Centraal Grand Café & Tappery — Restaurant in Milwaukee

March 12, 2021 Update:

-1 star. VERY disappointed. We ordered pickup for the first time... mushroom risotto and fish fry.

Small portions. Fish fry had a half slice of bread and a handful of fries.

Fries were not fully cooked and very soggy.

STILL so much heat on things that shouldn’t have ANY. Mushroom risotto and clam chowder were inedible for us. Yes, we’re super white, but so what? Your kitchen tends to ruin just about every traditional dish with all the chili powder and oil they throw on. I don’t know if they’re trying to hide poor quality, it’s impossible to tell really it’s soo spicey.

It seems you need to put a hot warning on just about every menu item!

See you next year, Cafe Centraal!

June 12, 2020 Update:

Thanks for re-opening quickly! It was so great to get out and sit down for food again! We had lunch and everything was perfect. Staff wore masks and there was plenty of space.

We had the haddock fish fry and a doner kebab sandwich with a new sour. Beer was slow to come but the food came fast, and was delicious. The frites were, amazingly, crispy (hal-lelujah!).

Maybe they focused on improving quality during the quarantine—Let’s assume so. However, they were not busy and we wondered if fewer tables had something to do with it. Will quality hold up under a full house?

Still miss the thin cut fries, but I’ll take it. Good job, +1 star. Keep up the good work!

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What is Cafe Centraal now? Who knows. They radically changed and expanded the menu and kitchen with the renovation, but sadly, it lacks identity, and worse, the food is just so-so.

Do: Beer Breakfast/Brunch/Lunch Pub fare Comfort food Appetizers Light dinner Deserts Take in the atmosphere

Don’t: Big Dinner Non-standard entrees Asian Middle Eastern Fries Salad

Initially, we thought they were still transitioning through the change in space, staff, and menu. But it hasn’t gotten better.

Some entrees are actually terrible. Hot pepper is added to everything even if it’s not specified and doesn’t belong. Non-standard entrees, that is, plates on the menu they twisted or created, are weird. Flavors and textures and ingredients are not right or very imbalanced. Fries used to be good, but now are nothing special. Asian and middle eastern plates are still terrible. Specials are usually okay.

As one of our go-to’s in Bay View, we keep expecting to find something on the big menu that is delicious and unique, but usually are disappointed. Even just the standard comfort and lowland style plates are mediocre to good, at best. But unfortunately there is much less of that on the new menu.

Generally, we avoid for dinner unless going for standard and light plates such as sandwiches, comfort food, and of course, a beer. They seem to be focused on quantity over quality now, which unfortunately makes it nothing special. Better to support the few traditional restaurants left in Milwaukee struggling to stay in business (Old Town Serbian is literally down the road), or hit up any of the number of outstanding brewery or beer bars nearby. American breweries are finally catching up to European stalwarts.

We’ll keep trying, but...

We went to Centraal last Friday (10/11) with a $100 lowlands food group gift card. The check came to $100.66 and when we tried to pay with the gift card, we were told they had just started using a new system and could not accept gift cards right now. No one informed us of this when we walked in or sat down. The waitress said they could possibly offer discounts after I told her the gift card was for $100 and she said she would go talk to a manager. We waited about 15 minutes for the manager to come out and talk to us. She said there was nothing they could do and the gift card would still be valid at other lowlands restaurants and “they aren’t telling people coming in that gift cards aren’t being accepted because how are they supposed to know people will be using gift cards”. After going back and forth for some time I finally just asked if we could get any sort of discount (after the waitress had already told us they could) and she said all she could do was comp our drinks. Another 10-15 minutes go by before our waitress comes out for us to pay the check. We asked if the drinks were taken off the bill and she said “oh no the manager must have forgotten”. So she goes back and we have to wait once again. The manager finally comes back out and says that she can take our gift card, confirm it has $100 on it, and she can comp our meal. That took about another 15 minutes. Once it was finally confirmed it was $100, she said she would comp our bill. We then asked if we could tip the server and she said we would need to purchase something to be able to tip the waitress. We responded and asked if we could just pay that $0.66 left on the check and tip from that. The manager reluctantly said we could and she would send the waitress out, which took more time. Finally, after about 45 min- 1hr we finally had our tab taken care of and the waitress tipped. While the gift card was eventually accepted, this was the worst customer service I have ever experienced and wasted an hour of our time on a Friday night. That experience paired with a mediocre meal left a terrible taste in my mouth, will not...

My husband and I have been coming here pretty often and have invited family members to come here as well and we all love it however, yesterday we decided to have breakfast here and I ordered the griddlers, the food tasted great like always but upon eating the second sandwich, I noticed a ton of white hairs sticking out of the bread, and a brown one… I immediately stopped eating and then felt a little sick to my stomach because I already ate one sandwich and didn’t realize. I notified our waitress and she took the plate to let her manager know which was nice, however she came back and let me know they were thankful I pointed it out for future orders being made to keep and eye out… well my meal was ruined and no discount was offered or a remake to take home. Our meal which included two entrees and two juices and a coke was $50 not including the tip. I feel like when you’re paying this amount, you expect the upmost quality and your food to be edible. Unfortunately mine was not, and I did not think this customer service was great, our waitress even mentioned “well the bread is crumbles so maybe it’s just that… “ no, there were long fuzzy like hairs sticking out, definitely not the bread… my husband verified as well, super disappointing because we spend a lot of money here. Not sure we will be back if this is how they take care of these kind of situations, when your customers are spending a lot of money, you need to ensure your food is very high quality and edible. Almost Half of my meal...