Carly’s Cafe

Great place to eat if you like to dine in a musty smelling room with dead bugs on the window ledge. If you prefer your food to be cooked through, friendly service and anything that doesn’t taste like grill cleaner this is not the place for you.

Forgot how bad it was and returned for another lousy breakfast. Overcooked eggs, some type of greasy spread on the toast and really tough chewy corned beef hash. The wife’s bacon wasn’t cooked… ech. Feel sorry for the nice servers who have to serve this up.

Tried breakfast, four of us each with different items. Consensus: Average service, average food, fairly priced. Positive note: the pancakes!

I really, really wanted to like this place. It has a good location, though parking is slim pickens. We met up with a friend and went for a late Saturday breakfast. We were served very quickly, so quickly that I realized most items had been prepared ahead of time and left to sit in warmers. Even though the eggs were perfect and made to order the hashbrowns were mush and barely warm. The toast was worse, it was moist and limp and not even warm! It’s hard to mess up bacon, but they did. It was totally limp, again, victim of the steam table pan that they keep the food in.
The three of us each had a breakfast entre and add orange juice. The bill came to 30.99 before tax. We all agreed that we should have gone to Key’s Café instead. :(We usually go there when we’re in Forest Lake and this time thought we’d give another restaurant a chance. Sorry we did. Based on the lousy breakfast I doubt that I’ll give them another chance.

If you find yourself in the area and you love comfort food, this is the place. I opted for a simple burger. It was as good as most others but what was remarkable was that it’s on a pretzel bun. I got a basket which you can get with soup instead of fries. It was a delicious homemade ground beef and vegetable. The special was beef tips on noodles. I immediately thought of Whitney and her search for beef tips. I bet they were good. My waitress was Tammy, who was pretty awesome. She helped me find my destination which I had passed. I would like to try other things as well. It’s like a Keys on the lake. There’s an Italian place next door which looks worth a try, too.

Service was slow and unorganized. Food was salty and overcooked. No taste. Do not recommend.