The Nook is a justifiably famous bakery/restaurant in northern and western WI. I’ve been anticipating the opening with excitement for nearly a year. Until now the closest outlet was a 2-1/2 drive away. I’ve actually made that drive more than once to get their famous pies. Now I’m less than a half hour drive away from the new storefront.
There’s one piece of good news – their pie remains wonderful – yum yum!
The bad news …
First, as wonderful as their pies are, buying them is is really … annoying I suppose is the best word. If you buy a whole pie, you pay a $7/per pie deposit for the metal pie plate it’s baked in. If you’re driving half way across the state on a special trip for their pie, it’s for practical purposes a surcharge for their already pricey product – hard to have a reasonable expectation of getting your deposit bock.
2nd, the food quality was poor, at least for the breakfast I had. The pancakes were … grainy? … chunky? I believe the batter was not thoroughly mixed and didn’t cook evenly, leaving little nodules of uncooked batter all through the cake.
And the service was abysmal. They somehow managed to lose most of my order. For some reason the waitress delivered my side order of bacon first, and told me the pancakes would be along in a minute. But they weren’t – they didn’t show up at all until my sister was nearly done with her meal and I got up and went looking for mine, because our waitress was nowhere to be seen. I flagged down someone else and reported it, and a manager ended up coming by the table to ask what it was I ordered. This despite the fact that my sister’s whole meal, including her pancakes, was delivered in whole at the start. Oh, and my sister the coffee drinker mentioned that no one came by during the whole meal to check whether she needed a refill. It seemed to be a rather slow day – there were numerous staff standing around seemingly idle (except for our missing waitress), so they surely were not swamped at the time.
Finally, the building itself is badly designed, and they built it new – they didn’t get stuck with a previous owners bad design. There’s a very large counter to display their baked goods, and it forms part of a narrow corridor leading from their entrance to their dining area. And people are lined up at the counter browsing for and buying pies. You can’t get past them to go sit at a table, and you can’t get past them to leave once you’ve finished the meal. There’s no other route, and it took me several minutes just to get back to their door.
Ok, it’s new, but it’s been opened more than a month so it’s not like these were opening day breaking-in problems. Such a disappointment!
… do you mean across the river in Wisconsin? (Hudson’s nice and arty…) Or across the smaller Mississippi as it winds through the city? (West St. Paul or Coon Rapids, MN?)