Café Lily — Restaurant in Decatur

We unfortunately had a very bad experience at this restaurant. My party arrived at Café Lily at 11:30AM and was promptly seated, as we were the only ones there. The waitress took our order and we began our wait. As time passed, others trickled in and it eventually became relatively busy. The waitress came by once to bring our beverages and did not return. We were there for a business meeting so were occupied with our discussion and did not realize how much time had passed. We did however notice that several tables had gotten their orders. As the sixth table received their order, the waitress stopped by our table and asked us what we ordered again because she “felt like they were taking a long time with the food”. It was approximately 12:35PM at that point. We proceeded to remind her of our orders and she left. She returned shortly thereafter stating that they had “run out” of the pre-prepared falafel batter and had to make new ones, but that our order would be out in 3 minutes. We were at this point quite annoyed and asked to speak to a manager. She said the manager would be right out. 3 minutes came and went and 15 minutes later, two of us received our order. The last order came out about 3 minutes after everyone else’s. We had to stop her again, as she did not return to check the meal or refill beverages (my water glass was empty), and asked for the manager again. He came to our table at roughly 1PM (30 minutes after we originally requested to speak with him). We proceeded to explain the unpleasant experience we had and not only was he not surprised, he initially didn’t seem to care that we were upset. We then pointed out that we couldn’t help but notice that we were the only African American individuals in the restaurant. The manager surprisingly got quite huffy with us and went on to tell us he wasn’t going to allow us to do that to him and that he refused to acknowledge the thought that it might have been a racial issue. He also explained that the waitress admitted to him that it was her fault and that she forgot to put in our order…a totally different story than what we were told previously. Had she explained that to us in the first place, or at least come by within that hour to state what was going on, we would have understood. He did eventually offer to comp our meal but we had already paid so he gave each of us gift cards to return in hopes of having a different experience.

The food was just okay, not bad but certainly not the best I’ve had. However It would have probably tasted better had we not received that poor level of service and met with such a callous response from the manager. I will re-gift the gift card; needless to say I will not...

The food was quite good I would say, and the service -the waitress was very good although she said she was new- but she was very nice, very helpful very courteous and professional, however there was another person, Maybe the one training our waitress, who (she) kept coming by after we had almost finished our food ( and I say almost because we were taking our time, I was dining with a friend that I had not seen for three years) and she kept asking several times if we finished with our food for her to take our plates, making it quite obvious that she basically wanted us to leave the table, to get up and go, and I say this because I was in the restaurant business back in the 80s and that's one of the things you do when you want to get rid of/turn a table. She was making it way too obvious, it was very annoying and unfortunately that experience will definitely cause us not to come back, it was my first time, I was really excited about the place and the cuisine when i read about it on the web, but that negative experience (repeated & making it quite obvious several times during the evening) turned us off. To make things even worse (!), after we paid the bill, while we were still eating our tiramisu desert, 2 or 3 ladies came out and started spraying the empty tables around us with chemicals that were very irritating to our breathing -my friend had to put her mask back on but it did not help. Please note that they were not disinfecting the tables because they were people waiting to sit and start dining... There was nobody coming in and there was nobody waiting ... these tables were empty and stayed empty with nobody waiting to seat at them..... all the spraying was to close around us, was too irritating to be brathing the chemicals & that eventually made us get up and go. Yes this time this was very effective indeed & yes, this trick did do the job. It's so sad to say that we won't come back. Neither myself nor my friend were ever treated so rudely by any of the other nice restaurants we frequent in the Decatur area. Well, if anybody ask us about Cafe Lily, I assure you we will share our experience with them, because that's not the way to...

We have lived in Decatur for thirteen years and have dined at this restaurant dozens of times and have never had an experience like we had tonight.

I want to be clear that our server -- Avery -- did his best to make a bad situation better. He was attentive and apologetic and kind, and so our issue is not with him.

We had a 6:00 Mother's Day reservation for four which included our eight and twelve-year old kids. We understand that it's a busy holiday, but the restaurant should also understand this and staff the kitchen accordingly.

We ordered no appetizers - entrees only - and still, waited nearly an hour before being served with our entrees arriving at 7:00. There is no children's menu and the restaurant refused to do a half order for our youngest, so these were full priced entrees starting at $20.00 and going up.

After several discussions with our apologetic server, we asked to speak to the manager, Katie, which is where it really goes badly.

I've never in my experiences dealt with a less empathetic manager of a restaurant in my life. She was defensive, non-apologetic, frazzled, and just continued to use the excuse that the restaurant was busy. I continued to reminder her that she was making her problem our problem. It's Mother's Day, which she knew, and as the manager, it is her responsibility to have it handled. An hour is an absurd time to wait. And if a family of four has to wait that long, the least one can do is be apologetic. She was not. Not even a little bit. Even when my son's thirty-dollar entree arrived COLD, she did not take it off the bill. She offered NOTHING to make it right; not a discount or a free drink. Nothing. She never even came back to our table to check on our situation after our original complaint. Horrible, horrible, horrible. How she is the manager of this place is beyond me. We have always loved dining here, but after tonight's experience, it will be a while before we come back.

The food is almost always consistent and the service is usually fine. The management, however,...