Little River Cafe — Restaurant in Portland

To clarify, I left one star with no comment (with good reason mind you), and then a month later the owner has replied to that review saying: “I wish you would leave a comment…”. Seems kind of passive aggressive to me. How about this, I am willing to change my review if you give me a free meal and it is better than what I had before. If you agree to those terms then reply to this review again, owner. That being said, below I will try to remember in detail my meal.

It was the worst breakfast I’ve ever ordered at a restaurant. Not because I thought it tasted bad, although it was mediocre, but because they messed up on basic things all over the place. I don’t remember it all because I went a while ago, but I believe that my toast was hardly toasted, my potatoes were not salted at all and neither were my eggs peppered or salted. They didn’t have any Tabasco, they didn’t give me any salt or pepper at the table or utensils, I had to ask for that all and ask for hot sauce and ask for jelly. That’s not even all of it but I don’t remember the rest, and it took a long time to receive my order.

Suffice to say, I’m paying good money to eat out and I expect my meal to be made with care.

Edit: The original reply from the owners has now been deleted and edited so this is my new response to them

What a disrespectful and unsatisfactory reply. Do you think I’m dumb enough to believe you when you say you’re going to fix issues like this? All you’re doing is coming up with some weak PR reply so that people reading reviews on Google would not think such horrible things when they read my review. It’s disrespectful to say that it usually never happens because that’s completely irrelevant to my experience. Nothing is going to change and you’re going to keep compulsively replying to reviews on Google acting like your place is so perfect and I’m gonna be happily never...

We both had an omelet here. The food was seasoned well and for the most part good except for the kale 🥬 being crunchy , which I’m not a fan of. The atmosphere is great, we sat outside on the waterfront/walking path in the sunshine. The tables were cheap, wobbly, and uncomfortable. Downside; when I walked in to order (never having been there before), it took forever to even be greeted (huge pet peeve of mine). This is the first way to irritate the very person trying to support your establishment. People need and want to feel welcomed even if you are super busy and don’t have time for them. You can always say “welcome in, we’re super busy but will be with you as soon as we can”. The girl just stood there at the counter, waiting for me to make the first interaction. When we ordered/paid, there was a suggested tip amount (only in America 🇺🇸 do we ask to tip because the customer is expected to directly provide job security/wages, and on top of that BEFORE we are served). It’s always super awkward and sets the tone when asking for a handout before delivering the goods. Anywho, the food was finally delivered to our table and the waitress said “there’s a condiment cabinet inside if you need anything… lmao, and to think I just tipped you $10 to deliver my food and tell me to go get my own utensils 🍴, hot sauce, katchup, coffee, or quite literally anything else you need. Would return as the location is convenient and pretty, food is decent, but definitely wouldn’t tip unless somebody actually did something other than...

We had an unfortunate experience at this place on 7/5/2021. We regularly stop here after bike rides/runs to get ice cream, and often get coffee from next door. This day, an employee told us to move from their green tables, because we had not purchased food. This would be completely reasonable, except we had purchased ice cream(s) from their establishment.

After moving three small children to another table, I went inside to ask why were were asked to move. He was quite rude and dismissive of me, turning away to work on a sandwich... so I kind of paused in shock, and left. About 10 minutes later, he returned to us (now down the walk) and wanted to "apologize" - except it wasn't really an apology. Instead, he was letting us know that if we had let him know that we had purchased from him, he would not have made the mistake of making us move.

I did not feel this was reasonable, given that the kids were eating the ice cream (no kid hides their ice cream). The information was readily availble to him. When approached and told to move, because we were using his table, we complied; the responsibility is not on the customer to justify, but rather on the establishment to enforce their rules accurately and fairly.

Mistakes happen. But in this case, the Little River did not accept responsibility, but informed us as the customer how to comply. This was an unfair scenario, initiated and propagated by the cafe. it is unfortunate that our kids will no longer get their ice...