St. Clouds

I wanted to like this restaurant. Sadly, I was severely disappointed and will not be back. The Saltimbocca was horribly watery, lacked flavor, and the chicken was undercooked. The pasta was overcooked and tasted old and reheated. Moreover, the dish was packed with shallots — overwhelmingly so (and shallots are not mentioned as an ingredient on the menu) — that it is the only flavor I could taste. I actually sent it back (which is not something I take lightly and rarely do), only to have it replaced with the Autumn Vegetable pasta dish which was equally watery and overcooked. My dinner date had the king salmon special of the day. It was also disappointing — tough in some places; raw in others. The bread was burnt-​tasting, which makes me question whether the grill was properly cleaned. This restaurant does not seem to be able to pull off even the simplest of dishes.

There’s nothing I can say but wow and superb. I’m a huge breakfast fan, and when my very good friend came to visit me this weekend, we had to go to brunch this morning. After running a couple morning errands, we decided upon St. Cloud after Unilocaling for a brunch spot. Great ratings and awesome photos led us here. We arrived right at the brunch rush aka noon on a Saturday. We really didn’t have to wait long at all, maybe 7 minutes at the most. Our server was amazing, I can’t remember his name, a taller gentleman with glasses. You could tell he knew the place well, addressed the regulars in the waiting area by name. Gave us a little blurb about specials and we each ordered drinks. Me a bloody Mary and my friend an orange juice mimosa. Both great, I prefer my bloody marys spicier but its my fault to not specify. I ended up ordering the country fried steak, over easy eggs with grandmas coffee cake. My friend ordered the special huevous rancheros (excuse my terrible spelling), which sounded amazing. I was only halfway through my Mary when our food came. Can I say wow on just plating alone? Perhaps the plate is even a little small for the sheer amount of food on the plate. An amazing mound of crispy hashbrowns, perfect over easy eggs, a corner hunk of coffee cake, fresh slices of grapefruit, ‘pineapple and cantaloupe, and the craziest country fried steak. It was a steak like id eat for dinner, coated in a crispy crunchy crust, all topped with this awesome bacon gravy. I saved my coffee cake, for a good midnight snack, but ate the lovely plate in front of me. Just a little siracha and ketchup make it the perfect meal. And I was stuffed!

The service was friendly, but our dinner was not special. BBQ pork ribs were tough and fatty, and tasted 3 or 4 days old. Collard greens and mashed potatoes were good, but it’s hard to get those wrong.
I have no patience for restaurants that don’t put their best food forward with every single entrée. If you don’t think it’s amazing, take it off the menu.

4 stars for food, but 5 stars for service. We came here for brunch on a Sunday with my hubby. We were seated promptly and our server (actually everybody in the restaurant) were just interactive and attentive. I had mimosas and the eggs benny, my hubby ordered the chicken fried steak. I mean the food was great… Not that it changed my life. But will come back due to superb service.

Pretty disappointing dinner. Our waitress seemed inexperienced and in spite of us repeating our preference for salad dressing twice she got it wrong. She also described a salad on the menu as kale and chard and it turned out to be lettuce. Then my appatizer was wrong and when we got the bill we got overcharged. To top it off my pint of local beer was $ 6 and my salad (mixed greens) and appatizer (calamari) were totally average. This meal was very disappointing for $ 85. Not sure if we just had bad luck but I’m not going back. We heard this place was delicious, it wasn’t and we didn’t get what we ordered and the staff didn’t know the menu.

If you can’t manage your brunch wait list you need a new host. Don’t bother coming here with anything more than a 2 top for Sunday brunch.

Good food, decent portions, mostly good service, average prices. I’ve been here multiple times for weekend breakfasts and suggest you give it a try.

Seattle to its’ coffee cake core. A wonderful, cozy and delicious restaurant. The food is casual, delicious and without pretense. The brunch is especially great in my experience.
Special recognition to the service. Easy going, effortlessly friendly, and yet supremely attentive.
It feels like coming over to the house of a beloved jovial uncle, who happens to be a lights out cook. Have the frittata, if they’re making it.

Brunch on the weekend at St. Clouds is not necessarily recommended.
Yet, I’ve had good, very good, dinner experiences here before, including absolutely fabulous fried green tomatoes on our last visit. So I’d still come here for dinner, you bet.
But brunch yesterday was an unmitigated disaster. Something was off here with the staff. Right of the bat, we noticed workers scurrying about with blinders on, ignoring us when we entered. Finally, we were acknowledged and seated. But then ten minutes passed and we had not yet received menus, nor water. JP got up and asked one of the staffers to bring us menus, which they did a few minutes later. Eventually our orders were taken, and then, nothing else happened. We waited for nearly an hour, nursing our coffees.
We noticed one other couple that was seated ten minutes after us. Only a few minutes later they had received their meals, which were the basic «Seattle Breakfasts», like we had ordered. When this couple had left after finishing their meal, and we still had not received our food, we asked the woman who was sort of serving us when we would get our meals. She indignantly replied that they had the «back» open and that was why it was talking so long. She also said in less than four minutes we would get our food.
Well, another fifteen minutes rolled by, and still no food. We were starving and realized if we were going to eat, we would have to go elsewhere. On our way out, we asked that one lady why the one couple had been served (the same items we ordered) so much sooner than us, after having arrived ten minutes after us. She fibbed and said that they had ordered before us.
If St. Clouds can’t handle the volume, then they need to either staff up or not seat so many patrons.
But no worries, after we left here we went to the Madison Park restaurant Bing’s, where we were promptly seated and served a most excellent brunch.

I don’t know if it’s because we came here in a large group, but this place definitely fell short of our expectations. We came here for brunch and several of us ordered dishes that had poached eggs and when the dishes came out all of the eggs were waaaay over done. I asked the waiter if we could have them remade and he said, «oh, so you wanted them soft poached?» Ummmm is that a thing? To my knowledge a poached egg implies a runny yolk. Anyways, They did bring out new poached eggs but they were brought out in little cups and were swimming in the vinegar water they were poached in… It was pretty unappetizing. Also, all our food came out at different times. In summary we won’t be returning.

St Clouds has been a regular haunt for us for years. We went regularly and then moved away for work and returning five years later, it is still a consistent and reliably excellent restaurant. The staff are mostly old timers like Mike, and they give a comfortable and consistently good service. The food is excellent and just enough creativity to keep things interesting. We especially love the fisherman’s stew (cioppino/​bouillabaisse).
Really, the food and service are probably four star level, but they do it so comfortably and so reliably and they make me happy, so five stars.

Survived a morning meeting with one eye open. Monkey swears got all the info! Can we eat now?
Monkey do:
BREAKFAST BURRITO– roasted chiles, black beans, salsa fresco, eggs, cheddar & cotija cheeses, flour tortilla, topped w/​chipotle sour cream — OMG this was perfect! Monkey split since it’s the size of her forearm
GRANDMA HAZEL’s SOUR CREAM COFFEE CAKE– cake for breakfast excuse works here. Never had such a perfect coffee cake. Moistness. Absolute opposite of the dry, crumbly excuse found at all coffee shops wrapped in cellophane. Get it from Grandma!
Lovely neighborhood business, friendly fantastic service, street parking. Nice area to stroll, so fret not if you park far. Enjoy indoors or out in the patio!
Monkey shall return for the TOFU SCRAMBLE, EGGS BENEDICT or give in to their PANCAKES.

Sadly, I’ve had to remove 3 stars from my review almost 4 years ago as the service and food has diminished quite a bit. While I want to love this restaurant (and I did as you can see in my former review) since it is a local spot, the menu seems a bit dated and the food not nearly worth the price. I would seriously suggest the owner grab a burger two blocks away at Red Cow and compare that to what is being served at their own restaurant. It’s a world apart. And in terms of service, we were there on a Tuesday night — it was hardly busy (the center of the main dining room was empty) — and we still had to wait an extremely long time between drinks and food. I might give this place another shot in a year or two but have to say, am extremely disappointed.

Service on weekends can be unbelievably slow. We waited 45 min to get a table after being told it’d be just a second. Once we got a table, we looked around at a dining room of angry patrons who were getting increasingly frustrated at the 30+ minute waits to get simple diner fare.
When the food DID arrive, it missed a whole bunch of VERY basic marks that I expect a restaurant to hit when I pay $ 40 for a no-​drinks brunch (or not!):
Undercooked or rushed potatoes.
Undercooked/​crunchy beans.
Stale Tortillas served raw.
«Salsa» made of uncooked tomatoes and onions.
Poorly balanced, unappealing dishes.
Empty coffee creamer that was never refilled.
Empty coffee and water that was refilled once during the hour and a half we spent there.
NOBODY GETS A FREE PASS ON MESSING UP A BREAKFAST BURRITO!
So they have a poorly run front of the house (no host, no place to wait, bad estimates of wait time), a poorly run back of the house (swamped kitchen takes 40 min to get hash browns on the table!), and low quality food.
The first time I visited (which took over 2 hours!) I chose not to write this review, because they’re a neighborhood restaurant, and maybe they were having a bad day. But as it turns out, this is the norm for them. I expect more professionalism from a restaurants — and this place is amateurish. I can count the number of times I have watched people complain to servers in Seattle on one hand, and most of them have been at St. Cloud’s.
They are successful because the other restaurants in Madrona (Café Soleil, that Thai place, and Hi-​Spot) do stereotypical restaurant self-​sabotaging behaviors like inconsistent hours, or have even worse food. All St. Cloud’s has to do is keep the doors open when they said they would, and the rest is easy.

Came here for brunch based on a recommendation because they do a solid eggs benny. And because they have hash browns. HASH BROWNS. Not that I don’t like home potatoes/​breakfast potatoes, but there’s something magical about the shredded potato with all its crispy goodness. So A and I came for the Benny’s and it didn’t disappoint. It came on a piece of Columbia City bread with two perfectly poached eggs, cubed Tasso ham, hollandaise, spinach, and pico de gallo. The only thing that made this benny not amazing was the bread. It’s a nice idea to put it on toast, however, trying to cut through the crusty edge of the slice made it a bit difficult.
They’re pretty busy for brunch, so we did have to wait a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. The waitstaff was lovely and we also had the coffee cake which was decent and a nice way to end a brunch.

I’m so sad about this brunch… my friend and I came here for brunch on a whim. I had passed by before and thought it was cute, which it was.
There were a number of interesting sounding dishes on the menu. I asked the waiter if he recommended the breakfast burrito or the Imperial Mix Up, advertised as rice, scallions, ginger, egg and tempeh (or Portuguese sausage) all mixed up. I imagined the latter was a rice bowl of sorts and the waiter said it was one of his favorite dishes and really sold me on it.
You guys… It’s a bland, basic fried rice with tempeh that tastes like cardboard covered in scrambled egg. I can’t believe I spent almost $ 20 for this fried rice and coffee. –_–

Ate here a couple of years ago with some friends and recalled the food being quite good. In fact, I «stole» their Imperial Mix-​Up and it’s now one of my favorite things to make for breakfast.
Just had breakfast here again today and ordered the Imperial Mix-​Up … I have to say that I was disappointed and that my version is leaps better than theirs. My dish today had only 3 or 4 small scallion slices and overcooked scrambled eggs throughout. I took most if home where I will fix it for tomorrow’s breakfast with diced carrots, garlic, more ginger, sliced red onions, fresh jalapeño, lots more scallions, and cilantro — and, I’ll top it with fried shallots (sprinkled with a little fine sugar and salt) … much more flavorful!
My side of hash browns (ordered crispy) came as ordered but needed seasoning.
My husband ordered the Seattle scramble today and found the coffee cake to the best thing on the plate. His eggs were hard scrambled (and thus, dry), his hash browns were flavorless and undercooked. His bacon was cooked crispy and was the second-​best thing on his plate.
The host was extremely nice and friendly. Our server was professional but not real friendly.
The first time we ate here we had an incredibly long wait for our food to be delivered — so long that they gave us pastries to gnaw on. Today, it wasn’t packed, but it still took a little longer than I had expected for our food to arrive — not terrible — just about the time I thought «where’s my food», it actually arrived.

Cute neighborhood brunch spot. Service was excellent. I can’t remember the last time I spent 2 hours at brunch without feeling rushed or thinking i was being ignored. With that said, if you’re looking for fast food this may not be the best place or you may let your server know in advance. Our coffee cups didn’t go empty and the food took about 45 minutes but I was catching up with a friend so we didn’t mind the wait. Food was solid, but I wasn’t blown away as I was expecting. The Chicken fried steak was good. I got the biscuit, but looking around I think i should’ve gone with the sourdough bread. The poached egg came out boiled through and not runny at all, which was disappointing.
Overall, pleasant experience. Would come back for brunch and recommend.

I coordinated a brunch for approximately 25 people at St. Clouds and was thoroughly impressed with the entire experience. Nestled in the quaint neighborhood of Madrona, everything seems so quite and peaceful as you walk up to St. Clouds. I had a feeling I was going to like this place.
First, service was so attentive; our waters/​mimosas/​juices were always refilled before we ever saw the bottom of the glass. The food took a while to come out, but again, we had a party of 25 people so that’s to be expected.
I ordered the Denver Omelet and unlike every other restaurant that serves it, St. Clouds has the biggest chunks of ham I’ve ever seen in a Denver. They don’t skip out on the meat, and you’ll get exactly what you’re paying for. I was impressed.
John, the owner, is a nice guy who will probably be working when you’re there. Say hi to him!
Everyone’s food looked delicious, I can’t wait to come back and try more of their offerings. Next time I’ll definitely be trying the cream cheese and strawberry jam stuffed french toast. Does that sound amazing?

Coffee cake over brunch is my favorite kind of brunch. It’s been decided, thanks to St. Clouds.
But what I really got was nothing I thought I came for. No bacon, no sunny side up eggs or chicken fried steak … instead, I went with a breakfast burrito that was full of chiles, black beans, eggs, cheese and salsa on the side. Only thing that could have made this burrito better was avocado! I ate my half, and shared the other… it was too much to eat in one sitting!
My brunch dates were also happy with their meals — a sort-​of-​quiche (though slightly overcooked) and the huevos rancheros (said to be fantastic!)
Reasonably priced also — everything at or around 10 bucks. St. Clouds serves tasty, quality food — arguably a little too slowly! But for me, on this particular day, it was a relaxing stop for some late morning food.