OMI Cafe — Restaurant in Lake View Township

I ordered a medium caramel macchiato. My review is for the drink only and not for any of their food or desserts.

The good:

My caramel macchiato was very good, one of the best I've had. I was worried that it would be overly sweet but it actually had a strong espresso flavor with only a mild sweetness, which is perfect for me.

The space itself was nice. It was simple but felt bright and modern. They also had relaxing music playing which added to the atmosphere.

The bad:

The service wasn't great. The employee that took my order was not very friendly in that they acted as though taking my order was a chore. They also didn't give any sort of send-off to indicate that the transaction was done, they just walked away. I don't expect employees to be overly friendly or talkative, but I do expect a bare minimum of customer service skills and my expectations were not met here.

It took at least 20 minutes from the time that I ordered the drink to the time I received it. I try to be understanding if a place is busy, but OMI did not seem to be busy at all, there were only a few other customers there.

The cup sizing is misleading. On their menu they only have Medium, Large and Extra Large (no small or extra small options and no units of measurement listed), which implies that their drinks are larger than average. I ordered a Medium (their smallest size) and was disappointed to find out that it was served in an 8oz cup. At most places the Medium option would be 12oz, so I don't understand why they use this atypical sizing convention. To their credit they do have cups displayed by the counter to demonstrate their size, which I did not see while ordering because another customer was standing in the way when I was ordering. Regardless, the sizes felt dishonest for the prices, and more expensive compared to other coffee shops in the area.

Overall I was somewhat disappointed with my experience here, despite really enjoying the drink when I finally did receive it. I would possibly return in the future to try their food and desserts and to give it a...

O-Mi… surely, you must mean Oh My! On a recent stop in O-Mi, I was served up racism and humiliation instead of a brown sugar tea with boba …by the manager no less.

When I picked up my order, I noticed my order did not have boba. I told him that I ordered boba. The so-called manager decide to say to me “you didn’t order that.” I assured him I did (it is my regular order every week), and a friend with me later confirmed that I did in fact order a brown sugar tea with boba. After he took the beverage to add boba, he decided he would mock me and my voice as he was adding boba. So, I added “maybe you didn’t hear me.” He kept mocking me as my children and friend stood there. I told him “you need to stop.” He doubled down and started saying “you need to stop. Maybe you didn’t hear me.” You can image how upsetting it would be, as the only black person in this restaurant with my children, white cis man mocking me (as his reports both Hispanic and Asian were working).

I asked him for the manager and he said he was the manager (which my husband later confirmed). I asked then who is the owner, and he responded her didn’t know. He continued to mock my voice as I asked.

Eventually, I raised my voice noting that I am a regular and pointed to another regular. I again asked him to stop, and when he didn’t, I finally dumped my drink on the floor. His repsonse: “I don’t care.”

He then had the audacity to speak to my children chastising how I was acting. I responded that I was demanding respect and asking someone to stop mocking me.

I am sure some of you will read this and think nothing of it. But let me be clear - NO ONE DESERVES TO BE HUMILIATED FOR ASKING FOR SOMETHING AND TREATED AS LESS THAN FOR DEMANDING RESPECT.

The cafe was a regular stop for my family, and we loved coming either as a family or as a weekly stop to grab treats for our children.

So while this man got his little $20 + 20%, he has now lost a family that weekly stopped in. Thank goodness that Lakeview has high turn over and a number of other...

Please open before 9! There is a whole community of people that have to be at work before 9, or are up working out before then that, and will get a coffee and a nosh. This makes us support Starbucks, and I'd rather support a small biz.

🌟Update. We did get here Friday morning. Here was our experience:

It’s Omi Speakeasy and Desserts, what is the speakeasy part? 😂

Menus are very confusing. There are the big screens, which you look at first and they’re almost unreadable. They focus on Boba teas, which Tea Ninja is across the street so that is strange. They don’t really list most of the things that are on the toast tab website so if you really wanna know what they have, look at their website. Also, they have these tiny menus that say something about bread? So they have a lot of things, but you can’t gather that from their in store menus. The branding is very disconnected, which is very strange, because it’s Japanese and they are masters of branding. Since the menus were confusing, we didn’t exactly know what to order or what their specialties were. So we tried the Akma macchiato and I had a Matcha red bean smoothie. It was really cool to see them put this in the can, I appreciate that kind of attention to detail. Both were very good, yet there wasn’t really anything special about them. I definitely want to come back to try one of the toasts which is impossible to know that they have by walking into the store. I might also suggest an iced green tea, maybe you have this, but it’s not...