Uncommon Grounds Coffee & Bagels — Restaurant in Town of Clifton Park

Pros: clean and comfortable interior, friendly staff.

Cons: subpar iced latte recipe, excessive pricing, no attention to detail.

I recently moved to the area and wanted to go to find my new go to local coffee place instead of going Starbucks. I ordered an iced latte and all I could taste was sugar and melted ice. I don’t know if it’s because the espresso doesn’t have a strong flavor or because of the amount of ice that was put in the drink. But I definitely know there was either way too much vanilla syrup or the syrup itself is way too sweet. It feels like I had an energy drink with how much sugar was in it. I couldn’t finish it all.

I also ordered a bagel with ham and cheese, requested for it to be toasted. The sandwich turned out to be a whopping $8.45 because it was a “build your own” option in the menu with a preset price. What’s funny is a typical sausage egg and cheese is $6.00 LOL In other cafes, they would’ve rang my order up as (for example): bagel $3.00, add cheese $1.00, add ham $1.00, for a total of $5 max. The quality of the bagel wasn’t much better than grocery store, same goes for ham and cheese, tastes like something I could get at hannafords. The bagel was barely warmed up. Cheese and ham were cold straight from the fridge. That’s not very “toasted” if you ask me. It was cold and unpleasant to eat. Biggest waste of $9 ever. What’s also funny about this is they gave me my sandwhich less than a minute after I ordered it. There was no customers after me. There were about 5 people just standing around in the food prep area. So I don’t get what’s the rush? Why couldn’t my bagel be properly toasted for $9?

This was such a disappointing experience. I mean I’d be down to come back to try the baked goods since I haven’t had those yet. But I won’t be ordering coffee or sandwiches there again. Maybe this style of coffee/sandwhiches is someone else’s cup of tea, but sadly not mine.

Overall...

Update: we revisited the Albany store yesterday, and we were not impressed. If all you want is a quick bagel and coffee, this is pretty standard fare. Sadly, not much more. Service is a bit more friendly at this store, but the staff seem to have little ownership over the quality of service and product. Perhaps it is our mistake to come on the weekend. My guess is that the owners have little stake in the day-to-day management, and little connection to their customers or the community. Kind of like Panera.

In short: Uncommon Grounds is pretty, well, unfortunately common.

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While we enjoyed ourselves, this store in Clifton Park New York is quite a bit more crowded than the one in Albany. This store seems to be more of a hangout, with an especially unfriendly staff, mostly student age workers. Overall the coffee was good, the bagel was good, the oatmeal was subpar, and the scone was returned. We probably won't be back to this location, but will give the Albany store another try. They Albany store seems to have a better quality of service, clientele, ambiance, and food product. Which is strange, because they have the same owner, from what...

Great tasty food and really friendly staff!!! (Clifton Park location). I would really like to give 5 stars BUT every time I go and order “The Mediterranean” breakfast sandwich and add bacon THEY FORGET TO ADD THE BACON. 7 out of 8 times I have ordered my favorite b-fast sandwich with added bacon they have forgotten THE BACON (the one time they remembered I had to do a double check and my jaw hit the floor). Not a great success rate. I have even tried explaining when I order to make sure to add the bacon because every time I have ordered I have to check the sandwich and come back asking for the bacon. I do this... and they still forget the bacon!!! So I have even just thought about defaulting to a regular bacon, egg, and cheese option...but I like the Mediterranean too much to live my life like that. I keep going because the food is good, but this is a growing annoyance where I have finally decided to leave a review about it in hopes it sparks a change. They do always give me the bacon when I go up and say they forgot it...so that’s a plus. Anyways always check your b-fast sandwich should you decide to upgrade with the “add bacon”...