Critic's Review
Review 11/8/2019
I was looking to have some breakfast mid afternoon, and the choices in this area are limited. I'd tried Toast when they first opened; I thought I'd see how they'd progressed.
The memories came back quickly. They seated me in the closest booth available to the hostess station.
With a big empty room you'd think they'd spread people out so you don't have to listed to other people's conversations; or watch the hostess at work.
I was also given a lunch menu with no mention of breakfast; she didn't ask me what I was having when I was seated. Why not give both menus or ask? Both the hostess and the server who worked Joe's Cafe for many years left at 3pm sharp, leaving one mature lady to service the dining room. I sat there for 5 minutes with the wrong menu before she came over.
"Are you still serving breakfast?". Of Course. Same BS as my first visit.
Coffee comes in a miniature cup. Plastic cup creamers.
I ordered a regular breakfast; they only have hash browns now. Not sure what's so difficult about making home fries.
The view of the lot is awesome. Music by Rick Ashley and Christopher Cross. They just have a radio station playing.
The eggs come out in a few minutes.
They still don't distinguish between over easy and over medium. You think after 20 years they'd figure it out. At least the yolks were still runny.
The hash browns had an odd taste; bad oil maybe? There were also very flat. The lacked all of the properties I seek in hash browns.
The sausages weren't freshly cooked; Sausages get dried out when they sit on a grill for 6 hours. Serves me right for wanting breakfast at 3pm.
Even the toast was weird and flat. It didn't even seem like rye bread. You'd think a place named Toast would have good toast.
They lowered the price of the coffee to $2.49; probably because $3 for bad coffee with an $9 breakfast is absurd. They updated their website so it now states that "Free Coffee" only comes with breakfast before 11am.
Conclusion
Maybe the breakfast is good here in the morning, but it's not very good in the afternoon. Considering that they don't give you a breakfast menu and they make you pay $2.50 more after 11am, it's clear they don't want you to order breakfast after 11. I won't make this mistake again.
Review 1/11/18
I saw their "Now Open" sign a week ago and I thought the place was a bar; Toast after all, is a homonym; it can be refer to drinks or bread, and it doesn't really look like a restaurant from the street.
Inside it looks like a restaurant. Lots of booths, which is good. I see the women from Joe's Cafe working the floor; as it turns out this place is owned by "Gus", the guy who owned Joe's for 10 years. He sold Joe's to the Wings N Things guy and opened this place. What's interesting is that Gus registered a business at this location in 2007. So it's been on his mind for a while.
I wanted to ask Gus why he took this space instead of the empty diner-esque location across the street, but Gus wasn't interested in talking to me.
I was the only actual customer at 2.30p; there was another table which turned out to be a meeting in progress for the restaurant. Cheap furniture bolted together. Still a lot better than Hummus House.
She gave me a lunch menu and I asked for coffee. "Do you serve Breakfast all day?", I asked. "I'll get you a menu". I later got a reply to an inquiry I'd sent from them telling me that they only serve breakfast until noon M-F and until 2p on Weekends. So I'm not sure if they really do serve breakfast all day.
Music was decent, with INXS and Wham! detected. The view wasn't so inspiring, however.
I asked about the wireless password, and she came out with a business card with a bunch of complicated stuff written on it. How about toast123 as a password? I tried 5 times but couldn't get it to work, so I just stuck with the LTE.
The food came out in about 8 minutes. Basic, pedestrian stuff. Same as Joe's. No seasoning on the potatoes, tiny rye bread. Eggs over medium instead of over easy. Your typical Fort Lauderdale breakfast.
I had to ask for butter; they always give you 25 jellies but no butter.
They tell everyone that everything is "home made" here, but we've all been to a friend's house and home made isn't always a good thing. This is just basic food; there are no secret recipes in this place.
One server for the whole place (another customer came in while I was there). No refill on my tiny coffee cup the entire time here. The server woman was way too busy with other tasks to bother checking on me. I guess when you're the only one drinking coffee in the place you don't get the full diner experience. They're still not using a real pos, so my "bill" had 2 items on it, one for $8.95 and one for $2.95, without telling me what the charges were for. I asked about the 2.95 and she said "coffee", and then tried to explain that "free coffee" was only certain hours. I pointed out that the web site didn't say anything about times, so she took it off.
Considering I didn't even get a refill, I wouldn't have been happy to pay $2.95 for that tiny cup of coffee.
Conclusion
Toast is a basic diner and you have to wonder why someone would sell Joe's for this place. Joe's is in a high foot traffic shopping center and this is an odd commercial center with a highly annoying and treacherous parking lot. It's also right across from Mason Jar, which has better food than this place.
Without the free coffee this place is too expensive; what I got wasn't worth $12. So make sure you get here within the designated hours.
