The Breakfast Club at Midtown — Restaurant in Lafayette

I hope the management and ownership group reads these reviews. The food is superb here. No question about that. The atmosphere is a vibe. No questions about that.

The service however is trash. As a patron, I understand every establishment has a different set of rules in regards to seating/ ordering. When I arrived, I was not instructed what to do or where to go. I asked a hostess, who said she was busy helping another customer. I asked another gentleman and he said you can sit anywhere. So, I sat inside for about 10 minutes and nothing. No server, no water no nothing. So, I got up and asked the hostess again, and she said I had to check in and give them my number so I could get a table and they'd text me when my table was ready. Ok cool, but why was this not explained at bat??

Anyway, my date was running late, and I told the hostess that I wanted a table outside so I could set the vibe. No problem, but it's a 25-minute wait. Ok cool. We got our table a little early actually (kudos), and got our water and menus. The server gets our orders and everything is going well. I ordered the trio pancakes and my date ordered the Crab Cake Benedict. The food was delicious, no question about that.

However, once we got our food, I wanted some more syrup for my pancakes, but they never came back to check on any of the tables outside. Even the ladies in front of our table mentioned that they were not present.

No water refills or no "Hey, how is everything going? Do you need anything?" Nothing. The food was delicious but the lack of customer service ruined my experience. Just a lack of standard customer service.

Note to staff, I shouldn't have to chase down your service when I'm a paying customer. Make it easy for me to spend my money. I shouldn't have to chase you down to pay you also. Check on your customers. It's low-hanging fruit to do the bare minimum. I will not be coming back...

Unfortunately I don't think my experience here today merits more than a two-star rating overall. The staff I interacted with were fine/ friendly. The food also came out in a reasonable amount of time.

But the tofu scramble tasted very bland, and I've had many tofu scrambles in my life. I know they can be delicious. I also had a "Midtown trio" meaning I sampled three pancakes and/or French toast. The raspberry ricotta French toast was delicious and I would get it again if I somehow ended up here again. But both pancakes I got (blueberry lemon ricotta and the peach cobbler) tasted of excess baking soda. The hash browns that came with the tofu were fine but nothing to write home about. 3 out of 4 "main" items not being very good is not a good success rate.

I was also quite turned off by the payment machine at the end pulling this common modern form of trickery where the order of pre-set tip options is reversed, descending from left to right instead of ascending. This is such a cheap way to get people who aren't paying attention to tip more than they otherwise would, and I cannot understand how anyone thinks a few extra cents or even dollars in tips is worth the amount of goodwill that being tricked into doing so loses you. The pre-set amounts also started higher than standard minimum tipping practices, which is another form of social pressure to tip higher than one wants to simply because calculating a different amount is inconvenient and possibly embarrassing. I often opt out of tipping entirely when I see such scams. I didn't today, but it's another reason I won't be...

Breakfast/brunch establishment located in downtown Lafayette - very nice area. Menu options are plenty and the food is great tasting - get the midtown trio to get three different options for pancakes.

This is our experience and I hope no one else experiences it: we were able to get in for a table for six with no wait. We were seated immediately with menus and waters. After about 15 minutes of looking through the menu, our party was ready to order. There was wait staff talking to other tables taking their orders - none of them asked if we had been waited on. Another 10 minutes passed and two tables around us were seated, one was two patrons, another with three patrons. Within 5 minutes, they were being waited on. Our party had to ask one of the staff that was bussing tables to get a server to help us since the two that were in our immediate section ignored us. I don't expect to be waited on hand and foot, but it's unacceptable when wait staff does not acknowledge a table with 5 patrons, menus on the table, clearly waiting to be helped only to be skipped over to help parties that arrived after us. Once this was brought to the attention of another server he apologized, took our order, gave us complimentary drinks and made sure we got everything we needed. While they did take action to rectify their mistake, the feeling of being ignored is...