Square One Breakfast & Bakery — Restaurant in Meridian Charter Township

TL;DR: the facility might look nice and have a whole slew of reviews, but I absolutely (and can't stress enough) inspect your food before you eat. You shouldn't have to at most places where you trust the chef and staff for a good meal, but this, to me, is most certainly not one of such places.

Being fully honest, I'm disappointed on actually doing this review. I was genuinely excited to dine in and see what so many people before talked about, but in the end, I left insulted and disgusted.

The Atmosphere: It's just this small place at an outlet mall nearby some train tracks; they don't got much room to work with, but they did a pretty good job with it on the layout, and their decorative catering to the local area was adequate, if not expected. Functionally, well done; decoration is fair and well maintained. It was kept clean too!

The Service: to be honest, we felt wholly a burden being there than welcomed clientele. Even though they had three staff around the small cafe, it took several minutes before we were given menus -- it took me giving direct eye contact and a wave before we got our menus. Ordered waters and that was given swiftly enough, but after we placed in our order for a breakfast sandwich, a cinnamon roll, and a plate of toast and eggs; we sat. And we sat; and sat; and sat for over FORTY MINUTES. After our disappointment of their product, we wanted to leave. The waitress did not question us about our meal which was clearly not enjoyed; no refund was given as we left in disgust.

The Food: I was hurt the most here. I do not mind waiting as long as I did if the product itself would have gone beyond my expectations; I would even find it as validation if it had been wonderful, yet the opposite could not have been more true. I ordered The Karl, a sandwich that came with sausage, egg, cheese, onions, and peppers with your choice to be made upon toast, an English muffin, a biscuit, and a croissant (though, I withheld the egg out of personal preference and ordered it upon a biscuit). I'm afraid I was never able to actually swallow any of it as to my abject horror I found the sausage patty raw in the middle and pink. It was genuinely a safety of health concern and what I deem inedible. My mother ordered toast, eggs, house fries, and sausage, however. After seeing how my sausage was raw, she dared not touch her own and found the house fries dreadfully dry and undercooked. Toast and eggs were alright, but you'd be a whole other level to mess that up. The over hyped cinnamon rolls were also disappointing. The roll itself was dry and a day old, but to mask it, they straight up down poured two cups of icing on the small cinnamon roll, literally masking it under a thick layer of liquid powdered sugar -- wasn't even buttery at the slightest.

We're not going back.

Took us over forty-five minutes of our lives and twenty-one dollars only to walk out with empty bellies, disappointment, disgust, and feeling blatantly insulted with the fear of contracting worms from raw pork or some other horrific NTD. I will not recommend this place...

Very, very poor service, the worst part of it is, we were waited on by the owner. I don’t like giving bad reviews, but fact is fact. We had been there a few times before, no major issues outside of small portions and one breakfast being inedible due to overcooked English muffins on eggs Benedict (these things happen and are easy to forgive). We entered the restaurant, the owner who was our server came over after having waited for quite a bit of time. As she took our order, my wife changed her order from one entrée to another, this was very apparent. When the food was delivered, she brought her both entrées. We had to flag her down to let her know the mistake. Her response was very aggressive, stating, and I quote, “she flipped her order!” I can only assume that the term flipped means changed? If so, I believe anyone reading this would assume to not bring both breakfasts? This isn’t hard to figure out, but what is hard is the attitude given (in front of the restaurant patrons), we were very kind to her smiling, pleasant demeanor, and polite. This is what we get. She never returned to our table once, my wife wanted another cappuccino, and my water was empty half of the meal! I did notice she visited the table behind us (with the child jumping uncontrollably in the booth attached to my wife’s seat), turns out they were her children & grandchildren. Maybe check on your customer once during all those visits? When we received the bill, the extra entrée was not removed. My wife clearly put down her credit card, owner took the handheld machine and purposely gave it to me, the nonverbal communication was very apparent throughout this entire meal. Why would you ever treat any customer this way, particularly ones who are being very pleasant? After we paid the bill, we did give the server we had last time a $20 bill. This display of entitlement and and rude behavior, cost her likely over a thousand in future revenue for a year from just one customer (also my wife was not shy to share our experience with those who we had dinner with). It also explains a question I had for my wife the last couple weeks we went, as to how a breakfast diner was not busy on a Sunday around noon and a Saturday around 11am. Hopefully, she will read this and perhaps improve...

I have to be hypercritical to find anything negative to say about this place. In East Lansing for an appointment I decided to swing in for their huevos rancheros. First time I've been there and walked in to find plenty of seats open and sat right down. The guy behind the counter brought me a menu in silverware and asked what I wanted to drink and I said I will have coffee and huevos rancheros so he went in the back to get the coffee. I assumed Aunt in the time it took for me to open up cream for the coffee and put it in. He was back with a plate of huevos rancheros! He said that it was because a catering order had just finished and everything was already ready but seriously less than 60 seconds for breakfast! The only thing even remotely negative I could say was that there was a fly busing around my table. Annoying me and I'm sure they couldn't help that. And the huevos rancheros had ground beef in it which isn't bad per se. I prefer shredded but it was excellent. Tasted fine. Tortillas were super crispy. A great breakfast all around and I would highly...