Ma's Cafe — Restaurant in Deerfield

I’m going to preface this by saying that according to other customers who were there at the same time, supposedly the owners were getting back from Aruba that day, so they weren’t there. Maybe it’s better when they are there? Anyway, it started with me and 4 other people in my party standing in a hallway between the breakfast area and the bar. Two waitresses walked by us and said hi, but that’s it. One of the customers finally said she thought we should seat ourselves? So we did, and we had to find another chair to fit 5 of us at the table. We weren’t offered menus, and the same customer that “seated” us got up and found menus for us and herself. Then it took forever just to get coffee. Once the waitress came over, we asked if they had pumpkin pancakes, and she said, yes, they can do that. We finally get our pancakes, and they literally put down a pancake, slapped a giant spoonful of canned pumpkin on top, and then put another pancake on top of it. The pumpkin was not mixed in, and it wasn’t even flavored or anything. It made the pancakes mushy and inedible, and this is coming from someone who loves pumpkin. Then both waitresses disappeared for about 20 minutes, and another customer got up and started refilling everyone’s coffee.

As for the rest of the food, it was bland, and nothing was seasoned. The “famous” corned beef hash is probably famous for how dry it is.

I do have to say, our server was nice, and she gave my daughter a pumpkin muffin to replace her pancakes. Other than that, the only real positive is that we got a huge laugh on the way home about how weird the pumpkin...

We were very excited to try Ma's Cafe in Northwood but ended up with a very disappointing experience.

When you walk in there is no clear directions whether to wait for a hostess or to seat yourself. My party just kind of hung around for about 5-6 minutes before an employee approached us and directed us to be seated.

Once seated, my husband had to grab our menus. After waiting about 10 minutes we approached the counter thinking we had to order there but a waitress said she would be over shortly, which took another 10 minutes to get our drinks.

We also put in a food order. Which mostly consisted of burgers, chicken tenders and kid meals. We waited for almost an hour without our waitress visiting our table once to get refills or update us about our food. We once again approached the counter and asked instead if we could get our items to go. While they said they could update our order they did indicate that it would still be a while before our order was ready. We ended up canceling our food order and just paying for our drinks. During this time the staff didn’t seem apologetic.

During this time two other tables sat shortly after us. One ended up leaving before us without food as well and the second was still waiting on food after we left.

I am not sure where the disconnect is but between the long service time and the staff not being attentive, I am undecided whether I am willing...

This place has so much potential! We had a great time doing karaoke, the crowd was small but fun and friendly. The drinks were weaker than we're used to, but since we didn't get charged for all is them it's ok. She likely forgot how many we had because the service left a lot to be desired. Just about every time we wanted to order a drink we had to go walk around to find her. And then she would still forget about it. After our food came, she never came and checked on us. I flagged her down finally when our water was undrinkable - it tasted awful and the smell in the plastic cup was so horrendous, we were gagging when we passed it around for everyone to smell - but then server smells it and tells us it smells like water. Talk about gaslighting. Wow, like just admit it smells bad, apologize and get new water. I had her put the water in my empty drink glass because I was afraid of another plastic cup, and THEN the water tasted and smelled like water. The food was good - the chicken tenders were yummy, nicely breaded and cooked well, and the Big Mac salad was a really good low carb burger and always a welcome addition to the menu for me. We might come back, we'll just cross our fingers we get a different server. It's not fair to the owners that they're trying to run a great new place and a few bad apples might be spoiling...