Sugar Tree Cafe Nutley — Restaurant in Nutley

I was completely prepared to be underwhelmed by Sugar Tree, mainly because 1) the decorating scheme looks like the board game Pretty Pretty Princess threw up all over the place and 1a) it seems as if the primary purpose of opening this restaurant was so young adult females could Instagram it. It's set up as a classic style over substance situation, and yet this is a rare time where the style and substance both rise to the occasion - a very pleasant surprise.

I came here for brunch with my Millennial Chum (perfect target audience) on MLK Day. It was decently crowded but it didn't take us more than a minute to find seats in their faux library section. There were three or four sections within the cafe that each represented what I'd categorize as a kind of meta coffeehouse. One of the girls behind the counter helpfully instructed us on the ordering process and the open seat plan, where you just take residence somewhere and the staff finds you with your order. We'd heard about the edgy latte art (not sure where I was when that was invented) so we each ordered one of those (I think about $6 in total, $2 for the art specifically), along with the mac and cheese balls ($12) and deep fried French toast ($14) to share. Everything was brought to us within six or seven minutes, I'd say - pretty impressive service.

The latte art is really something. I didn't want to bother the staff with questions when they had other customers, but it looked a lot like the edible screenprints that you sometimes see on cakes - it's definitely not like the pretty ye olde milk patterns that baristas show off. Mine held together until the very end of my latte. One piece of constructive feedback there is that the process of providing the pictures for the latte art is a little inefficient. The employee handling that needed someone with an iPhone (in this case the Millennial who was over the moon about getting her cat's image on top of her drink) to share the pictures to her phone, so I'm not clear what would have happened if it was just me and my poor Google Pixel. Maybe I would have had to text it? I'm not a Silicon Valley techie, so maybe there's an obvious way to streamline that, but it was definitely not a big deal for us.

The latte photo ops were good enough, but the actual food was amazing too. The French toast is a MASSIVE serving, so even the two of us jointly attacking had trouble finishing it. I assumed deep fried meant it might be too crispy, but I thought it was perfect, with just the right amount of cinnamon coating. My friend felt the toast was a little thick, but we agreed to disagree there. The mac and cheese balls were excellent, and the Millennial Chum declared they were the best she's ever had. They were close to being that, in my opinion - the breading was a little thicker than I would have preferred, but I'm basically just nitpicking at this point. Very, very tasty. We did notice that waitresses at least twice brought the wrong food to parties near us, which is probably the result of the open seating policy. It may make sense for them to have a section of formal seating to limit that chaos in the future, but we were unaffected by the quasi-turmoil.

What could have improved this experience? Not a whole lot. The Millennial Chum was pretty glum that the Babe Cave was full the whole time we were there ("It should be big enough for all the babes" was an actual quote from this meal), but it was close to perfect, especially if you're in need of some quality...

I went to this establishment today to celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday, we were told there would be a 45min wait after waiting 45min I was told it would be another 45min because they had a big party in front of us that just received their food. At no time during the wait did they mention that they couldn’t accommodate us I spoke with a supervisor and that went nowhere. Finally we get the text that says they’re ready for us only then a waitress comes outside to say that the text was an error; half the party had already started to enter the restaurant. Their remedy was to split the party at two table across the room from each other. We should have left then but we had children with us and two pregnant women they were hungry. So I go to the register to order like they advised and was told they didn’t have the Mac and cheese bites, they had the lobster tostados but no pico de gallo, and another food item was unavailable. We order anyway. The food came to the table randomly. But each time the waiter came over she mentioned they had ran out of something after waiting over an hour and a half now half the party left they ran out of the waffles for the kids meals, they ran out of the lobster tostados so now they were returning parts of every bodies meals. They’d come to the table and say “that’s the last of the waffles so these three orders need to be substituted do you want something else. I for the life of me can not understand how on an already limited menu do you run out of food and on a Sunday at that. And yet they kept seating new coming guest. At one point I had to speak with management again one of my guest had not been given her meal after informing the waitress numerous times. They kept saying it’s on its way out a two hour wait for three sliders is ridiculous. She had even told the staff to just wrap it as everyone was done eating after another fifteen minutes she got a refund and left hungry because the food never came. I would give this place no stars if I could. They ruined a special occasion and all they had to say in the beginning was they couldn’t accommodate our party. I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone huge...

I went here on the recommendation of a friend. The place has a good atmosphere but everything else about it sucked. I expected a small menu being a cafe which is fine. For my family of four we ordered small appetizers, they really don't serve meals here. My one kid had waffles, fruit, and an egg. Other kid ordered Taylor ham egg and cheese on a roll. Wife had eggs Florentine which was super expensive at $16 for an egg & meat on an English muffin. I ordered a buffalo chicken empanada and a croissant. Drinks were two coffees and an OJ. It took them 25 minutes to bring my croissant. It was cold and it was not toasted or with butter. After that our coffee cups were brought to us empty and we were told it was self-serve. Coffee was mediocre at best and I could have made a better pot at home. In the time it took them to bring me my croissant I could have made an entire tube at home from the supermarket and it would have tasted better. The food was cold as I believe they pre-cook it and put it under a warming lamp. Food came out in stages and all four of us were not served at the time. There should not be any need for food to take more than 15 minutes to get to the customer in a breakfast joint. It took us over 35 minutes to receive our food. When my empanada came it was cold and it was a cheese empanada. My wife brought it to the counter and it took them over 25 minutes to get me a replacement. My daughter's Taylor ham egg and cheese had kraft singles cheese on it. Cheese didn't even melt. The ordering system is stupid too. You have to wait at the counter to order all your food but everything else is self-served. You have to go get it from the counter. Terrible service. They never check in with you. They have to explain their ridiculous ordering self serve policy to everyone when they seat you. If I wanted to eat at McDonald's I would. The only thing nice about the place is the decorations, but it's definitely not worth your time or money to take out a second mortgage on your home to eat...