Vanessa Wiley
English VO1A
Evaluating Essay The Natural Café

Now-a-days everyone is looking for a way to eat healthier meals. More and more you’ll see vegetarian and vegan restaurants becoming the “it” place to eat. While we all want to eat healthier, a lot of us don’t have the time to cook meals ourselves every night and are forced to eat out. The Natural Café is a fantastic restaurant to go to for a healthy, reasonably priced meal, but lacks in traditional restaurant customer service.
The Natural Café is a small chain of restaurants based throughout Ventura County that serves health hearty meals with organic ingredients. It is open every day for lunch and dinner and they have pick up and to-go orders as well. The restaurant is very earth friendly and recycles all of their glass, cans, and paper. As you walk in the door of the restaurant they have really set the tone for a serene and calm setting. There are very high ceilings and splashes of earth tone colors, like green and deep yellows and oranges and brown, cover the walls. There are plenty of spacious dining tables to choose from once you order. The booths are wooden and not too comfortable to sit in but it gives to that nature feel in the dining area. Like most cafés there is seating outside as well. The outside seating area has patio heaters with tables and chairs with padding. For the vegetarian or vegan, they have a variety of different veggie options and for the meat lovers they offer entrees from a great chicken enchilada to an even better turkey burger. They also offer natural sodas, made-to order fresh fruit and vegetable smoothies, and also beer and wine. Everything is prepared fresh daily.
When you pay to eat at a restaurant, you should be waited on from the time you step foot in the door. There should be a hostess there to greet the customer, show them to their table and handed a menu. At The Natural Café, you are in charge of seating yourself after ordering your meal at the counter. That can be good for the customer that likes the freedom to sit where they please. There is no one waiting at the door to greet you; instead, you will be greeted by an employee standing in the opposite direction behind a cash register that will let you know where you can grab a menu and when you are ready, she will take your order at the counter. This is informal for the customer that would like to relax and take their time to sit down and think about what sounds good on the menu without being rushed. The menus are usually hanging in a slot on the right side just before you walk down toward the cashier. The cashier is very friendly and if you have questions about something on the menu the employee is more than happy to answer it. They are very aware of what ingredients are used and how it tastes. After giving your order at the counter, you’re given a number to be set at your table. This is so that the person bringing out your food will know what order is yours. To some people, that could be impersonal and considered rude to the paying customer. Also, if there were a waiter that took the order at the table the waiter sat them at, the food would come out faster and hotter because that waiter would know whose table to bring it to and not have to look all over the restaurant for your number on the table. The food should look appetizing and taste delicious. Not everyone wants to eat healthier unless it looks and tastes tempting. The Natural Café does a great job at making their entrees look presentable and the smell of the juicy Gobbler Burger-which is a popular item on the menu- lets you know it’s going to taste amazing. This meal is served on an oval shaped glass plate that comes in a variety of different earthly colors to go with the “nature” theme. The burger is made of ground turkey that is char-broiled and topped with grilled red onions, lettuce, tomato, and sprouts and served on a whole wheat bun with 1000 island dressing and you can add cheese if you’d like. On