Café Carmel

Enjoy the top of the morning in Carmel before stores open at this lovely coffee shop. We had Macha tea, soup of the day and a pastery. Eat inside or out. You can't go wrong.

You know, when I rate places, I take it extremely seriously. I consider everything, the service, price, the people working, spacing of seats, decor, parking, atmosphere, accessibility, options; the whole shebang. But in the end it comes down to one only: how was my experience? Obviously, my experience is extrememly localized, which is I try and visit a place several times before making a decision. But every so often, there is an experience so universally hated by all the customers, only one visited is needed to know the truth.

The coffee, food, and pricing are nothing of particular misfortune, I can say without a doubt this is lowest experience one can dread when going out in public. Dealing with the obnoxious behavior of the public is already a hard pill to swallow, so the idea of spending my hard earn money, just to be further disappointed and bombarded by the obstacles I try and avoid most in life is beyond me.

The quick of it, it's ten women sitting behind a cramped counter all wearing a single airpod in their ears, screaming out coffee orders, giving horrible service, in crammed hallway of a coffee shop, blasting horrible music over it all. They don't want to be their as much as the customers regret going there. I don't know what causes them to have such disregard for human decency and professionalism, and ultimately subject themselves to a meaningless job serving coffee that they clearly take no joy in, but it beyond all else makes me sad to see.

I hope they one day they can escape this life and existences they clearly loathe, just as I wish to escape this coffee shop now.

⭐
May the curse of my one star bring an end to this awful plague of an establishment.
~Pumba

This bakery looks great and the stars represent the excellence in presentation and cleanliness. In truth, we didn't eat any of the menu food - just several bakery items from the case. Each item we ate - rugalach, apple turnover, peanut butter brownie, and chocolate chip cookie - were consistently sub-par. They were primarily dry and lacking in flavor. We wanted to love this place because the first impression was so strong. Unfortunately, it just didn't deliver on the actual product.

Delight to the eyes and taste that doesn't disappoint. It's specially inviting with Halloween theme!

Try it. Don't hesitate.

Went here for a quick pick-me-up. Coffee is decent. I gave only three stars because for some reason it's always very hot inside. Carmel can be cold but this was during the day, when it was 70 F outside and more like 85 F inside. As a result, I usually cannot stand to be there any longer than I have to.

The food and coffee/drinks is aggressively mediocre. We were hungry and now we are not and that’s about all the positive things I have to say. Customer service was fine/nice :).

Service was ok, almond crescent was fair, but both of the short cappuccinos were cold. The coffee was not hot. My dish water is hotter. We have been there before. Not sure if the staff understand that the hotter the water the better the coffee. I only hope when we go again that this issue has been addressed. We are not tourist, we are locales and live on the central coast.

Only had coffee and almond Croissant, very good. There were several choices to choose from, and they all looked good!

Stopped by 9/5 around 11AM. I wasn't happy with the drink that I ordered. The woman charged me $3.25 to add some coffee to the drink instead of replacing it. When my husband expressed his disbelief, she was indifferent. Horrible experience, not what I would expect from a trip to Carmel. Would not recommend this coffee shop.