Stroll Café & Catering — Restaurant in Portsmouth

Wanted to try out the newest addition to the neighborhood so stopped in early one morning. Preface this by saying I’m vegan, gluten free, and avoid refined sugar. Yes, I’m in the minority, but like to leave reviews in case others who are similar find it helpful! While I saw a few vegan options, none were gf as well and even the boxed oatmeal had sugar. Overall, the displayed food options reminded me of an airport cafe. Packaged grab and go items, generic baked goods, name brand stuff. I got a decaf drip coffee (decided against an espresso drink because of the $1 upcharge for plant milk, and none that were unsweetened.) Unfortunately it was awful and I couldn’t drink it. Tasted very off - kinda chemically - couldn’t put my finger on it. Hopefully a fluke as I’ve heard so many good things about La Mulita coffee…maybe they just don’t do decaf well. If I was in a remote town in West Virginia or an airport, I’d say this is a great cafe. Honestly, there’s nothing bad about it. But Portsmouth has some wonderfully unique local cafes I’d recommend first. I’d have to spend more time here to try and uncover the unique aspect (possibly empanadas - but…gluten. 😝 I know, I know, just sad there was nothing on the menu...

I have so enjoyed going to Stroll at Port-walk and was hoping this would be a similar experience. Not so much. The restaurant was cute and almost empty except for a table of 4 women and another couple of people. We ordered 2 drinks and 2 sandwiches. Both my latte and my husbands dirty chai were luke warm. I can look past that but then we waited and waited for our sandwiches. Meanwhile 2 other guys came in, ordered, and were eating. Finally my husband’s sandwich was done but not my grilled cheese with ham. My husband went up to the counter and they had no idea about the order. I was upset, hungry, disappointed in the coffee, and lack of any urgency on the servers part. I asked them to wrap my sandwich up to go. She also made me a new coffee which was even worse than the first one because it was mostly almond milk. No one bothered too try and make it right by possibly offering to refund the sandwich or even offer a pastry. The two women working seemed to have no idea how to handle this type of situation. Both my husband and I work in customer service and found the lack of empathy or urgency frustrating. We won’t be back or recommend...

The vibe was really cute, so it seemed promising. My chai was so mid, not that spicy chai that you want. Our blueberry scone had no flavor. And we waited 20 minutes for our plain bagel with cream cheese, I had to approach the counter and ask about it, they apologized that they forgot, no big deal. But then when my name was called for the bagel the woman pretended to throw it at me? And said “catch!” Then said “no I’m just kidding, sorry for the wait”. Which I just found really odd.

We started eating the bagel and it was literally like a cafeteria bagel that was tough and the cream cheese was super salty for some reason.

Not impressed, the wait wouldn’t have been so annoying if the food was...