Cafe 1274 welcomes you to their dining room. Come unwind on their terrace beneath the sun. They are open late all week and are conveniently accessible by car.
One of the worst experiences in a so-called restaurant in a very, very long time. No service, no courtesy. We left after having waited for fifteen minutes for someone to take an order. This after two separate requests. Absolutely terrible.
Pleasant staff and a good meal battled it out with very dated decor and a powerful chlorine smell during this meal.
The restaurant is located in a Best Western, next to the exercise facilities on the basement level (and likely a pool that went unseen - hence the powerful chlorine smell). The decor is early 80s and looks tired. Simply adding table cloths would have helped, but this place is definitely not pretty. Not sure how you fight the chlorine smell, but it no doubt affects reviews.
The meal itself was served quickly and overall was surprisingly good given the first impression of the restaurant. The shrimp appetizer was very good, though the spring rolls which were a special of the night were forgettable. The pork tenderloin looked more like thin chops, but was ok - the vegetables and baked potatoes were quite good. We requested a side salad instead of vegetables with the chicken dish and our waitress was very accommodating. The dish arrived with a very large serving of garden salad which was pleasantly assembled and fresh. The chicken cordon bleu was excellent.
Overall a pleasant meal, even if the dishes are priced a bit higher than average. The atmosphere was a bit overwhelming and resulted in a sub-par experience which the food and a pleasant waitress could not overcome. We won't be back.
The lettuce in our caesar tasted dirty, as though...
The lettuce in our caesar tasted dirty, as though it hadn't been washed thoroughly. And Oddly enough, although the salad was underdressed (or maybe I was just looking for something to kill the taste of the lettuce), the crutons were soggy, and last I checked, bacon bits still belonged in a caesar.
My steak, which was ordered rare, didn't have a speck of red left in it (a terrible thing to do to a piece of meat) and was most likely thrown on at the same time as my companions med-well steak, or perhaps it sat under the line while the other steak was still cooking. Although fully cooked, our baked potatoes were not warmed all the way through. Which would lead me to believe that they had been fully cooked in advance and were simply being warmed (theoretically) to order...my question becomes how far in advance were they cooked? And finally, although I enjoy my veg aldente, I also prefer for them to be heated through too - call it a personal quirk.
Kitchen issues aside, my server would not win any customer service awards. Our drink order took longer than seemed necessary to fill, she appeared back at the table to double check our orders while punching them in three times (which would have been fine had she gotten them right in the end). And when the correct plates finally made their way to our table, it wasn't until the end of the meal before she came back to check on us. Making it a little difficult to rectify any issues we may have had with our plates asap. And when I mentioned my issue with my steak, her response was a shrug and an insincere offer for a second attempt (which as I had already sat through well over an hour of quality time at Cafe 1274 by this point, I passed up).
I most certainly will not be returning.
