Neal's Coffee Shop — Restaurant in San Mateo

I am a person that rarely anyone will have a negative evaluation of me. Why do I lack critical vision? No! But because I am an extremely compassionate person. But given the gravity of the extent of what happened today, I think it's important to take a sensitive look at the situation. I'm a Doordash dasher, for many people with restricted minds, I'm the simple food delivery girl, but I love what I do, and I feel like I'm much more than the food delivery person, I'm the cooperator of commerce in general, I'm the facilitator of life of many who are at home or at work in an uninterrupted routine, or people who are sick, or with limitations and cannot go out, or simply of people who gave themselves, at that moment, the right to be enjoying their time better, while waiting for the your request. I love and am proud to be the cooperator and facilitator. And I think that people, especially when relating to the public, need to act with respect, whether with the customer, the employee or the cooperator, after all, everyone is in a gear, where each one in his role, is making the machine called commerce work . But today between 10:30am and 11am, I went to pick up two orders at Neal's Cofee, in San Mateo, I live nearby, so I often pick up orders here, and it's also often, sometimes they give me the order next to the cashier, which is at the exit, as employees often call me to go in further and collect closer to the kitchen exit, where the bags are finishing, and today, the person who works in the restaurant, called Norma, was extremely rude, when asking me to withdraw from the premises while I was waiting for the orders, which were not ready. I'm not just the restaurant's employee, I'm also a customer and a place that welcomes so many educated, refined, intelligent people with critical common sense deserves to prepare people who can reciprocate with the same, to everyone who passes through that door. Sadly, when we tried both sides and stayed on the fringes of the service discrepancy, it felt like an act of outright...

Cockroach nightmare: We live close to Neal’s and so, at the end of this summer, our family decided that we would support our local diner by having breakfast here every Saturday. We have had breakfast here for the last month. It’s never been anything spectacular but it was good enough and our girls liked it. Unfortunately, everything changed today. Our girls ordered a chocolate milk and their regular breakfast of pancakes and eggs. We were almost done with breakfast when my oldest daughter, who was drinking her milk, felt something in her mouth as she sipped from her straw. She took out what was in her mouth and it was a small cockroach!!! When she saw it she threw it on the plate and started spitting like crazy (see attached picture to see what was in her mouth). I still can’t get over the thought that my daughter basically drank her whole milk and that had probably been sitting in there from the beginning. The waiter was very apologetic and took the plate away immediately. Unfortunately management was no where to be found, and while we got half the meal off, I think that’s definitely not enough. Our family, my daughter specially, will have that memory for the rest of her life and if we were different type of people, we could escalate this even more. Needless to say, we will never be going back there and if you go, I’d say check your food and drinks before you...

I spoke to a local about my family's experience, and they were surprised that we were served inadequate food, as they come here all the time and love the food. The local said that they must have gotten a new cook or something. With that said, here is my family's personal experience, with star ratings beside the item.

Chocolate chip pancakes: 4/5

Beef gyro with fries: 3/5 Worst gyro that I have ever had, but gyros (in general) are delicious, so it was tolerable. Fries were well cooked.

Beef gyro with potato salad: 3/5 The potato salad was not good, had one bite and pushed it aside.

Egg and sausage plate with crepe: 0/5 The egg was unpalatable, the crepe was undercooked and gelatinous, the sausage was not pleasant, even the steamed rice was bad (steamed rice is a daily staple in our home, and it was simply not cooked right). I had one bite of each item on the plate, and it was absolutely horrible. We did get a refund of the egg meal, without issue from the staff.

For a coffee shop, the coffee was not palatable. I typically have 4 cups with breakfast, and I had one....and barely choked it down.

Walking out, 3 out of the 4 of us had an ache in our stomachs...we had arrived having fasted for 19 hours....we were hungry and the food should have tasted like heaven on earth, but it was all so bad that even when famished...it was...