catalyst2GO — Restaurant in Missoula

I was here 2 weeks prior and the food and service was fantastic. But because of my experience today, I will never be going back. I was planning on meeting a friend for bfast, and they said they could not seat me until she arrived even though there were 2 open tables right in front of me. The host/waiter took my order for a chai while I waited. A few mins later I asked for a chair to sit on as I had foot surgery a couple months prior, and said my friend texted and said she would be there in 5 mins. The host was nice enough and brought me a chair, but did not offer a table My chai arrived, and I sat in the middle of the small isle way using the host podium as my table because they still did not offer to seat me. While I was sitting there a few mins, 2 other tables of people left ( I had to stand for them to scoop by me through the isle). Then I asked to speak with a manager who was extremely rude. I said that I totally understand when it is busy not seating groups of people until their entire group is there. But I can see 4 empty tables in front of me, and my friend is minutes away from arriving. He said "this has always been our policy, and it works for us". Then I said, well if I was dining alone, you would seat me. Could I just say that until my friend arrived. He said "that would be lying. You would be a liar if you did that.". My friend arrived a moment later, and we were ushered to a table. We sat down, but promptly decided that we did not want to eat here if that was the way I was treated with 4 empty tables right in front of me. 2 weeks prior when I had a good experience here, I also arrived prior to my friend. But the lady told me "normally it is our policy to not seat parties until their entire group is here, but as there are several empty tables, I will just seat you.". That's all they had to do this time too! That way they would have kept my current and future business, but also made it clear the expectation for the future that if I am planning to meet someone and it is busy, that I should not expect to be seated until they arrive. This is a true shame as I really enjoyed the food here with its many...

This place has lost all its luster over the years. It used to be such a great little breakfast joint—my favorite for many years. Nowadays the food comes out inconsistent at best and embarrassingly bad at worst (I.e. burnt or undercooked and sloppy). I won’t be going back again unless/until they start caring about the execution of their food.

**edit after reply from business: yes, I spoke up and told someone that the food—“The Heap”, served as a skillet plated item of home fries and sautéed veggies which I had had no less than twenty times in my life—was barely warm and was clearly undercooked (i.e. was not cooked in a skillet, just plated on one for appearance?) , to which the server looked offended and confused and told me she didn’t know what I wanted and did I want them to reheat it? Clearly, this was the new standard if my comment seemed confusing given the appearance alone of the meal. I asked for something different realizing “The Heap” was a lost cause. Another mistake on my part, as the next item on the list was equally inedible—the falafel platter was a couple of odd slightly wet bean balls and some coarsely chopped vegetables. It looked sloppy and unappealing and tasted no better. My friend’s breakfast sandwich came out clearly burnt the two times I encouraged him to retry the Catalyst. This isn’t the first or second time I’ve had these types of experiences at this restaurant in the last couple of years, as I keep hoping that the poor quality each time was just a fluke. Now it seems like a fluke when things actually go right. What happened to the old days of The Catalyst, when they served consistently tasty food and took...

I totally forgot about this until I was telling this story to a bunch of friends and laughing yesterday.

A few months ago I was in eating breakfast with a friend and they had a skillet on special that came with over medium eggs. I ordered the skillet and asked for the eggs over easy. The server said no. Lol. I was like, "what?" and the server, clearly pretty embarassed, was like "our chef is really particular about modifications". The server went into the kitchen and asked, they refused to make the eggs over easy. Overall we thought it was as funny as it was absurd. Server couldn't have been nicer.

Skillet came out and was ok. Pretty greasy and the potatoes and onions were undercooked. Certainly not a masterpiece worthy of a "you can only order your eggs the way we approve of" policy. Big fish in a small pond maybe? Place is pretty popular and I think kinda thrives on the overall low bar of the Missoula food scene. With a no mods policy on how you can get your eggs cooked you'd think Thomas Keller was back there but really it's just kinda ok. Great coffee, great atmosphere, better than sysco/us foods clearing houses.

Edit: haha this response is...