We stopped here for breakfast while staying in Long Island City and I had a rather lackluster…read moreexperience.
It's a small cafe with limited seating. They have a giant menu posted on the wall to peruse. When we approached the counter to order, the person manning the register basically ignored us. When she finally acknowledged us to place our order, the interaction was taciturn and curt - no niceties.
I ordered the single order pan-fried pancake ($8, but closer to $11 after tax). The menu states a choice between beef, pork, and chicken, but we were only given the choice between beef and chicken. The cashier also gave us a choice between spicy potato or pork floss (I opted for the pork floss), which was not denoted in the menu description. The menu does say it comes with veg, but what they really mean is lettuce/salad. The menu picture online is also misleading because it says it comes with an egg, and displays both a soft-boiled egg and beautiful runny egg cascading over the pancake. Instead, the only egg that was served was one overcooked fried egg (not runny at all!), and it was cold (but more on that later). The quoted wait time for the food was 20 minutes. There's a little station near the counter to grab napkins, silverware, and water.
Around 9:30am on a Friday, several tables were filled, but no one had any food (the cafe opened at 9am, so I suppose the kitchen was still ramping up). My friends and I ordered variations of the same dish (the pan-fried pancake), but the dishes were served in reverse order - the person who ordered last got their dish first and vice versa. When one order is more complex than another, it's understandable when the easier/quicker one is served first. Since we all ordered nearly the same dish, this was not the case. The way things were being expedited was not efficient.
When they finally called my name, I was excited to dig in, but the dish was cold! The beef was cold, the pancake was cold, the egg was cold and overcooked... I had half a mind to send it back. I'm guessing my order was ready earlier, but it must've sat there because someone forgot about it. Now technically, there are cold elements in the dish, if you count the lettuce and dressing, but there's no reason why the pancake, egg, and beef were all cold... they weren't warm, they didn't retain any heat, they were cold. They were also skimpy on the beef. The only redeeming qualities of the dish were that, fortunately, the pancake was still crispy, albeit cold and greasy, and the pork floss is a delicacy that gave the pancake a little extra oomph of flavor and texture.
My friend ordered the Wake Up Combo ($14), which is the pan-fried pancake served with a soy milk and tea egg. Similar to my own egg experience, the tea egg was disappointingly overcooked (think hard-boiled) and not jammy like the picture at all.
We all have bad days, so maybe Morning Brunch & Cafe was having one... but this is a skip for me.