Svea Restaurant — Restaurant in Lake View Township

My now-fiancé and I have been coming to Svea since he first moved to the city a couple years ago. It's close enough to us now that we can walk there for a spontaneous before-work breakfast during the week, and it's a good spot for brunch on the weekends - just be prepared to wait during peak hours, especially if you have more than two people, and they'll normally only seat full parties.

The food itself is delicious, and the service is fast and friendly. I always get the same thing, The Swedish Tease (2 eggs your way, Swedish pancake w/ lingonberries, & choice of bacon or link sausage), and it is consistently a delightful experience whether I'm there at 8am on a Thursday or 11am on a Saturday. The only other note I would give is to make sure you have cash on hand - they don't take credit or debit - which, after visiting three or four times we finally remembered...Oops.

It's a delicious meal with fast/friendly service, and the prices are pretty good to boot - but it doesn't feel rushed at all. One of my favorite spots to go in...

The food was yummy, but not anything special. The crepes were very good though! It’s a cute little place that gets quite crowded.

Although my friends and I found very interesting how there’s a “sharing fee” of $5 if you want to split one of the big breakfasts with someone else. I somewhat understand the extra effort for the kitchen to split a meal, however, my friend said “okay, well I’ll just have the full meal and we could maybe have an extra empty plate”, but apparently the fee applies to that as well???? It was either we pay $5 to share or we pay $3 for an extra side of toast and then they could allow us to share???? What?? I’ve never even heard of that in my life.

Additionally, when we’re getting ready to pay, we noticed the tip was automatically added to the total. We were a party of 4 but perhaps we missed somewhere that gratuity is automatically added to the bill for a certain number of people in a party.

Either way that was really weird. Food was...

I find myself confused by all the high rating/reviews for this restaurant. I found the menu to be rather overpriced, $4 for coffee and $10 for two Swedish pancakes. Swedish pancakes were okay, flavorless and greasier than I’d like. Emphasis from staff is really put on larger parties here. My friend and I were having a nice conversation after finishing our food (friend still had a full cup of coffee) when a larger party came in and we were asked to move to another table so tables could be combined for them to sit. We moved with no problem. Shortly after we were asked to leave as another large party showed up. This party went outside, stood around for 5 seconds, and left. We were at the restaurant for around 35-40 minutes and were given the check the second we finished eating. No follow up on whether we’d like anything more. Overall disappointed by the entire experience. There are many better breakfast places in...