Toasted Rooster Cafe — Restaurant in Sacramento

Monday, 6/19/2023 - Had Toasted Rooster Cafe for brunch. Address is 1650 Fulton Ave, Sacramento, CA 95825. Upon arrival: Pros :

1. parking lot is small. But I got parking right away.
2. When I arrived, the hostess was all smiling and said "are you with that party?" and pointed to the side. I couldn't see the table since there was a wall next to me, but I smiled back and said "yes. " Luckily, it was the right table. 😆
3. apparently it was very busy at 10:50 am-ish. My friends told me they were seated. But was not given menus till about 20 mins later.
4. I didn't notice, but my friends said several tables that came after us had their orders taken already. When I arrived at 11:10am, server didn't take our drink orders till about 11:30ish. We wanted to order our foods with our drink order, but she said she rather get our drink orders 1st and then come back later to get our food orders. Haven't had that happened to me before. But we only ordered water and one person order soda.
5. server didn't come back to take our food orders for another 10 mins-ish. Could have been 15 minutes.
6. it didn't take too long for our foods to arrive. I got the BLT Skillet and a side of 2 over medium eggs. Those were good. Actually all of our food dishes were good. Except for the Bonemain Eggsody skillet. The season shredded steak on it was super salty on one end. The other end had no flavor. The steak was ordered medium rare but came out fully cooked. It was tough and chewy.
7. bathroom was clean. 2 stalls.
8. server was very nice. I can see she was overwhelmed. It looked like there was only 4 people working. One serving the customers at the tables, one servicing the to-go and pickup orders, one busting the tables (I was told that was the owner) and probably one person cooking. I couldn't see if there's 1 or 2 cooks. But they were all working hard and as fast as they could.
9. place was cutely decorated.
10. there was a bar area you can sit and eat. See photo.
11. there's outside seating. But I didn't see it open when I was there.
12. server came & checked on us once. She asked if we needed anything else cus she had to go serve other tables & won't be able to come back. We were good by this time. It was nice she told us. Cons :
13. took a while for server to take our orders. A few tables that came after us got their orders taken before us.
14. we couldn't order our foods with our drinks.
15. as I mention above, the shredded steak was over salted on one side and the other side had no seasoning. Steak was over cooked. We wanted it medium rare. But they were nice enough to get us a new steak and it was much better. Not over cooked and chewy the 2nd time around.
16. our chairs were dirty and we had to clean it to be able to sit on it.
17. my friend didn't want ice in her soda. But got a lot of ice. She was upset and was calm about it. Server was very patient with her.
18. we got two skillet dishes. We were expecting those 2 dishes to come on a hot skillet. 😆 When we got our 2 skillet dishes, it was just a bunch of our foods on a plate. Foods were great. Not the shredded steak as I mentioned above. But the rest were great. Just wasn't what we thought a skillet dish would be. Hot and sizzling. Lol Conclusion : Today is Juneteeth. A holiday for some of us. Maybe the restaurant wasn't expecting a lot of people walking in for brunch today. IDK. But I can see they were understaffed. I only saw 3 of them working on the front, owner included. Srvc was slow & lacking. Some foods weren't good. But...the staffs were very nice. The owner was working hard & very nice. Our server was very patient & professional. She even asked if we wanted our picture taken. She made time to do that for us. The steak that was overcooked they took it back and brought a new one not so chewy. Made our other little one happy & devoured it. Today was an okay day. I'm going to give this restaurant another try on another day & see how their service & foods are. It wasn't bad. But it wasn't 5 star. They were so nice. As I mentioned, it may be due to staff...

Second attempt⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

My daughter and I sat in Tiara's section. I tried the Chicken Fried Steak again with over easy eggs and tots. The tots were crispy and salty, the textbook tater tot. The eggs were again spot on. The toast was again barely toasted and buttered even less, but it was just going into the runny yolks so they were fine. My daughter had the Chicken Fried Steak Sandwich with an over easy egg. She thought it was delicious, it was an absolute mess but it's not like you can eat a sandwich with gravy and an over easy egg without using a napkin or three.

Tiara was friendly and took good care of us. Most of my concerns from my first visit were addresses. Today's chairs were a pretty comfy plastic instead of hard metal and they even had half and half for the coffee. Since I knew about the yelp wait list there was no delay in us sitting when we got there either.

Good job management..

First Attempt ⭐⭐⭐⭐ It was Sunday at 9am a single party of four waiting outside. You need to use download the Yelp app to be placed on a wait list. I guess the people who don't have smart phones cant wait to be seated. (I'm clearly not one of them but they do exist). There was a 30 minute wait. Not horrible but unexpected when there was only a party of four waiting. As I sat there I figured out why as I saw people pulling in to the parking lot and going in to be sat. Being able to join the waiting list while you're on your way is a cool benefit to using an application like Yelp.

The restaurant looks great. They massively updated and remodeled the building from the previous restaurant. The seats that aren't booths are hard metal, not comfy.

As is normal when I try a new place I ordered the Chicken Fried Steak, Over Easy Eggs, Country Potatoes with a request to have them crispy, and Sour Dough toast. The coffee is on the bitter end but my wife would love it. They had French Vanilla, Hazelnut and Non-Dairy Creamer but no dairy option. The waitress brought me over a ramekin of milk. A good variety of sweeteners.

Food came out and it looked fine. The eggs were spot on over easy. The sour dough tasted like warmed white bread and was hardly even toasted. The potatoes seemed like they were fresh out of a roasting pan, mushy, barely warm and absolutely no effort placed to make them crispy. The chicken friend steak was pretty. It didn't taste bad and had enough gravy on it. The gravy was fine.

When you order the most expensive thing on the menu that "Sells out every weekend" you expect more than fine and warmer drawer potatoes. They cooked the eggs perfect though which a lot of places...

I am absolutely disheartened and disgusted that rasism is still so apparent in 2023. There is a difference of being slow/busy vs. Ignored. The waitress was a skinny blonde lady who blatantly ignored our table. We were promptly seating and she did not acknowledged us one time. After about 20 minutes of waiting, the waitress from the other side of the resturant came over to take our order. The blonde went around 4-5 times with the coffee while mine sat at the edge of the table empty. She continued to service every table around me. I tried to flag her down for a box but she ignored me once again. Then sat and waited 30 min for our bill while our toddler became inpatient as we have been here for almost 2 hours. We watched parties get seated, eat, and leave before us. At the end of the day, there is a line of people waiting to be seated, we just wanted to leave. This is the second time we have eaten here and seated in her section. Last time the hostess ended up servicing us while she ignored us. We gave it one more try and after this, I don't think we will return. Which is a bummer because the food is delicious and everyone was friendly except being treated like this is just unacceptable and sad. I have been a waitress for years and I would never discriminate someone so blatantly while going above and beyond to service every other table with a smile. I wish I wasn't having to write this review but here we are. I will not...