Centreville Café
5800 Kennett Pike
Centreville, Delaware
(302) 777-4911
A long-running local favorite, the Centreville Café made its debut in September 2003 and morphed into Montrachet Fine Foods, its cooking and catering arm, approximately one year later. Specifically mentioned in “36 Hours in the Brandywine Valley,” a New York Times article published on August 28, 2013, the Cafe, and its proprietor, Susan Teiser, are practically the stuff of urban legend…
At the Centreville Café, breakfast is served all day, while innovative soups, salads, and sandwiches take center stage at lunch. All meats are roasted & sliced on the premises, all soups are made from scratch, and only specialty breads are utilized to build the gourmet sandwiches. In addition, the restaurant is dog-friendly, has a spacious patio for al fresco dining, and guests may BYOB. Sounds great. I mean, what more could one ask?
But despite the warm & fuzzy website, cutesy floral-infused menu, several glowing online reviews (although, given the Café’s longevity, one would have expected infinitely more comments floating about), a beneficent blurb from the NY Times, and Ms. Teiser’s smiling countenance, as well as a loving enumeration of her extensive culinary, social, and philanthropic endeavors, a recent Sunday afternoon visit proved downright disappointing.
The sandwiches, for example, their flowery noms de plume notwithstanding, fell far short of expectations. My wife’s “Daffodil” – herbed focaccia with crumbled feta cheese, hummus, cucumber slices, lettuce, and tomato – long on bread and short on filling, was extremely dry. The hummus, which would have added a much needed touch of moisture (and flavor), was practically nonexistent; and the other “bland leading the bland” items, also rather sparsely applied, simply couldn’t carry the sandwich on their own.
My “Sunflower” – white tuna salad served open faced on an English muffin with melted provolone cheese & tomato – was also somewhat less than edifying. The tuna salad was slightly on the “fishy” side with pronounced lemony undertones. In addition, the muffin was barely toasted and decidedly doughy, and the tomato slices crowning the melted provolone had a rather strange, off-putting taste. Not the kitchen’s finest hour… But there were other negative vibes as well.
When we arrived for a light lunch at 2:00 p.m., Ms. Sweet-Young-Thing was holding forth behind the counter. Since we were first time visitors, she mentioned that we should order first, pay, and then retire to the parlor where our orders would be delivered to us when ready. So far, so good.
But after getting these preliminaries out of the way, one couldn’t help but notice that the interior was old, well-worn, and felt somewhat less than squeaky clean. This may seem an extraordinarily subjective snap judgment… Perhaps… That is, until Ms. Sweet-Young-Thing, noting that we had toted along a bottle of wine, popped into the next room to fetch a couple of wine glasses before sending us off to table. She promptly returned with two glasses that were – and this is hardly subjective – extraordinarily filthy.
Whether they had somehow managed to escape proper washing, or had simply been gathering dust for the last decade or so is entirely up for grabs… However, the fact that she had failed to notice their condition, I think, speaks volumes… not only about the attitude of the staff but also with regard to the establishment’s attention to detail and, perhaps, its overall state of cleanliness as well.
When I politely inquired, “Excuse me, may we please have two clean wine glasses?” she definitely sent a hairy eyeball floating in my direction, imagining, no doubt, that I had just made some shockingly outrageous demand. She departed, for a longer period this time, eventually reappearing with two acceptable – but hardly sparkling – offerings… We turned toward the parlor, wine glasses in hand. Before we managed to exit stage right, however, she felt the need to specifically instruct us that the restaurant closed promptly at 3:00 p.m. Fine, I nodded.
Once seated, our sandwiches arrived almost immediately; and we were enjoying our wine and a refreshing cross-breeze from two open windows, when, around 2:25 p.m., along comes another youthful member of the restaurant staff who proceeded to close and lock every window in sight… A scant five minutes later, Ms. Sweet-Young-Thing made a point of floating by to jog our memories: “Just a reminder that we close at 3:00 p.m.”
Apparently the members of the staff had pressing engagements elsewhere and wanted to make sure we got the (significantly less than subtle) hint… We did, indeed. After a last sip or two, given the fact that we had apparently worn out our welcome, we decided that it was definitely time to pack up and head for home.
Perhaps there was the fear that, because we had brought along a bottle of wine, we were planning to settle in for the duration of the afternoon… I have no way of knowing. I can certainly understand the desire to vacate the premises after a hard day’s work… but that this fact was made so blatantly obvious would hardly be considered customer friendly. Needless to say, patrons don’t like to feel they’re being pushed out the door.
There’s no question that the Centreville Café is both quaint and quirky; and as a professional restaurant reviewer, I find this desire to march to the beat of a slightly different drummer a refreshing change from the usual cookie-cutter cuisine and service encountered in many establishments. But quaint and quirky carry you only so far… then you need a good deal of substance to back up the bravado. And it is precisely here – with regard to both the quality of food and service – that the Café, in my opinion, falls short.
Repeat customers are a restaurant’s bread & butter. Thus, I think it would be well for Ms. Teiser and her assorted minions to realize that patrons whose initial dining experience proves less than satisfactory are seldom (if ever) tempted to return to the scene of the crime.
Bon Appétit!
TAD
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