Beacon Café On Beach

Reviews about Beacon Café On Beach

• 2 / 5

  By Alyssa Blackford
  My heart almost goes out to this little place because the food is actually delicious, it's just that their service is poor enough to make the experience dismal.
  
  I've been to the Beacon Café twice: once on a slow weekday morning in 2015, and once on a busy Sunday morning in 2016. Both times, I got the impression that things were so disorganized behind the scenes that the wait staff were not able to keep up with their customers in a responsible, timely manner.
  
  I was confused by how slow the service was on the weekday morning visit, because there were only about three families in the building. Nonetheless, our service was slow, and we often wondered where the waitress had gone off to.
  
  The Sunday morning visit was unsurprisingly worse. After I was seated, none of the wait staff approached me. A few minutes after the wait had turned uncomfortable, the hostess -- who I have to give a shout-out to because she was doing everything she could to accommodate her coworkers' mistakes -- noticed that I was still without drinks and offered to put in the order for me.
  
  A young man brought out my cappuccino, asked if my order had been taken yet, and when I said "no," he magically transformed into my waiter. From then on, he brought me my food and refilled my drinks and overall did a decent job at being a waiter.
  
  But when the time came that I was done eating and ready to receive my check, he vanished. Thankfully, I was spared a long wait by the manager, who for whatever reason approached me, very kindly asked me if I was done eating, and offered to take my plates and bring me my check. But after the manager brought me my check, he vanished, too. So I was left sitting at my table for an excess of 10-15 minutes, watching my waiter visit tables all around the restaurant, but ignore me.
  
  Finally, by the time my patience was wearing thin, the hostess once again came to the rescue and offered to take my check to the back. After a long three minutes, my waiter came back with my receipt and my change, but offered no apology or even an acknowledgement that he had stopped waiting on me. By that time, I was desperate to leave the place and nearly dashed out of the building.
  
  Overall, there's a sense that the staff have no organized system for how they wait on customers. It seems like the job is a free-for-all for whoever notices that the customer has been getting poor service first. (That is, of course, assuming that they DO notice.)
  
  The only saving grace, as I said before, is the food. I loved the quality of everything I got, from the pancakes to the potatoes. But I don't think the service is worth it. I would not return again.
  August 28, 2016