on their credit card machines when I have been neither provided service, nor food, at that point in time.

I ordered coffee and orange juice, and one of my arms is currently in a sling due to an injury. Now I have to make two trips from the counter to my table to carry both drinks with my one good arm. What more, I’m not even served coffee.. I have to go and fill my coffee mug up at the self service carafe… and if the coffee is supposed to be something local and gourmet, they’re not fooling anyone.. tastes like any run-of-the-mill generic breakfast blend. I abandoned the folly of asking for a water. They’d probably hand you a styrofoam cup and expect you to fill it up in the bathroom sink.

Because of their seat-yourself approach, people wander through the restaurant and wind up having to stake out tables that haven’t even been cleaned yet. Two groups tried to claim the vacated table next to me. It was full of dirty dishes and glasses. Not somewhere where any paying customer should be sitting. The first group sat there awkwardly, waiting with no avail for someone to come clean the table, and eventually gave up and left. The next group that came to sit at the table already had ordered, and sat next to the dirty dishes holding their table number waiting hopelessly again for someone to clean the table. As a single diner, I cleaned up my table to the best of my ability, and left. The second group moved to my clean-ish table, while the dirty table continued to be ignored by the staff.

This modern trend of restaurants expecting dining customers to both serve themselves and tip the restaurant for the privilege is so backwards. The waitress, busboy system is not broken, so why replace it? Seems like the management of this place is apathetic and shameless. Their restaurant experience feels like a glorified doordash, and they leave it to the college kids who run the place to fill the gaps.

I came out for a pleasant Sunday morning brunch, not some debacle. Service here feels equivalent to getting rushed in-and-out at a...

I can tell you right away, you will be leaving this restaurant thinking, "What did I pay so much for? NOTHING here is exceptional. I could go somewhere else, pay a cheaper price and get more out of that experience." I took my girlfriend here last night and it was our first time at this restaurant. We ordered and left a 20% tip only to find out later on that the service was basically nonexistent. The tip wasn't necessary. It took almost half an hour to get our food and when it came out, the portion sizes were too small for the amount of money we paid. Their $10 Angus beef hamburger was mediocre, overpriced and very small. You can pay $3.75 at In n Out and get a better burger. They also charge you extra for the smallest things, like french fries are an additional $2 with your burger, one CAN of soda is $3.75 (no refills), and if you want ranch because your food is too dry, that costs extra as well. However, nothing beats their Bahn Mi sandwich. The waitress neglected to tell my girlfriend that if she didn't want onions, she wasn't going to get pickled vegetables with that either. My girlfriend didn't want onions, but she did want pickled vegetables. So the Bahn Mi sandwich turned out exceptionally dry and overly salty. When we complained about it, they asked if we wanted more mayonnaise for the Bahn Mi (there was already a lot and it wasn't helping), because of course, ranch...

The business model does not work for me and my family. We were not expecting a cafeteria style, order at the counter and then find a table type experience from what we read on the the Google reviews. The pricing is very high for what is served. We got the kimchi fried rice and there was almost no detectable cabbage pieces whatsoever. We expected there to be actual kimchi in the dish. My sister ordered eggs over medium (we checked the ticket with the cashier to be sure it was entered correctly: it was) and her plate was so late, it didn’t arrive until after everyone else at the table was served and then she had to send it back because the eggs were scrambled (?) Most egregiously the person who appears to be one of the managers was occupying a 4-top and also blocking the adjacent 2-top when we entered. She was spread out and casually using her lap top, drinking coffee and had her personal items on both tables, so we all had to split up and sit separately. They ask for large percentage of tips on the automated point of sale machines. The whole experience was insulting. A big, expensive disappointment. I feel sorry for the servers because they are busting hard to make probably very little tips due to the disorganization of management, the counter orders and kitchen are not functioning smoothly. I hope this helps both guests...