Delta Cafe — Restaurant in Portland

We were heading to Ikea, and the traffic was so bad around 430ish pm. We figured that we get something to eat while waiting for the traffic to die down. My daughter and I wanted some Thai or Vietnamese food. My husband had wanted to go to Delta Cafe for a while now. He swore up and down that this place was awesome (in his defense the last time he went was like 20plus years ago). He recommended some dishes from what he recall of the menu. We got to the place and was able to get a parking space so that is plus already. The place is not much to look at, but this type of place that have moms and dad's vibe simply the best places to eat so I did not mind the "dive bar" ambience. We went to seat ourselves and we had the server walk to us right away. The place was fairly empty with two other occupied patrons in the booths by the bar area. We first went to the window seating, but it is too cold. That is the first I noticed about the place that it was cold and dark. The decor is what I would expect from the place... misfits and mismatch that has a charm to it. The server asked right away what we wanted for drink and my husband said to give us a moment. Ok this sounds weird, but she was staring or had this awkward moment like waiting... unsure if she heard him saying we needed more time. We got to this place around 4:50pm. We moved table at this time and waited for the server to come back and we sat there for a good 15 min before we sent our daughter to search for her. My daughter said that she is the only one working server so that is forgivable. She came to take our order like within 10 mins I believed. My daughter blesses her heart decided to share with me since she thought that the menu was not palatable. We ordered the fried chicken and blackened catfish. We ordered 7 up and my husband ordered some drink on their special menu. My daughter complaining that there was so much ice in the 7up that she took to sip and that was it. No refill since the server did not bother to even check with us. When the food finally came around...I posted on FB and it looks like the food was served 5 minutes before 7pm. The chicken was flavorful and hot unfortunately it was chewy and dry. The mash potato was not bad, it was actually tasty. The cheesy grits whatever that thing was so bland, I had to dipped in the mash potato to make it tasty. My husband fish was cold. I mean literally cold inside. The beans were cold. The rice was cold. The collard greens were good but a bit salty but at least it was somewhat warm. My husband told the server that the food was really cold. She apologized and went to the kitchen and took a bit of time to get back with us. She came with the new fresh fish, but she did not take into account that the rest of the meal was cold. She keeps apologizing. We ended eating the chicken for 3 of us. There is not much choice. My husband did not eat his food and the one replacement fish as well. The waitress stands next to our table and states that can she make an excuse for the food being cold. She went on to say that they are understaff and the place is cold (broken heater or some shit like that) so that is why the food is cold. If one food is already done, then send to the table and don't let it sit there waiting for the other to finish! Apologize then that the food will be delivered at different times instead of having it sitting there and getting cold! Also, we noticed that there is not a lot of noises coming from the kitchen since they advertise that the meals are cooked from scratch, you would think that the kitchen will be louder. When we left, the two people that is supposed to be cooks are just standing around chit chatting. Good GOD what a horrible place...dirty and shitty service and overall awful food! NOT RECOMMENDED. The only the thing that came from that horrible place is that we did not get charge for the fish dish. I would throw a fit if they had insisted that...

I just got done eating at Delta Cafe and felt like I had to share my negative experience. First off it wasn't to busy and we were seated right away. The service was ok at first and drinks and food orders were fairly prompt. However once we got our food my experience quickly declined. I ordered the fried chicken and my girlfriend got the cat fish sandwich. The sandwich was good and the side dishes were also pretty tasty. However, the fried chicken was completely undercooked. The breast piece was large but still very pink in the middle. After noticing how pink it was inside I decided to try the drumstick. This is where things got bad as soon as I bit down blood start dripping out of the chicken. At this point I decide to let the server know. she was polite and offered to bring more chicken and also gave us a free side dish. If this was the end of the story I probably wouldn't bother writing this review. After dropping off the side dish the I noticed at least five more tables had been served the fried chicken dish without so much as a glance toward our table. The server eventually checked back in on us and brought another complementary side. Again nice gesture but I really just wanted my meal so i could eat a little bit of it and head home. Finally after waiting about forty minutes total, the server let us know the chicken was about done and offered a piece of cake and asked if we wanted the chicken to go, which at this point sounded better. Well we just got home and opened the box of food we had boxed up only to discover only one rather small piece of chicken in the box when the meal I ordered was for two pieces. This is what made me decide to write this review, I am very understanding and can only think of sending food back to the kitchen a handful of times. And I also am pretty forgiving and understand mistakes happen so I dont get to upset when the wrong order comes out or anything as long as an effort is made to correct the mistake. However, this was one of the worst restaurant experiences I can recall due to the the slow correction of the mistake and not even fully replacing the meal. Given my experience tonight I would just warn anyone who eats at Delta to check their food before eating it and make sure you get the correct food if ordering to go, as this experience left me feeling short changed and...

Maybe I just ordered the wrong food. It's entirely possible that I picked the three things this restaurant has but isn't very good at making.

I want to start with a positive, the mash potatoes are great. Glad I accidentally ordered a double portion of them. I will say tho that the chicken gravy is just pepper gravy with chicken pieces in it. Not bad, just that I wouldn't call it chicken gravy.

Now for the semi good, the Corn Bread Muffins were bland. They tasted marginally better the deeper you got into them, but I understand why butter and honey was sent along with them. If these had been brought to my BBQ I would assume the person liked me well enough to bring something, but not so well as to bring me something particularly good. Edible, but not really good.

Now for the bad.

The images on the menu showed picture perfect chicken fried steak and Fried Okra. Two of my favorite foods, as a small town Texas girl. So you can only imagine how absolutely gutted I was when I got Okra that had been seasoned and dusted in bread crumbs, and a chicken fried steak that was thiner than a 25-page note book. Honestly I ended up with four times the amount of mash potatoes and gravy than I did chicken fried steak.

And I could forgive small portions, even at the price I paid. But the flavors were just not there. I know that different cooks make things differently, there's a bunch of different recipes. But in my 37 years of living on this earth, I have never had a chicken fried steak taste like practically nothing. I mean there was flavor but it wasn't deep fried, breaded, cubed steak. Chicken fried steak, as differently as it can be made, it tends to at least be that much in taste.

And honestly the "breading" on the okra was so dusty I choked on it a couple of times.

Just super disappointed.

Edit: I think about this food so much that I've changed my star rating to one star. It was just SO...