One small complaint I have about New York restaurants is that most don't start serving brunch until at least 11:00 AM, and frequently not until noon. Now, in my book by starting that late they lose any legitimate claim to use the "br" prefix. I have to admit that this is largely due to the fact that for me, the concept of brunch is mainly temporal, where the ordinarily acceptable time for consuming breakfast fare is extended through the adjacent lunch timeframe. By serving brunch from noon until 4:00 PM, restaurants are completely severing the time relationship of brunch to breakfast, and the whole thing breaks down into a "let's just eat breakfast food whenever we please no matter what time it is" affair. I don't know why this is so troubling to me; it just is.
Not to digress too far, though, I have managed to accustom myself to the idea that if we want to eat brunch brunch before 11:00 AM, we have very few choices. It was in this spirit that we set out to try Country Cafe, pleased as we were that they would be serving a full brunch menu when we arrived at 9:00. Hotels are always a good bet for those wanting to eat an early morning meal, but an unfortunate corollary of the aforementioned brunch time issue is that even hotel establishments will specifically offer distinct breakfast and brunch menus, with the latter and it's expanded set of choices not being offered until the late morning or early afternoon. Country Cafe appeared to be an exception.
Our experience started out well enough. We were seated promptly and given menus, which we were left to study for a bit longer than usual. After about 15 minutes or so, our waiter finally appeared. This event was significant mainly because it was the only time during our visit that the waiter came to our table without having to be flagged down. After taking our order he quickly disappeared, and thus began our long wait for final delivery of all the items.
A quick sign of trouble was the fact that 10 or 15 minutes went by without me getting the coffee that had been my first request when the waiter arrived previously. Now, I am not one of those caffeine fiends that goes from edgy to postal if they have to wait more than 5 minutes for a cup of coffee in the morning, but I am well aware that they exist, and therefore would expect that restaurants open in the morning must be even more conscious of their likely presence. Accordingly, I believe most all restaurants recognize the importance of quick coffee delivery to maintaining a harmonious breakfast environment. When I at last flagged down the waiter, it was clear that he had no recollection of my ordering the coffee, which I received a few minutes later.
The next part of the order to be delivered was a pair of fruit smoothies. They had some interesting choices, including the strawberry-mint and banana-honey varieties that we had selected. I had a good view of the swinging door to the kitchen, and at the point the smoothies were ready the restaurant was still uncrowded enough that I could readily detect that the server who emerged from the kitchen carrying a try with two tall frosty glasses was destined for our table.
What I saw at that point was something that I have experienced at times before, where it is obvious that the server has rushed out of the kitchen with a tray of food and then realizes that he has no idea where he is taking it. I watched uneasily as he hesitated a few paces from the kitchen door, glanced around the dining room for some help or hint, took a few steps in circle, and then promptly turned around and headed back into the kitchen.
My feelings when watching this were pretty much the same as usual. I knew those smoothies were ours. I knew that he was going to go into the kitchen, do some checking, and then come out sometime later and bring them to us. I also knew that since they were smoothies with significant ice content, their quality was only going to degrade the longer their delivery was delayed, particularly if that time was spent in a hot kitchen. I wanted to help the guy out, maybe get up from the table and lead him over to save time and trouble. I think that doing so would breach some dividing line that separates patrons from wait staff, and would come across as unseemly questioning of their professionalism. So, I remained in my seat watching the spectacle with detached bemusement and as I expected, a few minutes later the server re-emerged and headed straight for our table to deliver the smoothies.
That pretty much set the stage for the whole meal, which was a disaster from a service standpoint. While a couple of our main courses were delivered simultaneously (my wife had two eggs with a side of cheesy grits, while I had selected the oeufs au plat), the rest of the meal was spent trying to get the rest of the items we had ordered, including those intended for our 5-year-old son. We twice had to flag down our waiter to ask when the rest of the items were coming, and each time a server brought something, it was either wrong or incomplete. It was obvious that the staff was harried and rushing about trying to fulfill all the requests and orders, but given the rate of errors their jobs were very difficult given the number of trips required for each table. It was hard to see why this would be the case, given that there seemed to be an adequate number of servers and the room was not full. It was clear from the comments we overheard from other tables that we were not alone in the problems we experienced. The food was fairly good, but not good enough to make up for the fact that it was like pulling teeth to get what we ordered.
By the time we finally got the order of bacon that our son had been waiting for since we arrived, along with jelly for his toast, my wife and I were long finished with our food. All we wanted to do was pay our bill and get out of there in order to begin the process of forgetting about the experience. The final insult, though, had yet to be delivered. When my wife went to sign the check and figure an appropriate tip for the experience we had had, she saw that they had automatically added a 20% gratuity to the bill. This for a party of 3. It seemed outrageous, even if the service hadn't been so bad.
Unfortunately we were in a hurry to get to another engagement and running late, due to the length of time it took to complete our order. So, we decided not to take it up with the staff at that time.
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