Colossal Cafe — Restaurant in Saint Paul

Some of the worst customer service by management I’ve experienced in a while. My waitress was great and gracious when I told her the pancake was gummy and did not seem to be cooked entirely. She immediately took it back to the kitchen, but the other server who came out was not as gracious at all. She informed me They made their flappers with a yeast and they would not be fluffy. She asked if I wanted something else and I eventually found out that they would be charging me for the two bites I took if I sent it back to the kitchen, so I did an exchanged for a chocolate croissant and blueberry muffin.

The croissant was extraordinary and although nothing like a croissant, I would highly recommend it and go back, but perhaps with takeout, to avoid another a bad dining experience. I had ordered the strawberries on the menu that were listed at $2.25, but they brought me what I was told was a full serving of strawberries for $3.50, although it was a very small bowl about the size of something used for extra butter. As I was trying to get that corrected on the bill, the same dismissive server came and explained how they had served me the large portion. I explained how I had pointed to the $2.25 on the menu and said that that was what I wanted and she kept saying that is not what they served me, so I would have to pay more, which made no sense.

Then she looked to ask if What I said was true. The waitress, of course, said nothing, because she looked like she did not want to get in trouble. Then what must’ve been a manager came over and I explained it all. She kept going back to the exchange of the pancake for The pastries, and I kept saying that that was fine, I was talking about the strawberries. I had to reiterate it at least three times and she got more aggressive and then finally gave me this look and said she would just take the whole thing off, which I said was fine.

All of it was unnecessary and completely ruined what was an amazing experience with the croissant. It was very unfortunate. I have had takeout from there in the last years and the gravy, especially has been exquisite, but I guess it’s best to stick to delivery with no in person expectation of...

So we wanted to try something new and were excited to go here as we just never really noticed it tucked into green mill. But we were thoroughly disappointed. Upfront I’ll say the serving staff is great and there are no complaints there. This completely has to do with the quality of the food. The food here is below average. The hamburger patties must be frozen patties and if not, then the cooks are very bad at their job. The buns for the breakfast burger (not sure if they use different buns for different burgers) were sub wonder bread in quality. It honestly seemed like a hamburger a 14 year old boy would make himself if he were home alone for dinner. The food overall was flavorless. My girlfriends breakfast sandwich was made of 2 huge slices of sourdough bread, with feta, giant slice of tomato, scrambled eggs and completely lacked flavor as well. It fell apart as she tried to eat it. If it was cooked well then we wouldn’t care about how poorly constructed it was but nothing was right. The price is normal grand ave diner pricing maybe a bit more for some things but the quality was honestly below Perkins or maybe somewhat equal. Less a quality or major complaint but more of an irritation they don’t have fries as an option with burgers for lunch at least. But it came with a Caesar salad which was the best part of the meal. So I told my girlfriend that we can get a chai to go and a conamon roll and maybe it’s better for that kind of stuff. The chai was the worst chai I have ever had. It was a tiny tiny amount of chai but that’s actually good because drinking too much of this would have been awful. It was like chai flavored water. We have yet to eat the cinnamon roll but I don’t know how they could mess that up so I’m assuming it will be ok. This place can not compete with any diner around it for quality. This was by far the worst diner in the Mac groveland area I’ve ever been to. Which sucks because we really wanted to like the place. But now we will never go back as there was not a redeeming quality in any...

We choose Colossal Cafe because the food is incredible, seriously I’ve never had something sub-par here. The execution of the menu deserves 5 stars, no brainer, the owner and chef should be proud. 1 star review is based solely on our hospitality experiences at Colossal on multiple occasions. We have been gently been pushed out a couple of times before today, after receiving pokey initial greetings, impersonal table maintenance and then rushed to leave service to finish, ‘too bad if you wanted to order more’ type of treatment. I understand high volume, low seat count, during Covid restrictions, breakfast/brunch place, on the weekend, survive on turning tables- they’re only open til 2p. I get it and certainly try to respect the process of conducting their business. However, when they are actually telling us to leave abrasively when our arrival time was 10am, ordered food by 1030am, asked to leave our table 11:40am. This is well under the industry standard of 2hrs per table turn. Mind you, we are still ordering drinks and enjoying our meal. We are not stagnate squatters, we are an active table. They forced the printing of our checks, credit cards were run, and 8 minutes later we quite literally got the boot. In addition to this treatment, I prefaced before being sat at the largest table for groups as unnecessary, so the lack of foresight with the host that requested our eviction, was disappointing, as we wished to continue our patronage with future visits. I could be more empathetic if a.) we weren’t still ordering. b.) if we had exceeded 2.5 hours. c.) if there was any indication on their menu of a maximum dining time (some smaller restaurants include that info for guests to be mindful of) Very disappointed. Our server Hannah R was a sweetheart tho, never made us uncomfortable, unlike the woman...