Breakfast at Ironworks cafe shines through bad reviews

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Goodman Community Center – home to Ironworks Cafe

After stumbling upon the Ironworks Cafe in the Goodman Community Center a couple months ago I was intrigued by their breakfast offerings and decided I would have to return to try it out myself. I couple weeks after that a Groupon for Ironworks Cafe went up and it made my decision to return to the center even easier. Before I ventured over there on a Saturday morning I looked the cafe up on Yelp and it had mixed reviews. The service was bad and the food was lacking (since my visit there have been several positive reviews posted!) so I was prepared for anything.

We got there a couple minutes after they opened but were greeted right away. The person behind the counter was really nice, took our order and gave us a number. The only bad part about the service was that the coffee wasn’t brewed when we got there and we had to wait but not very long and the quality of the coffee was definitely worth the extra 10 minutes to let it finish brewing!

Tomato, bacon, cheese scramble from Ironworks Cafe

The menu was standard breakfast food but the ingredients listed were quite a few notches above diner food. The special of the day was homemade maple donuts, which is something I’ve never seen before on a menu at a cafe. I ordered an egg scramble with tomatoes, cheese and bacon, and my mom ordered eggs benedict. We both got the fruit cup as our side and were pleasantly surprised. The fruit cup had a generous amount in it and it had yogurt and honey drizzled over it, which was very good!

Eggs benedict from Ironworks Cafe

The rest of the food was very good (even though my mom and I had to trade because they didn’t put the hollandaise sauce on the side or switch out poached eggs for fried eggs – a consequence of the service and I’m sure they would have redone the order but we were happy to trade). My mom loved the scramble but I think I got the better end of the trade. The eggs benedict was traditionally prepared except for the hollandaise sauce. Their sauce had lemon juice in it which gave the dish a much needed break from the heaviness that eggs benedict traditionally is. As first I wasn’t sure about the sauce but a couple bites in and I was a believer of the citrus addition.

A couple days later I ended up meeting someone who works at the Goodman Community Center and they told me Ironworks employs high school students through a work-study program and the service ranges from excellent (toward the end of a semester) to remedial (at the beginning of a semester when a new crop of students are just starting).

Bottom Line: The food was great and, combined with the coffee, worth the risk you have to take with the service. It would also be interesting, as you continue to go back, to see the different types of specials they offer.