don't set your expectations too high. i blame it on my high expectations, of reading many many other reviews of this place and seeing it on list after list of must-eat places in salt lake. breakfast is not my meal of choice, partly because i'm not a huge fan of eggs or buttermilk pancakes and partly because i don't want to wake up early to go out to eat on a saturday morning. but my companion was a huge fan of breakfast foods so we decided to give it a try together and i hoped her love for breakfast would rub off on me.
judging by it's popularity, i assumed it would be busy on a saturday morning so i showed up a little early to get our names in. unfortunately it wasn't early enough, as i didn't understand the system of checking in and the woman walking around collecting names wasn't exactly organized in her system of walking around finding people that looked new and asking for their names. i ended up standing there for at least five minutes before she discovered me alone by the door looking around wondering what was going on. it was crammed right by the two doors and people were standing shoulder to shoulder, hovering over the poor patrons that were seated right next to the waiting area. i quickly prayed that i would not be seated there. how uncomfortable! so to avoid the awkwardness and heat of the body to body situation in the ten foot space, i stepped outside to wait for my companion in the cold.
after what seemed like double the "twenty minute wait" we were let in and pointed to a dirty table in the booth section and i said my thank yous for being seated in the most comfortable area. but if only the service had been more comfortable. thankfully we had looked at the menu online before arriving because our waitress arrived a quick minute after we had been given our menus and expected us to be ready. so we gave her our orders and hoped that there wasn't anything more eye-catching on the menus we were given. thanks to my lovely companion, the time in waiting for our food went by quick enough and soon our plates were sitting in front of us without so much as a "can i get you anything else?"
i had the pot of gold with a side of pancakes and she had the pancake topped with bananas and caramel syrup and a side of scrambled eggs. considering our experience thus far, i was surprised at how much i enjoyed my plates of vegetables and potatoes topped with fried eggs and country gravy. the sausage in the gravy was absolutely delectable, soaking in the salty creamy goodness and bursting in my mouth. the eggs were a nice surprise hidden under the gravy and were cooked very well. i couldn't stop eating mine! but when it came time to start in on my pancakes, there was no syrup to be found. i had noticed earlier that a waiter asked for a syrup bottle off of someone elses table to give to a different customer so i assumed they were short on bottles (at a breakfast place famous for pancakes) and kept an eye out for my waitress to ask her for a bottle of my own. she never reappeared so i finally started in with just the butter on top. the pancakes were good! not incredible like many others claim- i found nothing to be astounding or clever- but they were well cooked and on the larger side. i definitely felt mine could've used some syrup but i would've had to wait until my check came to ask as our waitress never returned.
without asking if we wanted dessert or anything else or bothering to see if these two women would want separate checks, our waitress suddenly appeared again, check in hand. i asked for a slice ofpieto go and she hurriedly got that and the updated reciept for me. though she had not been around our entire meal, i suddenly felt a sense of urgency, that her number one goal was for us to get out of that booth and turn it over to someone else. but because i hadn't seen my companion in about a year, we wanted to spend more time catching up (and let her finish her meal). and suddenly our waitress was by our side every few minutes, asking if we needed anything else or more water. where was that attentive service when we needed it? she then brought me an unneeded bag for my leftovers and the hints trying to get us to leave were getting uncomfortable. her tactics worked and we ended up leaving earlier than we would've liked, not wanting to feel rude for sitting at a table, eating food we'd paid for and chatting (how inconsiderate of us).
maybe it wasn't the high expectations. maybe it's that i value good service as much as i value good food, and if they don't go hand in hand i'm disappointed. when i returned home and handed my husband the slice of pie, i couldn't help but list off the many things that had irked me over our meal. "but how was the food?" he asked. "unfortunately it was great! i just don't know if i want to go back there for it," i said as i sunk my fork into a delicious piece of coconut creampiethat i wished i had bought a whole plate of. now if i ever want thatpieagain, i'll have to brave the tiny waiting area and rude and inattentive staff to get it.