Bayleaf Cafe in Salt Lake
April 24th 2010 Posted by derek in From The Road
7 Comments 
The Bayleaf Cafe came highly recommended by multiple sources. Did it live up to the hype? Read More to find out!
A quick note: The owner of Bayleaf Cafe, Seth Radford, has commented on this review below. Please read his comment as it provides some further insight into the restaurant and our experience.
Bayleaf Cafe claims to provide “Comfortable Food”… and nothing could be further from the truth. The food is an odd mix of southern cooking and asian flavors. This is evident in the appetizer we received of fried pickles and spring rolls. The fried pickles were passable… while the spring rolls were good. This started things off well, but it just went downhill from there.
Next up was chicken and rice soup for Amanda and a mixed greens salad for me. The soup had good flavor… but with mashed / chopped up rice and mushy vegetables it had no texture. The salad was fresh but lacking. The vinaigrette was tangy with orange infused flavors which was good, but again there was a lack of texture with no “crunch” to the salad. Some croutons or pecans or something along those lines would have been welcome.
My entree was chicken-fried-chicken with sides of mashed potatoes and collard greens. The chicken was cooked well, although the breading could have been crunchier. The mashed potatoes were fine as were the collard greens. The “country gravy” was too salty and just not that great. All-in-all nothing great but nothing terrible.
Amanda, however, had a bad plate of meatloaf. The meatloaf came highly recommended by several sources and Amanda quite likes meatloaf so it seemed like a good fit. When the plate came out… it was obvious something was wrong. The “meatloaf” was two thin strips of smashed hamburger that had been burnt on the griddle. A guy (who I assume is the owner) walked by and saw it and said that it wasn’t right… that it looked like they gave her the lunch portion which is used to make meatloaf sandwiches. He then said he’d go get a real cut of meatloaf.
He came back a little bit later and put down a plate with another thin cut of meatloaf on it that had blackened edges where it had clearly been burnt again. Amanda ate a bit of it even though it looked bad… and it didn’t taste better than it looked. Further, even if it would have been a proper helping it _wasn’t_ meatloaf. It was smashed up hamburger that had been wrapped in BACON. It tasted nothing like meatloaf which generally has some flavorings inside of it and on the outside it has a layer of a tomato based sauce. To top it off the same “not that great” gravy was piled on top… which is very un-meatloaf like.
After nibbling at it for a bit… she pretty much left it alone.
Dessert for Amanda was a brown betty that tasted mostly like butter and just wasn’t very good.
My dessert was banana pudding and while the pudding itself was quite good and rich the breading (which might have been made out of vanilla wafers) was grainy and not quite cooked.
(NOTE: I’ve been corrected! Nanner pudding is not supposed to be cooked! This was an error on my part in remembering the browning of a meringue topping on banana pudding. I apologize… and I learned something new!)
The decor is dreadful. Holes in the wall abound. A cheap stereo system provides the music. The “owner” (yes the same guy that replaced the meatloaf) was also busy with a hammer and drill in the back of the restaurant… doing god knows what right during dinner rush! We weren’t the only ones in the restaurant put off by the loud banging and drilling.
Our waitress was quite good. She was cheerful and helpful with the menu. I think she sensed that the meal wasn’t going well… but there wasn’t much she could do about it. We didn’t voice any of our concerns because it was pretty clear that we weren’t going to get great food this night… no matter if we sent stuff back or not.
A final note: there appears to be two kitchens in Bayleaf Cafe. One open-air one in the front where the “chef” is and then another in the rear of the restaurant. All during dinner cooks would shuffle large pots and pans of food forward and aft from one kitchen to another… right through the middle of the restaurant! Very strange indeed!
Our experience on this night really wasn’t the best. It’s obvious that our tastes really just didn’t line up with what the chef was offering. Further, there were definitely some issues in the restaurant on this particular evening. As I mentioned in the opening, Bayleaf is very highly recommended from multiple sources… it’s too bad that our experience had to run contrary to those recommendations.
Vitals:
Name: Bayleaf Cafe
Address: 159 South Main Street, Salt Lake City
Phone: (801) 359-8490
Website: http://www.bayleaf-cafe.com
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Dear Derek and Amanda,
To start, I would like to say thank you for being interested enough to review our restaurant. While we do read every post we can find and use those comments to improve, mostly I can leave them at that. We take our praises and our lumps equally and learn from both. Your posting has really effected me and I can’t shake it. So much so that I haven’t shared it with my partner.
I would like to share a few things for you to consider, both about your visit here and perhaps future reviews.
We ARE an odd mix of southern and Asian. I am from Alabama and my girlfriend/partner is Filipino and Chinese. We are known for that “odd mix”. We are known for being a hard-working Southern/Asian couple.
In regard to your food…..Obviously we had an off night. Salt Lake magazine doens’t hand out awards for best comfort food on a whim.
The meatloaf is our #1 seller. And we sell alot of it. No, it is not the ketchup drenched common version. We have never had the intention to serve common food. It is my great-great grandmother’s recipe that is near to my family and now to alot of diners in Salt Lake. (Ask Ted Scheffler)
Nanner pudding is not cooked. It is a classic southern recipe. So you were right in the assumption that the wafers were not cooked through. They are not supposed to be. Its supposed to be grainy. Make it yourself. The recipe is on the box. We are not fancy, just honest.
If Amanda has a sensitivity to salt, say that right after you say the gravy was salty.
I am painfully aware of your evening. I am sorry to have contributed to that. Usually, restaurants are visited more than once, as some of or all of these contributing factors will have disappeared by the next morning. I would encourage you to do the same in your future reviews. Harshly writing about a singular experience is not fair and a bit closed-minded.
We do have chips in our walls. We just changed the artwork two days ago and I haven’t had time to spackle them. Sorry about that. It is somewhere on my list. Somewhere. The music system is not expensive, we can’t afford it. Maybe next month. But, it does play music.
Our prep kitchen is in the back. Our open kitchen is in the front. We have very limited space. Thats the set-up and we make it work as best as we can. We do our best every day. We are not rich. Haylen still works full-time. We do as much as we can in one day with the time resources we have. Alot of people love us and we do alot of good for the late-night scene in Salt Lake as well. (Best late-night Utah -City Weekly.)
People read your blog. I understand you have a responsibility to them. However, I also feel that if you are to write about food, a greater understanding of the process of getting it to your table is your responsibility.
This restaurant is as Mom & Pop as it gets. Most small cafes are. Haylen & I are the cooks, plumbers, electricians, buspersons, waiters, P.R., HR, accountants, and full-time baby-sitters in this living, breathing infant of a restaurant. We cannot choose when pipes break or when the dishwasher goes down and needs an emergency bracket invented, HAMMERED, and DRILLED, just to keep the evening going. They must be addressed or the restaurant goes down hard. I would imagine neither of you have worked in the industry before or you would have considered all the gears it takes to run.
You were uninformed and incorrect about our concept, nanner pudding, and the 1000 different things that small owners have to do 20 hours a day (24 on the weekends) just to eek out enough to pay MOST of the bills in this economy. While some were fair, and believe me we will take them to heart, the comments you write effect people’s lives and the hard work that goes into them. Be understanding of what it takes, guys.
We would invite you back for another shot.
I invite you, as a responsible journalist to post this owner’s response on your site. We apologize for your bad experience, but you only told half the story. Post this and finish it.
Seth and Haylen
801-859-5589
Seth,
Thank you very much for taking the time to post this on our blog.
I completely understand your point of view and I know it must be hard to read a (very) negative review. That said, I do stand by everything else that was written.
When we set out to do a food blog we said to each other that we were going to be honest… maybe even brutally honest. We really just want to portray exactly what our experience was like… the good and the bad.
Amanda and I are critical people. Anyone who knows us will tell you the same! We’ve traveled and eaten as a hobby for a while now and would always spend the evening (and even the next day) talking about the food and the restaurant to each other. We would go into every detail about everything we ate and experienced… the good and the bad. These reviews on our blog are just the physical embodiment of what we have been doing all along.
The experience we had is the experience we had. BUT! Our experience is just one of many. As you point out yourself you have tons of positive reviews both all over the web and in magazines. Indeed, it was at the suggestion of Salt Lake Magazine that we decided to go to Bayleaf Cafe in the first place. I expect that anyone that is reading reviews on the internet will read more than one. I even linked to a review by Gastronomic Salt Lake City under “Other’s Opinions” that is fairly positive.
That is our idea. Relate our experience and give our readers ALL the information we have so that as they are reading through reviews they can make up their own minds.
As for coming back… I don’t think we will. It’s obvious that our tastes and yours just don’t line up! My wife was raised on southern soul food in Louisiana and has a fairly particular idea about what southern food should be like (especially in regards to meatloaf apparently!). I understand that many people like your food and have good experiences dining in your restaurant… just not us.
Please don’t take it too hard, we are just one pair of diners out of many. I am sure that your hard work will pay off and you will continue to see positive reviews and people at your tables. It is obvious that you care very much about both your restaurant and your food… and that will come through, even with a negative review floating around.
Thank you again for your time. I wish you the very best!
Derek
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Bayleaf Cafe has the worst servers in the valley. I think the food is great, even though the sides often arrive at a less than warm temperature.
The last time I went was before the menu change, when the prices were better. Buffalo chicken wings w/ bleu cheese dressing were offered as an appetizer. When I asked the server if I could have a side of blue cheese dressing with my salad, he looked me straight in the eye and said “No, you can’t”.
I have never been so offended at a restaurant. You may want to consider hiring new staff, because word of your horrible service is getting around town.
I’ve got to say, I have to agree with Seth & Haylen. A single visit, and pretty shallow criticism does not make a good review. If I’m not a fan of a certain type of cuisine, I’m not going to tell people how horrible the food is simply because it isn’t my personal taste. I worked over a decade in the confections industry, and I’m not a fan of candy. Does that mean every product I was a part of developing, marketing, and selling was crap? No, it just meant it wasn’t exactly for me. But other people absolutely loved the products.
I’m not trying to attack you, I’m saying that as someone who reads a lot about food, your review came across as a catty “it’s not how I’d make it” holier than thou criticism. More constructive, less “not my style” would be good.
I’d like to add to our reply that we do listen to criticism and read our reviews. And we try really really hard to correct our errors.
@Cheryl – I apologize for your experience with that server and we do try to keep on top of the service. We’ve made many changes since opening (and still continually make changes), only trying to improve and a lot of it is based on feedback like yours. I assure you that “no, you can’t” isn’t something we are ok with. When we hear something like that, we do all we can to remedy the situation. I don’t know who your server was, but he probably is no longer with us. We try to hire the best people, but sometimes, don’t realize our mistake until a customer has had a bad experience, unfortunately. We truly appreciate all our customers and our reply was simply to tell our side. That it wasn’t our intention to give anyone a bad experience by hammering during a busy dinner. It was a necessary fix. Things like that.
We welcome comments, good ones, and constructive criticism. Again, we take everything to heart. That’s why we have a feedback form on our site, and we try to talk to all the customers. We love our restaurant – we’ve put all we have into it -everything. Its not getting us rich – its our passion.
Thanks for listening, everyone.
@Haylen – I have to say, you really have made improvements in your service. I went for breakfast a few weeks ago. The food was delicious, and our waitress was incredibly sweet and helpful. It helped mend the bad feeling I had toward the Bay Leaf. I wish you continued success in the future!!!