Meli Cafe — Restaurant in West Chicago Township

If you're looking for an awesome place for breakfast look no further and come to Meli!

With a morning free from class, my friends and I scoured Yelp for some good eats before heading to school. Seeing so many great reviews and drool-worthy pictures, we quickly decided on Meli. The restaurant is located on Halsted in Greektown. There isn't a private parking lot, but there's plenty of street parking so no need to fret.

The restaurant offers a large array of menu items from omelets to skillets to crepes to waffles to pancakes...yeah it's overwhelming. The interior is very classy and many of the patrons dining seemed pretty affluent so it's a restaurant you should come to when you feel indulgent on special occasions. When we first arrived, we saw a girl that I think was the hostess, but we were actually greeted by a server, which a found a little odd. The hostess had a sour look on her face like she was annoyed to be there and was constantly sighing and rolling her eyes. These are common symptoms of a condition my friend calls #HOSTESSHATE, lol. Yup, this girl had full blown case of #HOSTESSHATE. Anyways, the server, who actually turned out to be our server led us to our seats and asked for our drink order. She was incredibly warm and welcoming, offering her personal favorites from the menu, as well as other recommended dishes.

Here's what we ordered: -Mana Mou skillet (my dish/server's rec): This dish was a hefty $16 which is different than the price listed on the site, FYI, but it was sooooo worth it! The skillets consist of a layer of diced red potatoes on the bottom and your choice of ingredients on top finished with two eggs any style. The Mana Mou is composed of sauteed portobello mushrooms, red onions, bell peppers, black angus steak and a layer of creamy melty provolone cheese. OMG! The angus steak was perfectly seasoned and cooked to a medium rare to medium so it practically melted in my mouth. I'm actually salivating writing this. Okay back to the review, I topped my skillet with two poached eggs, so the velvety yolks acted like a sauce to make the dish even more rich and decadent! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

-Emerald Isle skillet ($12): this skillet was alright, but nothing to write home about. This skillet is made up of corned beef and is top with swiss cheese. I actually found the corned beef a bit too salty to my liking.

-Spicy flamenco omelet ($13): This omelet consists of chicken chorizo, jalepenos, onion, avocado, tomatoes, cilantro and pepper jack cheese. It's topped with sour cream. This dish was pretty good. All the ingredients really lend themselves to each other. It was a good combination of spiciness from the chorizo, jalepenos, creaminess from the avocados cut by the tangy-ness of the sour cream and the cilantro added a freshness to the dish.

In addition, the meals come with your choice of toast and house-made ketchup and marmalade. We received orange and strawberry marmalade with our meals. The orange marmalade was definitely the better of the two. I would've licked the dish if I was in the comfort of my own home - that's how great it was! They also sell the marmalade, which is awesome. The ketchup was equally as delicious - haha, I actually contemplated having my friend take the bottle with us, but we were trying to be classy, lol.

Sooo...you're probably asking why I knocked off one star since I've been raving for the past 5 paragraphs - 3 reasons:

1. #HOSTESSHATE

2. There was a slight mix up with our bill where we paid, but the cashier couldn't add so they tried to charge us even more, but she ended up catching her mistake after we brought it up.

3. Our server was training another server, which was really nice, but incredibly clumsy (i.e. slamming plates on table, spilling water, etc...)

Overall, despite the minor setbacks, I would definitely come back to Meli to try out other items on the menu and their...

Don't listen to the good reviews!!! Those people must like being treated poorly and getting over-charged. The food at Meli is VERY over-priced. The management and staff are worse than rude, the place is uncomfortably cramped, and they are definitely NOT kid friendly.

We arrived with a group of eight (four adults, four kids) for breakfast, and were immediately treated to a very bad attitude from one of the young women working the front desk. She had an angry look on her face and spoke to us as though she would rather we leave. I joked with her a bit to lighten the mood, but she only became more agitated. She appeared to be compensating for some inadequacy by trying treating us to an unhealthy dose of nasty attitude.

We were told it would be a half-hour wait, and we were given a big square pager. After over an hour, the pager went off and we returned to the desk. The angry young woman asked if our whole party was there, and we told her they were. A few minutes later, she asked again. Then again. Finally, we told her we would like to sit down, since the kids were hungry and getting antsy, and she flew into a rage. She yelled at us, red faced, and insisted we would have to wait because she was busy.

I asked to see the manager, and she said she was the manager. We asked to see the owner, and she said she was the owner. I asked her for her card, and she gave us a card for Nick Karabelas and Yiannis Theoharis. Apparently these two men are the managers or owners, and not the hostess at the front desk.

Finally, the angry hostess took us to a table. Several minutes later, an obese, sweaty, older man in an ill-fitting suit comes to our table and yells at our party for upsetting his hostess. SERIOUSLY! He said his name was Nick (presumably Mr. Karabelas from the business card). After reading some other reviews, apparently Nick has a bad habit of yelling at his customers. If he wasn't so ridiculously comical, we would have been more upset. He didn't ask us for our side of the story, didn't care what we had to say, and was just as nasty as the hostess. If we didn't have four starving kids, having already waited over an hour, we would have left. Instead, we toughed it out and stayed to eat.

When we finally received our food, we examined it thoroughly to be sure it had not been tainted. It tasted ok, but it was definitely not worth the price we paid. After all the yelling, I can't even remember what we had. Seriously, you can get better food for less money (and with way better attitudes) at Stax on Taylor or Hashbrowns on Maxwell. Don't waste your time, energy, or money at Meli. And if you choose to do so, watch out for Nick Karabelas!!!

The whole episode was sad and hilarious. These people were like bad caricatures of the worst stereotypes of surly, ill-mannered Euro-trash. We were embarrassed for them, since they plainly didn't know better. We won't be returning to this place, and...

I finally had time to try this little breakfast/lunch diner in Greektown; but I was truly disappointed. The other location in Rivernorth is much nicer and I'm assuming run by different owners.

I took a look at the menu and most of the breakfast items were priced quite high; but the smoothies and fresh raw juices were extremely well priced. I absolutely loved my raw juice so it's definitely worth ordering and priced fairly.

Today was very strange though because the restaurant was absolutely packed with customers and there was only one waitress taking care of everything and everyone's orders which must have been hard for her.

I sat down and patient waited and finally my server offered me coffee ☕ but since I don't drink coffee she went away pretty quickly without asking me if I was ready to place an order. She just disappeared on me even though I already knew what I wanted to order.

Based on the high priced items I chose a 🥕 carrot, apple 🍎 and celery juice, an order of cheesy grits and one scrambled egg because I was on a budget and they didn't have freshly baked muffins so I chose what was less expensive.

My juice came immediately and then I waited for a very long time before my eggs 🥚 and grits came out. I ate the gris because I was starving and didn't feel like waiting longer for a hotter order...meaning yes my grits weren't warm they were cold. My server probably didn't have time to grab them and so they were brought to me cold. The grits were watery and obviously not prepared with enough butter or cheese so the consistency was soupy. The cashier was very kind and decided to not charge me for the grits especially because I waited so long for just a tiny breakfast request.

They are definitely understaffed here and I saw a help wanted sign outside looking for full time waitstaff. What I don't understand is the fact that they made one person wait on an entire restaurant full of people and no one pitched in to help her?

The menu items here aren't within my budget and since my meal and wait time was disappointing I don't feel compelled to...