New restaurant serves mediocre food, disappoints with unwelcoming service

Maggie Devine/Editor-in-Chief

The Butterfly Café, located on Fletcher Avenue in Waterloo, is a recent addition to Cedar Valley restaurants.

Not knowing what to expect, I agreed to a lunch there on a Saturday afternoon. At two o’clock, when most restaurants should be fairly empty, the Butterfly had two groups, spread out among the table and booth seating.

My party and I were greeted soon after we walked in the door and were given the choice of a booth or a table. The booth we chose was very roomy.
The décor overall had a red tone to it, which seemed to go towards a fancier menu. However, there was a bar (which no one was sitting at), giving it a homier diner feel.

The nicely designed menu had a lot of variety. Chicken, burgers, wraps and some seafood were dominant. In addition, there were about six desserts.
I ordered the two-piece fried chicken dinner, which was listed to come with a potato and corn. I asked our waitress if the corn came on the cob, which she was unsure of, and went to get her manager.

The manager spoke scarce English and didn’t understand what a cob was. Fed up with the language barrier, I just said that whatever he was talking about was OK.

My companion ordered a wrap, which was supposed to come with a choice of soup or salad, which the waitress had never asked about. She never asked about any dressings for the wrap, either.

Twice, the waitress came back to clarify our orders.

When I received my meal about a half an hour later, I was disappointed. The corn was (as I had expected) off the cob in a bowl, meaning it was straight out of a can. The French fries resembled frozen Ore-Ida’s, and the chicken wasn’t very crispy as I like it.
Despite not meeting my expectations, my meal was very hot and fresh and tasted fine. My companion’s wrap came with pickles, but overall it was a nice dish as well.

Only once, towards the end of the meal, did the waitress ask us if we were doing alright.

I ordered a dessert of bread pudding (as it is my favorite dessert of all time and not many places offer it) and informed the waitress that my companion had never received his salad. She, once again, asked her manager. The waitress brought the salad out with my bread pudding, and never once apologized for the inconvenience.

Maybe she was frazzled because it’s a new restaraunt, or maybe she was upset that she had messed up, but our drinks were empty when she brought out the last of our food. She never asked to refill them, and left before I was able to politely ask her for more.

So we waited. And waited. And … waited. Finally she appeared to fill our drinks, after I was halfway through my bread pudding and very thirsty.
My bread pudding was fantastic, and was an excellent portion. However, the salad tasted of unnatural chemicals and was inedible.
The other guests were clearly friends of the employees and owners, and when they left were asked how their meals were. They were told by the owner that, “We’re [the staff] still learning and getting everything together.”
We paused for a long time after we finished eating, waiting for our check. As no employee was in sight (because all their friends had left), we couldn’t ask anyone for help either.

We finally got our check, which was taken care of quickly, and no one said anything to us as we left.

All and all, it was an alright meal. The service was questionable. Will I be going to back to the Butterfly Café? I doubt it.

Class of 2014

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