Cafe Du Berry — Restaurant in Portland

The first eye opener was the $5 fountain sodas, milk & coffee on the menu. Why? Why not $7 or $8? Second eye opener was when my Spanish omelette came after 25 mins. It was small. Too small. It seemed to be only two eggs. The menu described roasted peppers, onion & tomatoes on top of the omelette. It looked like it was poured from a jar of pasta sauce. I found one small piece of red pepper amongst it. Strawberries and grapes were not fresh & strawberry had mold on it. The serving of hash browns was almost 2 inches thick. The inside of this was mushy mashed potato not crunchy hash browns. It was too thick and therefor undercooked inside. I was hungry after finishing this meal, so I got my daughter & wife’s hash browns from their French toasts. Very disappointing at $15. Served on the smallest of plates. The French Toast served to my wife & daughter looked like two different meals. It consisted of one piece of uncut bread. Once again about 1/2 the amount acceptably served for French toast in other establishments. Why half the amount of food for the full price? Because you call yourself French? The server placed the larger serving in from of my 5 yo daughter & the smaller one in front of my wife. My wife’s was a crust and it was burnt . My daughter’s was not burnt, yellow and plump. It has a lemon taste which my wife’s didn’t have because it was burnt. Where is the quality control of meals leaving this French Kitchen? I have already described the hash browns and likewise the strawberries and grapes were not fresh. The server disappeared after dropping the meals & I didn’t see him again until I went in to pay the bill. One of our party ordered the Shirred Eggs. She said that the eggs were uncooked and sent it back and ordered a Spinach Omelette. The Shirred eggs were poorly presented. They looked like two poached eggs swimming in tomato soup. Very unappetizing. I know that my brother-in-law was hungry after his omelette with clams @ $21. The servers didn’t write down the Spinach omelette order so it was misheard and a Spanish omelette was delivered to the table, in stead. It went back & a Spinach omelette was ordered to go. My mother & father-in-law had raved about Cafe Duberry. My experience was it was over priced and the food inconsistent & poorly executed. I took the server aside inside & told him that it was an underwhelming experience. I had to repeat myself as I don’t think he believed what I’d said. However, I told him straight without any upset. From the website the owner is mentioned as a chef trained in French cuisine. Almost 40 years in business is a long time. He’d better check...

Eggshells in my Benedict!!! I really hate giving bad reviews but sometimes you just have to say something. It would be wrong not to. We went here for breakfast on a Friday morning. The dining room was full and we were told to grab a seat in the covered outdoor area. It was beautiful, with greenery and patio lights and wrought iron patio sets, but the loud traffic noise right next to us made it hard to hear at times and was off-putting. The lady we first spoke to came out and gave us our menus and took our order. She then brought us our coffee and our food and and asked if we needed ketchup or hot sauce and very quickly came back with it. That was the last time we saw her!!! No one ever checked back to see how our food was! No one asked if we needed refills! When I was about two bites into my meal I chomped down on eggshell! There was a square inch piece of eggshell in my salmon Benedict!!! I don't understand how, since the eggs were poached and Hollandaise sauce shouldn't have eggshells either, but there it was! I carefully poked through the rest of that half and put the shell aside to show the server. She never came back but a younger gentleman came and took care of the other party in the room and sat a single party and just ignored us. I eventually started eating again after waiting for a time for our server or the gentleman to come to our table. No one ever came back and we both ended up finishing our meal and coffee. The young gentleman came back to the room when someone else entered the dining area. He finally took the order for the single seat who had been waiting for quite a while. We called him over before he could leave again to get our check and show him the shell I crunched on. I was very nice about it because I don't think being rude helps anything but I guess I should have been. He did not apologize but took our plates and came back with the bill. No comp, no discount, no apology! I paid $25 for a salmon Benedict with eggshells in it!!! It really is a shame because the actual food was delicious. It was the best Hollandaise I have had in Oregon and the salmon was plentiful and perfectly cooked! In spite of this I will not go back and cannot in good conscience recommend this place to anyone. My husbands meal was good too but not worth the bad...

I'm going to be honest looking at these reviews I was severely disappointed with my meal here. I'm thinking they probably have a good french toast recipe that draws a lot of people but whoever prepared my food did not know what they were doing. I ordered the veggie frittata and here are my notes:

The frittata: This is not actually a frittata. It's warmed vegetables with scrambled eggs and cheese on top. I don't think the vegetables were cooked on their own AT ALL. There was no maillard reaction, no removal of water/liquid, and hardly any browning on any of the veggies. Even/especially the mushrooms were slimy and undercooked. The eggs and cheese were fine (honestly the only part I ate) but this whole recipe needs to be rethought, or maybe the line cook needs to be trained again.

The hashbrowns: Ideal hashbrowns are about 30-40% crispy with a soft center. These hashbrowns are 95% mush with a tiny amount of browning on either side. They were not cooked with enough oil to fry properly. On top of that, the hashbrown is much too thick. Tell your line cooks it will come out better if they spread the same amount of potatoes over a larger area. Wider, not thicker. Currently your hashbrowns last about 2 minutes before becoming a chewy mess. Final note: SEASON THE POTATOES WHILE COOKING. I could taste nothing in my initial bites except a mushy undercooked mess that soaked up what little oil you used.

Sides: Cheap sliced bread with butter and some fruit that were placed on top of the frittata and hashbrowns to ensure they were warm by the time they got to me.

Overall: maybe $5 dollars worth of ingredients prepared with so little care and skill I could not believe they charge $18 for it.

Will not be coming back here. This is another one of those places that looks really nice but the kitchen is miles behind the atmosphere and the service. I'm an amateur home cook and I could prepare every aspect of my meal 10x better than what I...