Mendocino Cafe — Restaurant in Fort Bragg

Pretty little cafe, vined outdoor area, and food is Thai-inspired, as advertised, long wine list, several comfort-style desserts. Husband loved their Healing Bowl, loaded with soba and kale. We were surrounded by old, well-heeled hippies.The white waitress with hair pulled back in a dry half-ponytail said all the right words but basically disappeared after the food was served, leaving the Hispanic busboys to make sure we had water and weren't waiting for any other dishes.They seemed to want to give good service, but they didn't really have any authority.

Admittedly, I have a lot of food allergies, so I played it safe and ordered a roasted chicken, promised with rosemary jus and garlic mashed potatoes and spring vegetables. The server arrived with a flat bowl filled with the promised elements. The mashed potatoes were real, not powder, the skin on the chicken was nicely browned, you could see the pieces of rosemary softened by the cooking, and the sugar snap peas were bright green and the baby carrots were real babies (not the carrots you see in most restaurants carved to fit the "baby" moniker). However, the amount of liquid was alarming. The meal looked like a roasted chicken dish thinking it might like to try being a chicken soup, or maybe the other way around.

And it tasted that way, too. My chicken meal was edible but not pleasant for an evening dinner. The cook had obviously nicely roasted the chicken, and made nice with all the vegetables. However, the meat itself had obviously seized, so that the now-toughened meat was without any roasted flavor and no tenderness at all, and drowned in an insipid, watery liquid that could have been forgiven as a very generous gravy only if it had been properly seasoned and properly hot. I'm normally very forgiving with food because I know the amount of work it takes to make a dish and present it well. The service and this simple American dish seem to reflect something not quite right back of kitchen.

Husband left several cubes of tofu in his bowl. When I joked that he was leaving the bones of the soup, he admitted that there should have been more kale in it than all the tofu. After a very long wait for the server, we decided to leave dessert alone and drive by the local, wonderful Harvest Market for treats and tea...

My wife and I went here tonight for our anniversary dinner.

We came in the door and stood for five minutes at the host sign. The staff didn’t say a word so we suspected that we were waiting in the wrong place. We stepped in further to look for the proper place and a server stopped us to ask if we wanted outside seating or inside. We chose outside and she proceeded to say she didn’t have anything and sat us in a near empty indoor dining room. As it turned out, there was a table just outside the window near our table and they sat a couple in that spot minutes later.

A worker brought us menus, bread, and water and the entire staff promptly forgot about us. We watched through the window as the table outside were brought drinks and appetizers and we waited to order.

I planned to get one of their interesting entrees but by the time anyone remembered we were there my bread consumption and irritation left me without much of an appetite. My wife ordered an appetizer of chicken skewers and a what can only be described as a deconstructed ‘slaw’. I ordered a bowl of clam chowder. We also informed our server that we would want a desert and coffee later.

The waitress left without filling our water glasses and I didn’t see her again until 20 minutes later when I got up to find a water pitcher to fill my own glass. ( I was parched after a day of climbing around on the beaches.)

We returned to the waiting game and a while later our food was brought out. My wife insisted that she liked her food, even though the bite I tried seemed pretty bland. My chowder was very good, but for $14 I figured it would come in a nice bread bowl, or include a little something extra…it did not.

When we finished our food, we waited…again. By now the restaurant had emptied out (including the people at the outdoor table) and we were not in good humor toward each other, or the waitress. She came to collect our dishes and notified us that they would be closing in thirty minutes and asked if we still wanted desert and coffee. We skipped it and went to McDonalds instead.

Happy...

My wife and just patronized this establishment for a late lunch which comprised a green salad with fish side for me and a soup and salad combo for her. We went there based on 4 and 5 Star ratings on Google. That is why I feel compelled to write this review. My my meal cost $24, broken down as: $16 for salad and $8 for the added fish. My wife’s combo cost $23. The green part of my salad was a small quantity of mixed green comparable to about 1/2 of what one gets almost anywhere including the super expensive Los Altos and Palo Alto area where we have travelled from, and a (unnamed) restaurant a few doors up on the this cafe. To make things real unpleasant, the grilled cod piece that came with the salad had a very unpleasant old fish odor that put me off completely from eating this meal. My wife’s soup was a standard bowl of what she called a “bit mediocre”. The Cesar salad part of the combo was about 1/2-to-2/3 of the quantity of my already meager salad. I am giving this level of detail for the patrons to gauge for them selves why I am giving such low rating for a place that has gotten good review.

The last word on this subject is for establishments that use inflation as excuse to gouge their customers. Fortunately, my wife and I are not affected by what an unreasonably undervalued meals cost. But many people can’t quite say that. It is important for merchants to treat the customers with...