Horrible. Utterly disappointing.
I went to Cafe Lily for brunch. I ordered the lamb with potatoes and eggs. I thought the $14 was a little high, but not ridiculous, for a lamb brunch item. I asked for my eggs over easy. No dice. The chef is busy and can only do the eggs scrambled. While refusing requests is no reason to hate a restaurant, a brunch place should be able to accommodate eggs however you like them. But that was only the beginning of the disaster.
I received my food. I was shocked.
Five tiny nuggets of lamb. Where does a lamb nugget come from? No cut of lamb I can think of yields lamb nuggets. Was I being served the trimmings from someone else's piece of lamb? The potatoes had way too much garlic. I put heaping spoonfulls of minced garlic in nearly everything I cook. I love garlic. The garlic on the potatoes made them unappetizing. The eggs were just "blah." They had no distinctive taste and no redeeming qualities. They reminded me of the eggs served at a cheap hotel's breakfast buffet: poured out of a container rather than made fresh. The tomato slices were from the tiniest, most unripe tomato. Not only that but one of the four slices was the end of the tomato with the hard stem portion intact.
I would not pay a penny for this food when I can go elsewhere and receive much better. Much less would I pay $14 for this plate. To top it all off, the service was lackluster at best.
My wife ordered the french toast.
It is hard to screw up french toast. She said it was decent but not amazing.
She also ordered a side of sausage.
I have never seen sausage served this way before. It is a large sausage link cut several times so that it would lay flat. It wasn't bad with some syrup over top. However, the additional charge of, I believe, $4 for this one piece of sausage was excessive.
Overall, avoid Cafe Lily. It is a waste of money and time.
Cafe Lily
308 W. Ponce De Leon Ave.
Decatur, GA 30030
404-371-9119
Hi there!
ReplyDeleteSorry you didn't enjoy your meal at Cafe Lily!
First off, the price of lamb has been at all-time highs for the last year or so. Also, the lamb in that dish is lamb tenderloin, so the cost is inherently higher because it's a premium cut. In fact, it currently goes for more than beef tenderloin at wholesale cost. The portion is pre-weighed at 4 ounces, and there is some shrinking involved from the cooking process. Either way, I'm sorry you perceived it as a poor value. I assure you that for the most part we are known for our generous portions.
Second, I'm sorry you found the tomatoes to be small and unripe. You must remember, however, that these are Roma tomatoes, which are much smaller than regular tomatoes, and very often restaurants are at the mercy of whatever is available in the state farmer's market, so they could be even smaller or larger at any given time. I am a bit befuddled that you thought them unripe, as it's clear from your picture that they show a bright red color. Sorry about the stem, though.
We do not, and never have done eggs to order. Doing that adds an operational component to the line that really slows down service. We feel like if people really want that, they can go to a breakfast place that specializes in the mass-production of eggs. We have received few complaints about this in our 12+ years of business. Also, many other brunch places echo the sentiment. Watershed, for example, served only poached eggs. Further, our scrambled eggs are cracked fresh and mixed with only salt and water. I strive to make my food as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, so that's why I do not add milk. But once again, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy them.
I encourage you to come back and try us for dinner, as that is our bread and butter.
Thanks for the visit,
Anthony Pitillo,
Chef/Owner