Cafe Intermezzo

11/01/08

Going down hill quickly

by BruceSketta at Citysearch

Cafe Intermezzo used to be a great place to eat and have drinks with friends. Both the variety and the quality of the food seems to have decreased in the last couple of years. Service was never great except from the occasional GaTech waitress who didn't know she didn't have to care about the customers. Desserts are still an attraction, but believe it or not the service has gotten worse. On our last visit (and I mean last), our meals arrived at different times, the wine came after everyone was finished eating, and except for the obilgatory delivery of the order, we never saw our waitress again until she brought the check. Sorry to lose what used to be a nice place, but the negative reviews are closer to the truth.

• Pros: Desserts
• Cons: (Lack of) Service, uninspired food, parking

09/16/08

CONTEMPTUOUS PROFITEERS (Beware ratings-inflating 5-star posts)

by SixFt5Bear at Citysearch

NOTE: Suspiciously glowing 5- & 4-star reviews routinely bump off of the facing page truthful 1-star reviews. Comments such as "super clean" & "doesn't get any better" owner/manager attention are absolute LOL nonsense!

*2008 SUMMARY*: SURLY & LAZY waitrons; mine, an angry Eastern-European wage slave fresh off the boat. 2008 PRICE INCREASES on already-OVERPRICED, often CHILD-SIZE-PORTION bar/cafe drinks/desserts/snacks: You know, those oddball, tall-and-narrow, 6-ounce glasses filled with ice and 1 squirt of no-free-refills, not-even-alcoholic liquid (however, at $3.19, the six-ounce iced tea qualifies for free refills, but that's assuming your waitron ever reappears)...coupled with a plated $10+ handful of pasta...and an $8.48, 6-inch-length by 2.5-inch-arc of STALE-tasting dessert pie (last year, same item tasted thawed-from-frozen fresh). DIRTY, BLOWER/NO-PAPER-TOWEL BATHROOMS (for you and the ones who handle your drinks & food) are an owner specialty; filth on the unwashed, dirty-grout walls has been there a decade. (Note: Dessert & iced-tea prices include 8% tax.)

*SUMMARY OF MY 2007 REVIEW*: Listen to the SHILLS talk up this place! POORLY executed great concept; ATL's backward Southerners offer no similar 365-day/wee-hr spot that's not a drunk-filled diner. Saw R0ACHES there 3x in 2006. Waitrons SURLY/LAZY. Custs bailed, place usually dead. Owners lost $, so MIN DONE to fix things. Fix brings it back to history as MINIMALLY HOUSEKEPT, OVERPRICED bar/cafe w/tasty desserts ($7.50/slice); tiny, overpriced meals ($10/HANDFUL of PENNE & 2 thin slices of Amer-Ital bread, upcharges for more slices); big coffee/non-alcoholic/drink menu. BATHROOMS DIRTY: Decades-filthy walls; TINY-BOWL sink (can't fit both hands under faucet); no towels; seldom filled soap dispenser & cheapest-grade TP. SINK'S WATER FLOW TURNED DOWN: Save $, encourage help/patrons not to wash! A caring restaurateur should copy theme & BURY THEM w/CLEAN, EXCELLENT SERVICE & NON-GOUGE PRICES!

• Pros: Great, poorly executed international-cafe concept
• Cons: R0aches, dirty tableware/bathrooms, overpricing, surly staff...what more do you need?

05/27/08

Manger from down below

by onemangrouphug at Citysearch

I have been there off and on over the years. Their desserts are great. Recently I ordered a cheese plate and they brought out what looked like a Publix deli tray with chunks of white and yellow cheese. I expected a little better from Intermezzo. I looked at my date and she laughed. It has some grapes on the plate too. I nibbled one of the yellow ones and it was like Reagan free cheese, velveta, American cheese, and the white was like, white American cheese. I called the waiter over and said just take it back. He said I would have to pay for part of it since I tasted a bit of one of the white pieces and one of the yellow pieces. I told him that I also tried to eat a grape but they were sour. I pointed to the bit that I had taken back out of my mouth and had place on the plate. Long story short, they manager argued for a while, then submitted. As we were leaving, later, I went back to find the manager to thank him, yes somewhat sarcastically for having take the cheese plate off of the tab. He was in the office. One of the waiters said that the "Guy with the cheese plate wants you." I was standing right there outside the office door. The manager said, "What does that MF want now." (He did not use the initials.) He was face to face with me when he finished the sentence. I thanks him and have not been back.

05/12/08

Poor Service and Even Worse Management

by rosyone at Citysearch

I have never written a review before but after seeing first hand what so many people have written here, I felt compelled to share my experiences and opinion. Cafe Intermezzo is well known around Atlanta for it's poor service but we keep coming back for the great drinks and desserts, hoping it will get better. Unfortunately, quite the opposite has happened. What makes it so bad is it appears that management does nothing about it. If the manager mentioned in the prior review is the same one we have dealth with we know first hand how rude he has been to customers who have raised concerns while dining there. It seems it is more important to him to converse and play around with the employees instead of making sure that customers are being tended to properly and timely. I think because people keep coming, the thought must be that this behavior will get overlooked, but eventually people will tire of the bad service, bad attitudes, and all around bad experience.

Pardon the bad pun, but Cafe Intermezzo, Wake up and smell the coffee!!!!!

• Pros: Desserts, Drinks, Ambience
• Cons: Service, Management

03/31/08

Horrible Service and RUDE Management!

by cseluv at Citysearch

Intermezzo has good dessert (albeit WAY overpriced), but the service is so terrible and the management is so rude that I will not bother with this place again. I generally don't complain about slow or inattentive wait staff, so I wouldn't base a bad review on one bad experience. The problem with Intermezzo on Peachtree is that I have had slow and inattentive wait staff every single time I've been there (4-5 times). The last straw was when the waitress neglected to bring my date his food order, and then never checked-up on our table, so we ended up just sharing my food. I had experienced poor service at Intermezzo so many times, that this time I wanted to alert the manager. As we were leaving, we told the manager about our experience. He asked us to wait while he went to speak to our waitress. I thought that was unprofessional, and he should've addressed the waitress outside of our presence. Then, when he came back, he asked whether we wanted to purchase the food that the waitress never brought us. I told him no, we only wanted to bring the situation to management's attention. He arrogantly said "so what do you want me to do about it?" We were so offended by his remark, we just left. Because of the consistently poor service, and the insulting and rude way the manager spoke to my date and I, I will never patronize Intermezzo again. There are plenty of other dessert cafes in the area where I can spend my money...and considerably less of it.

03/17/08

Le Pue...

by dickcipher at Citysearch

Horrible customer service, inefficient and poorly managed. It is a shame that something as essential and fundamental as service, it is still so overtly sub par. To the person in charge of creating such an apathetic environment I must say, Sir you are a failure at management, walk away........

• Pros: Great Food
• Cons: Pathetic Service

02/24/08

worst service ever

by sirnose420 at Citysearch

I would not recommend visiting intermezzo. what once used to be a bustling italian style cafe is now the most poorly managed establishment in the history of restaurants. My glass of crown royal xr, a $25 drink came with 80% water, and the other 20% was not crown xr. watered down drinks. not cool. we waited an hour for cake that never came to the table. HORRIBLE SERVICE.

• Pros: none
• Cons: manager

01/14/08

Awful

by beetlebum at Citysearch

What happened to this place? The food was never great but it used to be ok. My fiance and I went there last night for coffee and a piece of cake, but we decided at the last minute to get something to eat. I ordered mushroom ravioli thinking that it shouldn't be too complex for the kitchen to handle. My fiance ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. My ravioli was just horrible. All you could taste was onions, garlic salt and pepper with no trace of mushrooms at all. The sauce was gluey like it had been reheated in the microwave several times. It was completely inedible. It was almost as if whoever cooked it knew zero about cooking and certainly did not taste it before sending it out of the kitchen. My fiance's grilled cheese sandwich was ok, but honestly, it looked like something served up at Waffle House - Not that there's anything wrong with that, however at Waffle House I would expect to pay $3 for a grilled cheese, not $8 for the same thing with no accompanying side dish. Unless a pickle is considered a side item.

The tea I ordered had no flavor whatsover which I did send back to the server. Had I known that the ravioli was going to be as awful I would have kept the flavorless tea and sent back the food. I didn't have the heart to send back 2 things especially after the waitress told me that many things had been sent back to the kitchen that night, so one more thing didn't make any difference.

Come on Cafe Intermezzo folks! You're sitting on a goldmine - why would you serve such awful food! Also, train your staff. It always takes sooo long for stuff to come out to you. I used to love coming here as a single gal, but I've realized that I seem to now make a yearly visit to this place which always makes me remember why I only go there once a year.The service and food is awful, and even though the desserts are fabulous, its just too much of a pain to deal with the service and the growing potential of the place having gone even more downhill since your last visit.

• Pros: Desserts, ambience
• Cons: Service and Food on the menu is dreadful

12/12/07

Decent Coffee, Great Desserts, Too Expensive, Very Poor Customer Service

by aknjmmg at Citysearch

On Saturday I took my wife to Cafe Intermezzo after dinner. When we entered the restaurant, five employees were standing around the reception counter, talking amongst themselves for the first 30 seconds while we stood before saying "hello", "welcome", or any of the other common phrases that don't give customers the feeling they're more of a nuisance rather than the reason any service provider is in business.

When we were finally given a seat, the waiter was quick enough to get us a menu and take our order for two coffees and a dessert, and it took about 15 minutes before we had our coffee and dessert. However, he didn't come back and check on us for about 30 minutes. While one of the main goals of going to a coffee shop is long conversation, checking up on customers (e.g. how is everything, what else can I get you, do you need a refill on your coffee?) is still just as important. Why couldn't one of the five folks in the front help if our waiter was too busy, and is everything as expensive as it is to fund staff that just stand around and ignore customers?

I can go elsewhere to get good coffee AND good service, for a better price - my wife deserves better. The atmosphere is nice, but I cannot recommend this place.

• Pros: Nice place, good dessert
• Cons: Poor service, too expensive

07/22/07

Pest Problems...stay away from here

by robertjohns at Citysearch

Rodents and insects!!! my wife and I went to cafe intermezzo on peachtree last week when we noticed a large insect crawling up the wall near our table as if this did not disgust us enough I found rodent excretement in the corner of the mens room floor.even though the service has always been terrible and we"ve received cold coffee a few times we loved the pastries so we continued to patronize the place for a while but after this never again will we set foot near the place.better off getting cheesecake from the kroger deli than chance eatting food in a place with pest problems.

• Pros: none
• Cons: terrible service at best