Dish Cafe — Restaurant in Highland Park

I usually hate giving low star reviews especially to small, family owned restaurants like Dish Cafe. For the longest time my family and I have wanted to go to Dish Cafe since we have always passed it while walking in Highland Park. Finally we decided to go for breakfast instead of our usual spots. Unfortunately the experience was subpar and disappointing. To begin with our waitress Jocelyn did not give us any straws with our drinks which should have been a red flag. I know it seemed like a minute detail but it should have tipped us off that she was not interested in being at work. I’m not sure if she’s related to the owner and she’s forced to work here on her weekends but please someone put her out of her misery of working here. Before we began we explained to Jocelyn that we had dietary restrictions and could not eat meat. We ordered the Florentine Three Cheese Omelette which was supposed to have Spinach, Feta cheese, onion and tomato and we added on more mushrooms. Initially the omelette looked delicious but we were shocked to find out that it contained meat when we took a closer look. I felt the menu was misleading since it never indicated that there was meat to begin with. When we brought this issue up, we found out that the weekend menu is different from the actual menu. No doubt this was something that our waitress should have informed us about prior to ordering the dish especially considering we made our dietary restrictions clear. The situation was remediated with the same dish without the meat but with no mushrooms like previously asked for. We also ordered the Big Dish Breakfast which came with Silver Dollar Pancakes, Two eggs, Home Fries and a meat of your choice. We asked in place of the meat to substitute it with more home fries which evidently did not happen (and we payed full price). We had also ordered the Maple crunch french toast since another google reviewer suggested it was a good choice but it was extremely dry and not worth it. Our waitress did not even bring syrup until we asked for it. Overall I was extremely disappointed with the food and the service. I would not go back and would not recommend anyone to even consider visiting them. It took an extremely long time for the food to come even when the restaurant was remotely busy. It would be better if you took your business to a local ihop or Le Peep on Route 1 in Edison or some...

The food I received this early Sunday morning was contrary to the overwhelmingly positive reviews this place has received in previous years. It's best to avoid this sleepy, stingy, tasteless wannabe diner nowadays.

They particularly irked me today because I was really hungry and decided to splurge on a breakfast consisting of an omelette, pancakes, and sausage. Whereas the person who answered the phone had some difficulty taking the order, apparently there was also difficulty in the kitchen.

The omelette was flavorless and dry as a bone, perplexing because its vegetable and goat cheese ingredients should've retained at least some moisture, and certainly one makes an omelette in a pan with butter, no? But the pancakes, too, were dry, and I was given just one lonely container of syrup for all three pancakes. The tastiest thing was the sausage. The least edible thing of all were the home fries, which were also tasteless, rubbery and obviously re-heated and not fresh, with an unpleasant burnt odor about them to boot. Two ketchup packets were all the restaurant could spare me.

Lastly, the menu prices that appear online, at least on this establishment's Facebook page, really need to be updated. It was an unpleasant surprise to be charged significantly more than foretold by the online menu. The price was all the more disappointing once I discovered the condition of the actual food, which after a few miserable bites, was mostly discarded. With so many starving people in this world, I feel terrible throwing food out, but this meal was so bad I wouldn't feed it to...

I have been a fan of this place for a very long time but I have noticed that the service and the quality of the food is going downhill. Ever since they changed ownership the quality of ingredients is mediocre to say the least. Portion sizes are smaller but they are still pretty large. I went there do lunch last week and ordered a bistro salad. The salad was supposed to have blue cheese and pecans. There was very little of anything. I received a bowl of greens and no dressing. I politely asked the waitress if I can have a little bit more cheese and pecans which she brought after 15 minutes. When I received the bill I noticed she charged me $2.50 for the “extra toppings”. I don’t really care about the $2.50, but I was annoyed for two reasons. First, the salad barely had any of the ingredients listed and second she should have told me about the charge before bringing out the “ extra toppings”. Is this situation horrible? No it’s not but it speaks volumes about the pettiness of the business. The whole situation was a bad business decision that can turn away a customer that has been loyal for many years. I think they have good food sometimes, the Mexican dishes are tasty. The omelettes too although they get smaller every time we go. I would probably visit this place again since it’s so convenient but it won’t be for the food or service, it will be out of...