Madison Coffee House — Restaurant in Madison

A once great coffee shop that has fallen hard under new ownership. Skip this one.

I am sad to have to update my once glowing review from when I was a regular at Madison Coffee House. I left the original review below for comparison. The new owners have destroyed this once great coffee spot. When the owners themselves are working, they are very inattentive to customers. The woman of the couple has a TERRIBLE attitude problem and the man definitely prioritizes service for attractive women. Half the time I will be standing at the counter to order and she will take her time to finish her personal conversations at a table before getting up to help customers. And when she does, she is very rude and dismissive, despite my keeping a friendly attitude. I even witnessed her berating a customer who slipped and fell on a wet floor that had been mopped, rather than trying to help her and see if she was ok. Other customers had to help the injured person up.

The food has suffered, many good options have been removed from the menu, quality of ingredients has degraded, baristas remaining are the ones who can't make a good latte, good employees that were around for years have jumped ship and found better jobs, environment and furniture are not maintained.

You will be missed Madison Coffee House.

ORIGINAL REVIEW UNDER PREVIOUS OWNERS: One of the best coffee houses around. Staff is fun and energetic, coffee is delicious and the food is always good. Everything here is consistent and a good quality for the price. Atmosphere is also very pleasant, good for...

Why so LOUD? (See videos I recorded to demonstrate this shocking noise level.) The place was absolutely loud… perhaps it is because most folks sitting for breakfast were of older folks, who tend to be hard of hearing? Or was it because the seats were arranged in such a way that a party of 4 will have to shout to each other to be heard? Maybe the acoustics are poorly designed? I highly recommend you order in advance, to be in and out of the place before your iPhone / Apple Watch warns you that you are in a VERY LOUD environment, above 85 decibels. Actually, OSHA should stop by this place, as the hearing of the young two persons attending the place should be protected. Talking about the attendants… I think there should be an additional person taking orders. The young woman was cordial, yet you could see her running from place to place - taking orders, walking to the tables to bring food to customers - she had not a minute to breathe. By the way, the kitchen was fast - sandwiches were ok: very small sausage piece on my husband’s kaiser roll egg and cheese; though plenty of ham on mine. Coffee was not good - absolutely not worth...

Every time I call here there’s no answer, I’m not sure if they even have a phone. I call so I don’t need to wait 25 minutes for takeout in the restaurant. The few times I have been here it’s because they got rid of the Guilford Coffee House which was much better. The pricing is ridiculous for what you get and the service is fairly rude for being locally owned. In short: terrible hours, over priced, not great quality, poor customer service, and SO LOUD.

I’ve come back to re-review. They’ve had a change in owners and every SINGLE time I order the salad bowl it’s wrong. Today I went in at 2 and they acted like they were closed (they close at 3). I asked 4 times for no salsa and extra sour cream, what did I get?, extra salsa NO sour cream. They made their portions smaller and upped prices. The quality has gotten worse. $30 on 2 very small salads is shameful. I’m honestly tired of it. I’m not sure that I will be returning. The only reason I have is because I’m trying to primarily support small businesses. But why help if they can’t even...