The Mini Chef Restraunt and Lounge

There’s a reason why it’s not very busy… Food is super salty… Like something you’d find at an old folks home… Definitely not worth the price… Water tastes musty and heard the waiter mutter under his breath… «Again!!!» Won’t go back…

I’ve eaten here a few times, and generally the food is decent. I thought with Biscuits Café coming to town they would try to step up their game. I was running short on time and it wasn’t very busy so we came in for breakfast around 10am. We waited more than an hour for our food and our coffee was only refilled once. I watched several staff members standing around, talking while my order sat under the heat lamp. Two of the orders were wrong and the gravy was flavorless. Unfortunately this place has lost a customer. Better luck next time.

This is one of those just meh places. Sunday afternoon around 1 and the kitchen was experiencing a 30 minute back log. There was no more than 8 tables with people so it seems excessive.
I judge places by how clean things appear. The menus had hard crusty food on then. The blinds have food spatter.
I had a chicken bacon avocado sandwich. It was ok, nothing spectacular.
Since we were just out on a Sunday drive I couldn’t imagine coming back out of our way to come here again.

Overpriced cafeteria food.
I ordered a pulled pork sandwich that sounded great according to the description on the menu — supposedly there was Jack Daniels BBQ sauce involved with the preparation of this sandwich, but I could not detect anything resembling BBQ sauce. The meat itself was dry and bland, and it was set on a very pasty white hamburger bun, with a small dab of your run of the mill coleslaw.
The accompanying steak fries were the best tasting things on the plate, but it would have been nice to have had a few more of them. As few as there were, there was even less of the ketchup that they felt the need to portion out in little tiny plastic cups.
Did I really just pay $ 10 for that? That’s highway robbery.
My son ordered the «half pound» bacon cheeseburger with fries, and it was supposed to be cooked medium well, according to the menu. That was the smallest half pound burger I’ve ever seen, and it was cooked until there was no juice left in the patty, whatsoever. He had to stop eating it because he said it tasted «burnt». That never happens — he’s almost 13 years old and eats everything in sight.
My daughter couldn’t finish her kid’s meal cheeseburger, so I decided to finish it for her. I kept wondering if they had just driven over to McDonald’s, picked up a burger to go, and brought it back and served it to us.
Never again. There’s too many good restaurants in Canby to settle for this.

GROSS!!! The absolute WORST service and HORRIBLE food! My husband, daughter, and I went to breakfast there on Sunday. They were busy, but not by any means «slammed». I have waited tables in my past and could tell they were not in the weeds. We sat down and ordered coffee. The cup they brought my daughter had lipstick on it. We had to wait forever to get someone’s attention to get us a new cup. We sat in this restaurant for a WHOLE HOUR, and no one even came to fill our coffee until we had been sitting there over 30 minutes! Again, had I seen the wait staff hustling, I could understand. But that was not what I saw. There was even the hostess who literally just moseyed around, not doing much of anything, and certainly not pouring coffee. I caught the eye of other patrons and could tell that we were all just in shock at this horrible service! After they grew the wheat for the damn pancakes, our food finally arrived. Now I am truly not a picky girl, but one thing I can’t tolerate is runny eggs. I ordered 2 eggs, scrambled hard. Um, no. My poor daughter, who had her heart set on sausage, said, «Mom, these don’t taste done.» She flipped them over and the other side of the patties were just grey, totally grey with no crispy situation you would expect on sausage. EWWW! When I FINALLY got our waitresses attention, she asked me, «Well, what would you like me to do? Should I have them cook these eggs a little more or do you want two new ones?» Well, considering that I had put my fork which had been in my mouth in these eggs, you probably don’t want them back on your grill. (I didn’t say that). Then she asked my daughter the same thing, but she was very condescending. She said, all snarky, «Just tell me what you want me to do.» The rest of the food was vile. Even my trash compactor husband said his omelet was gross. Please, do yourself a favor and stay away from this dump. There was not one redeeming thing about the entire experience. GROSS GROSS GROSS!!!

This is the worst restaurant I’ve ever been to. Not even in the same league as basics like Denny’s or Sharis.

I had the country scramble with pancakes and hashbrowns. The scrambled eggs had plenty of ham and bacon and spinach cooked just right nothing runny. The hashbrowns were cooked crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. The service was fast and friendly. Great place to come will be back. Christie and Andrew were great employees.

Great service. We didn’t have to wait long for our meals. Food was fresh and tasted great.

It was a the hands down worst service I’d ever experienced.
My father and myself met up there for breakfast after we both worked graveyard shift. After waiting to be seated, 60’ish year old lady starts to seat us right by the kitchen door. I had my dog in the car and there were only two tables of people in the whole restaurant, the rest of the tables being empty, so I requested a window booth, instead of by the kitchen with no view. The woman seemed annoyed at the request, but complied, sat us, and poured coffee.
My father and I then read the menu and made our selections. I found the price of the Mushroom swiss burger a bit steep at $ 9.00 without fries which cost $ 2.00 extra, but settled on that. Pops also made his decision.
Then we waited.
We waited while the old lady went and sorted silverware across the dining room, paying no attention to us, and we waited as the 20’s something blonde male server avoided eye contact with us several times as he walked by tending to one of two other occupied tables… That one had 4 guys speaking like they were in health insurance.
So after politely trying to get a server’s attention for about 10 MINUETS after we’d decided what we wanted and being ignored, we figured we must be on the pay-​no-​mind list, so we paid for the coffee and went to Denny’s where I got a double Mushroom Swiss burger + bacon & onion rings for under 10 bucks. The service was prompt, attentive and courteous.
I was pondering why our service was so lousy, and all I could figure was that I’m a welder and Pops runs a huge energy-​center for one of the largest hospitals in Oregon, so we may have had some dirty spots on our pants from working the night before.
IDK, I’ll never go there again.
I do thank them though, because they prompted us to search out the best little diner in the canby/​molalla area… Pappy’s Greasy Spoon.
Awesome atmosphere, great décor, huge portions low prices, and the owner’s a riot.
So all and all, I don’t feel bad about giving Mini-​chef 1 star (I’d like if I could give them zero) but after all, without their horrible service, we’d have never discovered Pappy’s.

I’ve had too many negative experiences at this restaurant. It’s beyond help and is doomed to suck forever.

Great breakfast spot. No long line, good food, large portions, nice servers, comfortable atmosphere, lots of parking.

Loud atmosphere, slow service 45 minutes is too long to wait for lousy food.

I recently had lunch at The mini Chef and it was awful. The food was tasteless and drab. The dishes and flatware were dirty, the tables and chairs were dirty. The carpet was dirty and stained and looked like it had not been vacuumed in days. The décor was old and shabby and dirty and full of cobwebs. The cook was heard arguing that he didn’t know how to do the order and all it was, was a sandwich. The cook took forever to cook the order and was heard arguing and flirting with waitress andthe bartender. To top off the horrible experience I gave the waitress two twenty dollar bills to pay for $ 24.95 of awful food in order to break the second twenty into smaller bills and got change for a twenty five dollars. When I protested she went to the cash drawer and showed me that there no extra twenties so that means the waitress expertly pocketed the extra twenty. So it ends up that we had a horrible lunch and got ripped off.

My wife had ordered a taco salad. She thought the meat had tasted old and dry. As if it were reheated meat from a couple days ago. Rather than make an issue over it she asks for a side of red potatoes.
This is when the manager (possibly owner) came over rudely asking what my wife’s problem was with the taco salad. She explained the issue. Rather than simply correcting the problem, this female argues as to why exactly my wife disliked the meal, that it must be the seasoning or something else. Then had an attitude when asked to prepare red potatoes.
Poor food & horrible customer service. It’s shame my wife and in laws didn’t check the reviews on this place before going. They could have saved themselves a poor experience.

Great food, mainly made from scratch. Very rare for this price range. The staff was really friendly and brought crackers directly out because they saw that we had a toddler with us. If you have children, you know… My food was well made with quality ingredients. For the price in Canby, Cannot be beat!

I had a weekday breakfast early today, well mainly because i got to work way too early today. So found this place much by accident. Infact, i thought it might have been an asian or HK style café. It’s not.
Inside the décor is clean and new, nothing special. There’s a chef’s statue in the lobby, maybe this is the mini chef? Had the bisquits and cravy combo which came with meat eggs and i added hashbrowns and due to a promo special was a 1,00 off today. came to $ 9.50 total. The sausage gravy was full of meat and spices, I thought it to be rather good. The bisquits were standard but plenty. The has browns were just fine, perhaps i prefer them more crispy, but nothing to complain. the sausage links on the side were plump and tasty. No coffee for me today. My impressions at first were the prices were a bit high, a 10 dollar breakfast needs to be great. See Patty’s eggsnest in Seattle. But I would rank it well above a Denny’s/Ihop for the meaty fare. I’m just not into pancakes unless it’s at home.

I was told my order would be right out because it was a special order and the chef’s didn’t consider what she had written down so my food came out about ten minutes later.
I am deathly allergic to onions. I am not trying to be picky or difficult.
I ordered the Veggie Scramble and my food came out on a dirty plate (ketchup on the plate by the hash browns). I ignored my better judgement and began to eat my meal. There were onions everywhere!!! When the waitress finally came back, she asked if I would like to order anything else. I said I would like eggs hash browns and toast. I got eggs. My friend asked if I could get toast.
I have worked in the service industry for many years, and that was the WORSE service I have ever gotten. I will not be returning to that establishment. No one there tried to make it a better experience.