Camacho Watcho

I am a sucker for marketing. I love the signs that convince you that you’re getting a bargain “2 for $4″. I love the samples at the grocery store; you can bet I’ll want to buy the whole thing after a taste. I especially love the way a restaurant sells you on their food. A well-written menu will have me salivating as I deliberate over my order.

With this in mind, I was sold, with a capital S-O-L-D, upon entering Yum! Kitchen and Bakery in St. Louis Park for breakfast this past Saturday. Bright and spacious with high ceilings and well-designed seating and sales tables, this restaurant looked beautiful and smelled, well, yum! Everywhere I looked, there were cookies, fresh loaves of breads, cupcakes, muffins, lollipops…you name it, all marked in their signature red and blue logo, designating them as ‘Yum!’. So imagine my surprise when, despite all this beautiful marketing and expectation setting, I was disappointed in the food. I feel guilty even saying it…the marketing is that good. It honestly had me wondering if I was the only crazy one in the room. Do I not know ‘yum’ when I eat it?

The ordering process was interesting. Along the back wall was the full menu with breakfast, lunch and dinner items displayed on large boards near the ceiling. I scanned the menu, truly salivating at all the possibilities and decided to order the “Yum!” (you might be detecting a theme here). The menu description read “slow-cooked scrambled eggs with sausage patties, potato hash and challah toast. Kyle ordered the banana waffle to curb his breakfast sweet-tooth. But that was just the food order. Once we placed our order, we then had to take our ticket to the muffin, coffee and cupcake counter to order coffee. The good news was that they rang it all up together to pay only one bill. The bad news was the price - $28 for two breakfast entrees, a side of bacon and two coffees…before tip. Ouch!

Our food arrived and I have to say that I was highly disappointed. My eggs were bland - even salt and pepper didn’t help. Have you ever tasted buffet-served eggs? Not the runny kind, but rather the dry ones that scream “someone forgot I was cooking until it was too late!” kind - that was how my eggs tasted. The sausage did have spice, but overall it was a little greasy and appeared a bit undercooked. The potatoes were mediocre; the peppers added a bit to them, but not enough. The toast was good. So was the butter. As for Kyle’s waffle, it was just a plain ‘ol waffle with a bunch of whipped cream and bananas. I would have at least expected a crisp, browned waffle that would have contrasted the creaminess of the whipped topping and the texture of the bananas. But, no, it was just okay, but nothing really special. And the bacon? Kyle’s comment was that it “tasted okay, but was super thin.”

I wanted to like Yum! Kitchen and Bakery, I really did. But, no matter how many little red and blue stickers screamed “yum!” at me, it just wasn’t happening. Over-priced, highly-hyped, but no delivery on their marketing promises. In Kyle’s words…”what should have been yummy turned out to be crummy.”

Posted on May 12th, 2008 by katiejocannon
Filed under: Food