McMenamins Spar Café — Restaurant in Olympia

I want to first begin by saying that I have been a loyal McMenamins customer since the Kennedy School grand opening in Portland. I have been to multiple locations in both Oregon and Washington for over 2 DECADES. I also had the pleasure and privilege of going to the original Spar Cafe in college before it was taken over by MCMenamins. Anyone who experienced the original restaurant would be HORRIFIED by what it has become. I don’t know if it was straight up racism (two members of our family are POC), classism, or just terrible management, but from go our experience was a nightmare of food service. We were an “11top”. 11 diners for dinner service. Any establishment would know this is going to be a huge ticket well over $100+. Especially when the kids meals were all $10+ (even for a shitty grilled cheese sandwich, I’ll get into that later). We were seated yards away from any other diners in the back of the restaurant with no lighting and children. The server offered to “light the candles” for us when we commented how dark the ass end of the restaurant was, but didn’t actually get to doing that until after 25+ minutes. We had to turn on our phone flashlights and use our never refilled water glasses to be able to see anything on the table. We had 5 actually behaved children ranging from 6-12, and so about half our party ordered from the kids menu. The birthday kiddo ordered the $18 Mac and cheese which was served with burnt, stale, COLD garlic bread. All the kids meals were cold. All the fried food except the fish tenders were room temperature Or straight up cold. I also ordered a salad and specifically asked to swap out the “peppercorn ranch” for blue cheese because of an allergy-only to be served blue cheese dressing also heavily flavored with black pepper. The $22 “Jrs Burger” which was supposed to come with a fried egg, was also laughably small, cold, and the eggs was a hard solid egg white hockey puck. When we expressed our disappointment with the quality and temperature of the entire table’s meals-and after a few eye rolls and very unapologetic remarks for what food we would like replaced (we asked simply for hot fries) we asked if the manager was available to speak to. We were then informed she WAS the manager.

Never in my life have I been so blown away at the level of unprofessionalism from a MANAGER of a higher end restaurant. I say higher end because a basic undersized burger and literal handful of over-cooked tots commanded $22-thats insane, even “in this economy”. My partner spent 15+ years in kitchens, I also have decades of customer service, managerial, and food service experience. Never would we have put out food like that, or when it was called to our attention what an utter failure our food was-would we have treated the customer the way we were treated. The other half of our party was too embarrassed to speak up much, but we pointed out the birthday kids’ burnt old toast, and the terrible food everyone else received on their 2/3’s of the bill. The manager said he wouldn’t have to pay for “any of the food we complained about” but then when we stepped outside to collect ourselves, and the quiet embarrassed member of our party went to settle the bill, they charged her for EVERYTHING. The burnt ass garlic bread, 5 entire kids meals out of which only 4 tiny portions of fish were edible and the starving teen girl ate through her cold stale grilled cheese. Corporate owes my family a refund and the Spar needs a...

Back in the early 90s I accompanied my wife to Olympia for a business meeting. We had a room in the old Best Western on Capitol Avenue and after she left for her meeting, I took off on foot to explore downtown Olympia. Without going into detail, I was delighted as I wandered aimlessly through the then vibrant business district. One of the many delights I discovered that morning was the Spar Cafe. At the time, I owned a restaurant in Old Town Portland at NW Third and Couch and I marveled at the timeless architecture and design of this classic vintage restaurant. It was like walking into a time warp. There were photos on the wall of when the place first opened in 1929 and after looking at the photos, I could see that nothing had changed.

Whenever we visited Olympia, we always made it a point to dine at the Spar Cafe. Then, about ten years ago, we observed that it had become a McMenamin's and our hearts felt despair. After dining at several McMenamin's in the Portland/Vancouver area over the years, we instinctively new that the Spar would never be the same.

This weekend, we were in Olympia for an overnighter and decided to at least give it a try. We entered the place expecting to be disappointed. Happily, most of the original dining room is still in tact but the McMenamin Brother's in their infinite wisdom, decided to insert some of their funky bullsh*t art on the walls totally distracting from the original vintage ambiance.

The breakfast menu was the first thing to disappoint. It's not a traditional breakfast menu but rather something that was created to make think you are dining in a "hip establishment" I didn't see what I wanted but ordered a two egg breakfast. Service was slow and inattentive even though there only a dozen tables going.

My food arrived on three plates. Hash-browns on one plate, toast on one plate and the eggs on a third plate. Even though this seemed a little odd, I determined that the cook was very good at his craft. It took forever to get our check. I was charged ala cart prices for my breakfast which was strange because this was the first time I have seen a menu without a two egg breakfast.

Well, in the end, we were only mildly disappointed, mostly by the non-traditional breakfast menu and slow inattentive service. Also, updating the restaurant with "McMenanin Art" ruined the original vintage ambiance. Regrettably, we...

I've been to this location a few times now and each time I am less inclined to return. I usually only go here when it's chosen or decided on by others. Last night was my last attempt and final visit (actually, I will go back once more, but just for my passport book/stamp).

The servers are never friendly and seem judgmental. Last night we had a female server that we had to call over multiple times. Every time she stopped by, she would tell us to hold on, or she would be back then take another 20 min to return. We ordered drinks within 10 min of sitting down and it took 30 min to get 2 out of the 4 drinks (beer) and my husband had to go up to the bar to get his mix drink after 45 min of waiting. My beer arrived 15 min before we left... Our server was training another server, but not once did they state they were training or even acknowledge the shadowing server. When they stopped by to deliver the drinks we told her we were ready to order food and she scoffed, said to hold on (rather abruptly) and said she would be right back (delivering drinks to another table) but didn't come back for another 20 min.

The most upsetting part for me: we asked about the truffle fries and if there was mushrooms on them, both the server and the shadowing server said there were mushrooms and the fries were amazing....they were not amazing and there are no mushrooms on the fries, the salt is derived from mushrooms... And they were $10 fries with some peppercorn aioli that was good, but not worth $10 salted fries with a dip.

Overall we were there from 645pm to 930ish on a Tues evening. Our visit would have been way shorter if the service was there; we spent a majority of our visit waiting and asking for service with a rude waitress.

Food is ok, prices are not fitting, my beer was flat and my friends cider was too sour. Cool location,...