Esther's Kitchen & Beer Garden — Restaurant in Los Altos

Nothing against the staff or the store. We always try to support small businesses. We just wanted to let others know if you are expecting a 'Bakery' selling fresh baked in-house bread this is not it. I think 'deli' or 'convenience store' might be a closer description. Since we made the trip, we ordered a sausage plate, coffee, and a variety of baked goods to go. The baked goods were not baked there, and we confirmed they are not delivered fresh daily, but sit there for awhile. I guess it was our mistake we assumed with a name like this, the german style apple strudel or pretzels would be fresh baked in house. Or that there might be German style rye or bread in general fresh baked. The cheesy covered pretzel was not edible, rock hard. We tried reheating in the oven. The cheese is really cheap quality. The sausages were not in-house made sausage but bulk imported? packaged sausage that they heated up for you. Same with everything else on the plate. Coffee was stale and sour, but I guess you cannot compare it to Blue bottle or even a Starbucks coffee. Husband and I both got stomach aches...

My wife and spent this past December eating our way through Germany and Austria. So when I found Esther's German Bakery I was excited. The place is small but pretty cute. Parking can be a challenge but I managed to find a spot around the back. Bit the food...I just have to start out saying that I wasn't impressed. The pretzels weren't authentically German. They lack the texture and bite of an authentic German pretzel. It almost tasted stale. The German breakfast plate I ordered was good, but not great. Why did it have red radishes and not sauerkraut? Maybe some potatoes! The wurst was fine, but would have been amazing if it was an option to have it grilled. My plate just felt boring. My wife's dish cost a dollar more but at least looked full and colorful. The downside was that it felt very American. Lastly, the price. It cost my just shy of $30.00. That was just for two plates and 1 extra pretzel to go, no drinks. I sadly could never recommend this place as a true authentic German experience, and I definitely won't...

Edit: after Alex’s comment we decided to come for breakfast for a second time. The food was delicious, and, as we were the only customers, the service was quick. Thank you! As a small comment to Alex considering last time: I am not sure what caused the miscommunication, but I explicitly checked if there was a pause in serving new customers, or any denied customers, and there were none, so your information seems untrue.

That was a very bad experience. The waitress-manager barely speaks English, did not bring us our order for more than 50 minutes. She messed up the dishes and tried to persuade us that the veggie omelette she brought was the salmon omelette we ordered. The only response she had for the delay and the mistake was: “It’s not my fault, can’t you see how busy we are”, even if they did specifically mess up our order and did serve several of the following customers in the meantime. The food is reasonably good, the coffee is bad, the cappuccino was milk with a slight...