Cafe Nova — Restaurant in St. Louis

A friend and I met at this restaurant last night. When we arrived at 7:00 PM there were only two other patrons there, which should have been our first clue that this might not turn out so well. I decided to order an Athens Gyro because it sounded authentic ("When in Rome...") The online menu describes this menu item in the following way:

Seasoned beef and lamb, crisp fries, ripe tomatoes, wrapped up with a warm pita and drizzled with Nova's special sauce and served with oregano fries.

What was delivered was a sloppy mess that looked like green goop (special sauce???) had been ladled (not drizzled) all over the food to the point that it was oozing out of the loosely wrapped gyro and onto the plate. It seriously looked so unappetizing and quite impossible to eat. I was also shocked to see that catsup and mustard had been squirted inside of the gyro, on top of the already disgusting looking green "sauce." The combination of these flavors was offensive to my pallete. There were also fries inside of the gyro which if I had read the menu more carefully I would have known. Not wanting to make a scene while eating with my friend I used a fork to picked the meat out of the gyro and ate the oregano fries on the side. I will say that the fries were good. I called the manager from my car to offer my feedback about how terrible the food was and she argued with me and tried to convince me that people in Greece eat their gyros with catsup and mustard. As you can see from the online description, the menu does not mention that these condiments will be used.

This is the first restaurant review that I've ever written, but I had such a negative reaction to this dining experience that I want to warn others. Some may ask, "What do you want for the very reasonable price of $7.99?" To which I would respond: "Something that isn't...

As I was on a tight schedule that evening, and thus not wanting to spend much time cooking, I put in a to-go order, and was given an estimate of 20 minutes for my food to be made, and would receive notification when it was ready. An hour later, I had not received any such notification, and checked in on the status of the order. Apparently, it was ready to be picked up. Expecting to see the restaurant extremely busy to account for the either slow preparation or failure to follow through on the notification, I instead arrived to find there were 2, or maybe 3 occupied tables. Immediately after getting back to my car with the food (a gyro), I promptly sampled some of the accompanying fries to see whether the issue had been that it took a long time to make, or whether customer service was the problem. The fries were well-seasoned, but some had a texture best described as somewhere between soggy rubbery, while others tasted dry and stale, all being mildly lukewarm in temperature. The gyro itself was of decent size, but was likewise lukewarm-to-room temperature, dry inside, and the pita partially soggy. Even without taking its lack of freshness into consideration, I've had much better for cheaper in far less-nice restaurants. The decor in the restaurant seemed nice, but unless I'm given good reason to think this was a rare anomaly, I have no plans to place further take-out orders here. As for dining in, I could be open to it, although unless decor at a fairly reasonable price is of greater interest than the food, there are other places I would much rather visit. In conclusion, for the price range- service 1/5, food: 2/5 (possibly 3/5 if served fresh, but it wasn't, and it also left my stomach churning through the night), speed: 1/5, ambiance: 4/5 (irrelevant...

I went to Cafe Nova with 4 other friends at 6:30 pm on a Thursday. When we walked into the restaurant to be seated, the waiter asked if we had a reservation. Their website makes no indication that reservations are needed, and I didn’t think a table for 5 would be unmanageable for a restaurant with a large patio. We told him we did not, and he looked annoyed at this. The patio was over half empty, so there were plenty of tables available. He told us it would be a 5-10 minute wait and to go to one of the big tables. We did so and received menus about 10 minutes after. The bus boy then said he would be back with waters (he never came back). The waiter came by once asking if we need anything and we said we wanted to place drink orders. He said he had many drinks to make and would be back. He never came back to our table, despite us trying to flag him down as he waited on other tables. After 40 minutes of no service, we got up to leave. There was a table of ladies sitting behind us and they asked if we were leaving because we never got service. I said yes and they said they didn’t receive all of their food yet. The waiter then caught my eye and I told him we were leaving due to no one coming to the table. He argued with me that we didn’t have a reservation, while the restaurant was half empty. He did not apologize or give us any indication of wanting to serve us at all. We asked for the manager and he didn’t give us a straight answer, just pointing to the other waiter/bus boy. I have never experienced such rude behavior from waitstaff at a restaurant. I would not recommend this place to anyone. It’s a shame because the patio...