East Café — Restaurant in Raleigh

We were so excited to try this cafe on our recent visit to the museum. In our experience, museum cafes usually have great food and service. Unfortunately, we did not have a pleasant experience here. To start, service was poor. We waited for 20 minutes and no service. Multiple servers passed by us without even looking up. We had to hunt someone down to wait on us. We assumed that she was the manager as she was dressed differently and a little older than the servers. Instead of checking on the customers, she was walking around with a rag and spray bottle in her hand looking lost. Finally, a young lady came over to our table to take our order. We ordered entrees and coffee. The coffee took so long that we actually got in line to order self serve. The waitress finally brought out our coffee which was cold. The entrees also arrived cold and my risotto was so tasteless we had to get someone to bring us salt to make it palatable. Also, we asked for cutlery multiple times and ended up just walking to the counter to get some. Same with a straw. It was like we were invisibleVery disappointing. Someone needs to get in there and implement quality control measures on both the food and service. Not once did the lady walking around with a spray bottle and rag check on us, even though she knew we weren’t getting any service. This is one cafe that we won’t be...

So pleased to finally have a chance to visit the renovated museum. After enjoying the art…. we began googling where to go for lunch so I walked up to look at the menu at the NCMA Cafe & met lovely Britney, the manager. She was so friendly & spoke highly of the chef and food. So I told my husband we must try & let’s write about it! She was able to get us in fairly quickly so I can do a review on Google.

Here goes….

Our server Hanif was very nice and helpful. After he described the food, funny thing is both my husband and I were in the mood for a salad. We decided to go with two Cobb salads. They were plated beautifully and delicious. The only thing for us was we “wished the chicken was warm” but every restaurant does it their way. I still highly recommend the cafe, it’s people (their service is top notch) & the ambience is amazing!

I took a few videos and pics of our food. PS I also took some coffee and a slice of the raspberry cake to go!

Check out this beautiful cafe the next time you are at the North Carolina...

My husband and I didn’t know what to expect with this place and I’m glad I didn’t read reviews because we would have missed out on a very tasty meal.

We ordered the Monster Chicken Biscuit which was mouthwatering delicious 🤤, the seasonal primary color salad which was everything we didn’t realize we needed to tour the museum, and green tea. Both meals were packed with palatable flavor and fresh ingredients. The tea, rosemary fries, and house pickles were perfect. The watermelon and cornbread inside the salad were delicious and service was exceptional.

Tom works the bar and came over to check on us. He was friendly and kind to recommend some places for us to visit in Raleigh while we are here traveling from Philly. The woman who seated us was friendly and our waiter was sweet. We had a great experience here and look forward to coming back but next time...