Eat-A-Pita & Cafe 2 — Restaurant in Southwest Harbor

Let me be clear: The food we were served for breakfast was absolutely amazing. This was our first trip to Maine, and we wanted to taste the blueberry delicacies that were so famous. Eat-A-Pita was the perfect place to go to try the Maine blueberry french toast and Maine blueberry pancakes, which were flawless. The server for our breakfast was also very respectful and attentive to our needs. My mom decided to try something else, and she had a veggie pita which was really tasty and delicious. Overall, our breakfast experience was fantastic and the prices were very reasonable. Therefore, we wanted to try dinner here at Eat-A-Pita Cafe and see if the quality was still the same.

Indeed it was. But there were caveats.

My mom had scheduled to make a reservation for dinner, but the owner was very rude and did not make any effort to work with us. We decided to ignore it since the dinner service would likely be busy, and another person gladly put in a reservation for us.

For appetizers, we tried the crab cakes which were very flavorful and buttered nicely. Additionally, our server during the night was a man in his 40's and he seemed very proud of the restaurants pastas, claiming they were made from scratch in house. Hearing this, we were excited and ordered a lobster ravioli, a mushroom ravioli, a vegetarian cream-based pasta and shrimp scampi. The first three pastas were balanced with the pasta being cooked all the way, sauce being seasoned just right with a good consistency. However, the shrimp scampi disappointed us, because the spaghetti was somewhat chewy and the sauce was incredibly runny with no flavor at all. Hence, we asked our server for crushed red pepper, to increase the spice and flavor in our pasta. Unfortunately, our server showed signs of restlessness and seemed as if it was a burden to bring the pepper out.

Still not being satisfied with the pasta, we decided to combine the sauces from our other pasta dishes into the scampi to make it tolerable, and it happened that we were able to finish. We agreed to pay for all of our pasta but we wanted to tell our server about the flaws of the shrimp scampi. And so we did.

But, instead of hearing our constructive criticism, he proceeded to yell at us and proclaim how he hadn't taken back one pasta throughout the whole summer. Moreover, he ranted about how his restaurant's pasta was made fresh from scratch and at this point, we just kept calm. After paying, the guests around us didn't understand why our server was mad at us and consoled us. At least our fellow guests made us feel better.

Once again, I definitely recommend coming here to have breakfast and dinner (excluding the shrimp scampi). However, know that the owner may be ignorant occasionally. If it weren't for our rude server for dinner, I would totally give this place five stars. But, this is based on me and my family's experience, and our experience felt like...

BE AWARE: this place charges 18% gratuity on your bill by dedault, which means you cannot reduce tip without getting frowned upon. This default percentage ruins the "American tip mechanism" that encourages and rewards good service. IT IS THE OWNER'S RESPONSIBILITY TO KEEP THE RESTAURANT PROPERLY STUFFED TO PREVENT WAITERS FROM WORKING OVERTIME. It is NOT the customer's responsibility to pay obligatory 18%+ tip to compensate for the owner's under-payment to its employees.

The food we ordered was tasty, but the dining environment and service were far from satisfactory. We just had dinner at Eat-a-pita/Cafe2 to hours ago, and I couldn't help but leave a review tonight as I was deeply troubled by the experience.

The restaurant was kind of busy tonight as it's the Labor day long weekend, but the place was heavily short-stuffed (only 2 waiters in the front and 2 in the back). As a result, the service was slow, and the waiter never brought the high chair that we asked for (we moved the high chair by ourselves from the table nearby, when the family of three on that table left).

The outdoor space was full of mosquitoes, and everyone in my party got multiple bites, even though we managed to kill three... To be fair, this is not the restaurant's fault, but it is still a matter of fact that will make your experience not so enjoyable, and everyone considering outdoor dining at this place should be aware of the large number of mosquitoes.

The most unexpected experience was at the very end: the restaurant automatically charged 18% tip despite the slow and sub-par service. I asked to reduce the tip amount, and the waiter gave me the most horrible attitude I've ever experienced: he told me "Just leave nothing [tip]. You are a nice lady and I hope you have all nice things in your life" in a sour, sarcastic way, while nearly throwing my credit card on the table. I left a 13% tip in the end which isn't much different from the original number. But I did want to let the restaurant owner and the waiter himself know that I'm not happy with such service and attitude, hence this review.

If you are reading this review, please make sure you read other recent, low-star reviews and the owner's responses below -- you'll see a pattern that the owner always, always try to find excuses and ways to blame the customers. Yes, every restaurant gets some bad reviews, sometimes ridiculous but sometimes reasonable. If an owner tries to fight off every bad review, they are replying for the sake of arguing and defending instead of seeking to improve customer experience. This is an indication of the service and attitude you get at...

I had quite interesting experience here. The place seemed cool from outside so mw and couple of my buddies went in. The restaurant was severily understaffed. Our waiter apologized for any inconvenience due to staff shortage. He wasn't the nicest to us but I understand the stress and frustration working without the appropriate resources so I won't hold it against him.

My food simply didn't just meet my expectation. Their clam chowder was so thin and runny I could probably drink with a straw.Bruschetta ( I just looked up how to spell it) was quite ok but I didn't like goat cheese on the top, it just didn't go well with the dish.They ran out of several popular dishes even though it was peak dinner time on a Friday. which made the menu looked very limited. We were thinking about ordering some more food and stay a bit longer but was nervous about rest of the food quality.

I liked their pasta. It was perfectly cooked and they were able to alter the menu a little to get us exactly the kind of dish we wanted. So that's a good thing. Mango margaritas were really strong which is good but tasted like cheap alcohol. But if you doing care about how alcohol taste you should be fine. Just don't drive if you have more than 3 of those, Roads can be quite dark and curvy in the island.

I usually add at least 20% tip to any restaurants I go to but the bill came in with a 18% tip already added. It was kinda weird and I dint feel like making it a 20% since they already did all the math, I guess its their loss.

Lastly, if you don't want to read the whole comment, here's the summary, they can do better. I wonder if my experience would be better if they were fully staffed and actually had all the foods available. Will I go back there?probably not. Atleast...