For the most part, when I review restaurants I focus very much on the food with a few call outs to service, decor and a few other things. Most places have decent enough service and on a few occasions when I've experience exceptional service, I do make note of those experiences. Unfortunately, my service at Delaware and Hudson was so unacceptable that I had to dock it a full fork - which is really sad because the food is quite excellent and very tasty.
It's located where Egg used to be and it continues to be a very popular brunch spot. They had coincidentally gotten a Michelin Star that week so I'm not sure if it made the place anymore crowded than it used to be. Things started off well with us only having to wait for a table of 5 for 10 minutes or so. They even allowed us to sit and order when our party wasn't complete, which is something I always appreciate. Sadly, they don't have a liquor license so or brunch drinks they had mimosas and bloody mary's made with beer. The menu looked amazing with a slight Mid-Atlantic (hence the name)/Southern twist to it with items like beef hash, scrapple. and corn mush on there. We ordered a side of the biscuits and scones ($8) to start and I got the crab cake benedict ($16) as my main and a side of potatoes ($5) for the table. We had also ordered a round of mimosas to start. We got our 1st round of mimosas and that's when it all started to go downhill. We must have waited 20 minutes for our scones to come out and during that time we had tried to order more mimosas but that was taking just as long as our food to come out. I was frustrated that I had to ask them repeatedly where my 2nd drink was for 30 minutes.
Finally the scones and biscuits came out and they were delicious! Apparently they are some award winning scones and biscuits and they came with homemade butter and jam. They were soft, addictive and I can totally see how they could be award winning. You'd think that after getting our appetizers, our main entrees should be out not to long after that. But no, we probably waited another 45 minutes for our entrees - which to me is just unacceptable. It was so long that several of us were getting drunk from our mimosas - not because they were particularly strong but just because we were drinking so many on empty stomachs. It got to the point where one of the hostess/waitress recognized how long we were waiting for our food and profusely apologized and offered to comp us the scones and the side of potatoes. I will say that I really appreciated that gesture and it does go a long way when the staff acknowledges their mistakes and tries to do something about it (ehem - Skal). While it was a nice gesture, it didn't really help when half our table got their food and the other half didn't get theirs for another 20 minutes afterwards. Richelle and I both got the crab cakes and watched in half tears as everyone else tore through their meals. Luckily Jenn's funnel cake was huge, so we gorged on some of it. It was super delicious and it wasn't too dense or heavy. They had served us the side potatoes with this round of food, so I snacked on those while I waited for my entree. The potatoes were also great - they were baby potatoes cooked just right and seasoned with just enough salt on them. Thank god for them, otherwise I may have passed out from hunger. Finally our crab cake benedicts came out, just as everyone else was done with their meal. At least they were fantastic. The crab cakes were very heavy on the crab and light on filler and they had two very nicely poached eggs on top with some capers on top. I don't want to go as far as to say that it was worth the wait, but it was a really great dish and I was so happy that at least I had waited for something that tasted good.
Sadly, after we finished our food Richelle found a gigantic egg shell in her benedict. She purposely put the shells out on the plate to see if they would say anything but they barely noticed. In fact, they never actually came to busy our tables. Once we were done eating, we just wanted to get the check and leave. But of course, like everything else here it took at least 20-25 minutes for them to bring us the check and then split it on 4 cards. There was practically no one else left in the restaurant and it still took them that long to run our checks.
I know that it's hard to run a restaurant and I definitely appreciated that they comped us for a few items, but having us wait that long for everything and then finding a giant eggshell in our dish is just not something that I can tolerate very much. Luckily for them, the food is on point and excellent otherwise I would have put this in the 1-2 fork category. While the wait staff was nice and apologetic about everything, I'm not sure if I can really handle that level of service again. We ended up being at the restaurant for over 2 1/2 hours and it wasn't because we wanted to have a long boozy lunch. Maybe it was a fluke experience but definitely be prepared to wait when you're here. Total bill with tip, tax and lots of mimosas: $48/pp
Photo Credit: Yelp
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