Morning Belle — Restaurant in Grand Rapids Charter Township

Decided to meet some friends for a Sunday morning breakfast at Morning Belle. I am constantly told how good the food is so I thought I’d give the place a try. I had put in my name for a table of 4 on their website thorough Yelp, arrived on time, and was seated immediately. Nice feature and off to a good start.

Menu is very expansive with a lot of options. However, I strayed away from a lot of menu items because they don’t appeal to me. Maybe the garlic BBQ sauce is great on the corned beef hash (I’ll get to the CBH later…yikes). Ham instead of Canadian Bacon? Focaccia replacing English muffin? as a Benedict? I’m sure the side salad that comes with the breakfast item is good. But it’s breakfast…we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

I had ordered a Classic Breakfast #1 with a side of corned beef hash, two others at the table had a Classic Breakfast #2, and the last had a Pork Belly Frittata. I’d say pretty simple and hard to screw up menu items outside of the frittata. We waited a good while before food came out. Had some good conversations, enjoyed the interior (nice interior design!), and waited some more. I don’t have a problem with waiting. It’s Covid, there’s staffing shortages, it’s a busy Sunday morning, not worried because Morning Belle is so highly acclaimed and ranked “#1 Breakfast in Grand Rapids”.

Food comes out and I almost started laughing. When I say sad, I mean SAD looking corned beef hash. I’m talking deli counter corned beef from across the street at Meijer that someone slapped on the flat top, chucked some Luke-warm scalloped potatoes next to, and said “yup. We’re charging $4.50 for that.”. Bacon that came with my breakfast, meh. There’s crispy bacon, and there’s burnt bacon. This was burnt. Along with the waffles the came with both Classic Breakfast #2’s. The look on everyone’s face at our table was the same. Disappointed. I scanned the restaurant and saw nearly the same look at almost every other table. I can understand screwing up a frittata, it’s a frittata! Even the name sounds complicated and exotic. But a standard toast, eggs, and your choice of protein? How can a place make a decent frittata but not execute on the basics? My buddy and myself finished our meals because we were hungry. The ladies only ate half when the realized it wasn’t going to taste better if they ate more.

Will I return, not likely. A $40 breakfast should make me feel like there was value to it, not taken to the cleaners. I left Morning Belle with the same feelings I did when I left Anna’s House. There was a lot of pomp, circumstance, hype, flash and bang, long lines, and mediocre food. If I want a good breakfast, I’m going to Westsider, Real Food Cafe, Wolfgang’s, SpeakEZ Lounge, or New...

2/24 Update: The company and I were able to discuss the issue and we believe the matter has been resolved to everybody’s satisfaction. Due to technical issues, this situation did take a little longer to come to a conclusion. I have adjusted my review to four stars (still not sure how those eggs tasted).

On Feb 1st at approximately 9:15am, my wife and I went to Morning Bell on the East Beltline for breakfast. We were sitting at the bar on the corner, just outside of the kitchen doorway.

We received our food after a normal amount of time waiting for our order. A few minutes later, I was moving my potatoes from under my toast when I noticed a black hair was under those potatoes. As I showed it to a waitress, she apologized, took the plate and asked if I would like my order to be re-made. After I told her yes, she went to the kitchen, and told me she let her manager know as she came back out. This all happened within approximately three to five minutes from the food delivery. While waiting for my order to return, our waitress came up and offered her apologies.

In the meantime, my wife finished her breakfast and was drinking her coffee. I still had not received my meal. I told the waitress to cancel the replacement breakfast and we would take our bill.

They did comp my meal from our bill, which was good considering, as I mentioned above, I had sent it back due to a foreign hair mixed in with the food.

We know that sometimes stuff happen and we accept that. We also know that when things like this happen, you usually get an acknowledgement with someone from management. Not here! The manager may have been busy, but not so busy to miss an opportunity for verbally letting the customer know these things are very rare.

As it appears now, these things may be so normal that it’s business as usual and nothing needs to be said.

Optics are very important! • Corporate Optics: Refers to the aspects of an action, policy, or decision that relate to public perceptions, and can be used to deal with challenges, conflicts, or controversies by communicating clearly, collaborating effectively, and resolving issues promptly.

Prior to this writing, we used the ‘Contact Us’ link on their webpage to send an email voicing our concerns. We did not hear anything back. This also makes one think, that they...

I was super excited when I heard about this place. Brunch is the best. The place is super cute and I’m sure the food is very tasty as the menu is unique and almost every item on the menu sounded good. This also could be due to the fact that no one in our party had eaten anything yet when we chose this place for brunch. I arrived a few minutes before noon and put my name in for 10 people. We were told there would be an hour an a half wait. I then also added the fact that we had a baby and would need a high chair. We decided to stay and wait, but after an hour the waiting room cleared and everyone had been seated, except us. Parties of four or five people would come in, put their name in and be seated within 15 minutes. I asked one of the hosts about this and she said she had to wait for a place to put 10 people- but if you’re seating three or four parties of four or five people who came in after us, then take those tables you gave them and push them together. Plus, tons of people from the breakfast rush had left 45 minutes into our wait. A few people were seated, ate, paid and left all before we were seated. This seemed a bit ridiculous to everyone in our party. Finally after being seated, and by the way, the thing about the high chair wasn’t communicated to the servers, so we had to switch chairs around and cram a baby in the corner. We all put our order in within 10 minutes of sitting down. Mind you now, we have a hangry year and a half year old with us. So fast forward an hour and we’re sitting there still waiting for our food. Most people well into their second drink and the babe getting crankier and crankier. We asked someone at the bar what the status of our order was- he said he’d check on it, but then never got back to us. We had now been in the restaurant for well over two hours and hadn’t heard a word about our food. So, we all decided to leave. Pretty...