Hot Cakes Capitol Hill — Restaurant in Seattle

The only things this place has going for it are that if you want cake at 10pm, you can get it here and the probably average inebriation level of their Capitol Hill-based customers. A good molten cake should be 50%-60% cake and 40% oozing center. That way you get a great cake that sauces and moistens itself as you eat it. The weird facsimiles at Hot Cakes are 90% molten and 10% cake, so you end up with basically a cup of hot batter with whatever few bits of cake you manage to pry away from the sides of the paper cups in which these weird little things are served and to which they cling with the tenacity of a leech to a summer camper's calf. On top of that, they are served with ice cream and sauce set on top of a shallow saucer-like depression in a tiny wooden platter. From the menu, you'd think you will be getting some kind of amazing elevated brownie sundae, but in actuality, you end up trying to carve up ice cream while it slips around it's tiny caldera, splashing sauce around the table, then attempting to somehow combine it into a cohesive bite in with the viscous batter and slivers of cake you've managed to liberate, inevitably cramming an unbalanced combination of whatever you can maneuver onto the tiny spoon they give you into your mouth, your only solace being that you know it will be over soon, because of the modest amount your $15 actually got you. No, I'm not kidding. They are indeed charging $15 for a small brownie sundae here. Even if it were a good one, I'd be a bit shocked, but for this, it's a bit criminal. The staff is friendly and I honestly believe they think this stuff is good, but I'm certain the proprietors are secretly laughing in the back about the fact they are able to successfully foist this charade off on a naive...

Ordered online for takeout and I would suggest never doing that. There was a long line when I got there but I went around it to stand next to a sign that said “online orders pickup”. The staff was clearly busy so I was waiting until they came to me, I guess I was expected to interrupt them and ask for my food. After several minutes of standing right next to the online orders sign I was briskly asked by an employee “Do you have a question?” And then I was given my online order, which I then realized had been sitting on a shelf behind the counter the entire time I was waiting.

I was handed one bag, and right outside the store I opened it up so I could put the ice cream in a cooler bag I brought. The incredibly hot cake containers and ice cream containers had been interchangeably stacked on each other. After waiting for several minutes for my bag, even putting them in a cooler right away didn’t spare my ice cream, it was melted by the time I opened it to eat less than 5 minutes later. I would really recommend the business start putting the hot cakes and the cold ice cream into two different bags for takeout.

** Edited to add one of the cakes we got was a S’mores cake, and it did not come with a graham cracker as stated it would online. I can see it in pictures others have posted though so maybe our experience with it missing was rare.

The cakes were really good, and the store was cute, so maybe it’s worth it to eat in but after the tip I left and tax it was $20 per hot cake and scoop of completely melted ice cream after an unpleasant takeout pick up process so I don’t see...

We really enjoyed this place but had a bad experience today with the people working today Thursday around 7 PM. We ordered to-go and the cashier told us the plating is prettier when eating in store, but we told the cashier and confirmed that we were getting to-go. We waited for about 20 minutes so we went to check our order and they asked us why we don't have a number. We told them that we only gave them our name because we ordered to-go, and then they confirmed the order with our name and gave us a number to wait. We told them once more we are getting to-go. A bit later, we received our order on plates instead, and went back to them very confused and told them we ordered to-go. One of the pink haired worker aggressively told us that we got our orders on plates because we were standing next to the people seated.

I can understand that people can get stressed when mixups happen but when we eventually came back home with our to-go order, we saw the food intentionally mixed with each other. Our creme brulee came broken (which is OK from the mixup), and also we found strawberry rhubarb mixed under the brulee. I can only suspect this was done intentionally...

Leaving this review hoping things can get better, you can check the...