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Name Of Establishment	Country Waffles
Address:	845 W.Pacheco Blvd. Los Banos Ca.
Phone Number:	209-827-0805
Website:	Unknown
Prices:	Low / reasonable
Date Of Review:	July 8, 2006
Check out the Official Merced County Health Inspection of this Restaurant - If that link isn't working try this link (note: these links are slow to load)
Our Overall Numeric Rating
Summation Opinion: Good breakfast foods and some lunch items.

On July 8, 2006 we went to Country Waffles of Los Banos, a pretty little restaurant on the west end of town that is only open until 2pm daily and offers a variety of breakfast foods along with some lunch items. We had very mixed opinions of our experience.

The interior of country waffles reminds me of going to "grandma's house". There is white wainscoting, flowery wallpaper, lattice work and paint that comes in colors of pink and lavender. It is all together quite charming and VERY female. My husband, who has spent a fair bit of time doing home improvements, noted a lot of small but very nice touches such as routing on certain woodwork and well constructed lattice holders etc. etc. There are pictures of flowers and such on the walls and even the restrooms (which happened to be acceptably clean) keep the color theme. It looks like someone took a lot of time to make this place look very nice inside.

We were seated in a booth and given our menus. The choices were typical breakfast fare like bacon and eggs with some more rare treats like Swedish crepes. There is also a section featuring lunch items like burgers, fries, potato salad and various sandwiches. We were pleased to note that there is also a child's menu with very inexpensive choices.

We ordered our meals and were brought our sodas. I was a bit disappointed in my Sierra Mist as the carbonation was nearly nonexistent. Our waitress brought me a Dr. Pepper instead, which turned out to be slightly better. She was very friendly and apologetic over the soda replacement. My husband's soda was also a bit syrupy for his taste.

When our food arrived, my plate looked absolutely delicious. I ordered crepes and they came smothered in blueberry sauce with dollops of whipped cream over the top. I also got a separate plate of scrambled eggs, one sausage and one piece of bacon.

The crepes were absolutely wonderful and my husband couldn't help taking quite a few large bites! In fact he seemed to spend more time with his fork on my side of the table than on his! After eating about 3/4 of my crêpes though, I thought they became kind of oversweet and had enough so I turned toward the rest of my meal. The egg was done just right and so was the bacon, but my sausage was undercooked. For us that is a big deal... undercooked pork is to our way of thinking not to be trusted so that got left on my plate.

My husband had ordered a beef dip sandwich with potato salad instead of fries. He was disappointed to find that the potato salad wasn't cold and so he didn't eat it. He thought the French dip was O.K. but not nearly as good as my crepes.

Throughout our meal our waitress did an O.K. job. She was quiet but friendly. She could have been just a bit more attentive, but overall we were satisfied.

Country Waffles turned out to be a mix for us. Some of our food was terrific and yet other parts of our meal weren't properly prepared. In our opinion it is unsafe for sausage to not be cooked thoroughly and warm potato salad doesn't cut it. Despite our negative experiences, we left very happy with the quality and flavor of the crepes. We agreed that we'll be back just for those and perhaps to try some more of the lunch items on the menu.

It's a shame that Country Waffles isn't open later. We like the variety on their menu and Los Banos could use a place where breakfast is served all the time. We think that while Country Waffles had a few problems on our first visit, what they did right makes it worth giving them a another try and hopefully the issues we ran into are anomalies. If nothing else at least there is a place in town where we know we can get absolutely delicious crepes.

Specific Opinions By Reviewer One
Overall Rating:
Food:	Not at all pleased about the undercooked pork and poorly chilled potato salad
Service:
Decor:	It is apparent that a lot of workmanship went into the "pretty" decor.
Price/Value:
Bathroom Cleanliness:
Romance Factor	An excellent place to take mom to breakfast
Family Fun
Despite my less than glowing rating, I am looking forward to returning to have my own plate of crepes!

Specific Opinions By Reviewer Two
Overall Rating:
Food:	The 4 is for the blueberry crepes! Not happy with undercooked pork.
Service:
Decor:	Cute
Price/Value:
Bathroom Cleanliness
Romance Factor	Only because it's so cute.
Family Fun	You'll love the kid's menu prices

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Reviews in this section are simply personal opinions. We are sharing these, our experiences and opinions as a means to further discussion in our Los Banos Forums section not to promote or discommend any particular business. In fact we absolutely encourage our readers to make a personal visit to each of the restaurants we review and form your own opinion which (if it is respectful and honest) you are encouraged to post on the Los Banos Bulletin Boards where you are also welcome to discus OUR reviews.

More About Our Los Banos Restaurant Reviews

In this section, the staff of Our Los Banos .com shares our personal opinions on the restaurants that we patronize in the City of Los Banos. We would like to stress that we are not professional reviewers, that we have had little or no training in the food arts, and that we are simply expressing our own personal views and opinions on particular visits that we made to the establishments under consideration.

Subjectivity. We make no pretense of the fact that we are not objective. As with art, food is a subjective experience subject to personal opinion and even whim. Some people love a particular artist's work while others can not stand what is put on canvas. Picasso comes to mind. Similarly people's appreciation for a particular chef's abilities are uniquely their own. While our tastes are very eclectic and we enjoy a tremendous variety of different types of food, we do not expect our readers will agree with all of our opinions and views. We DO encourage our readers to try each of the places that we have reviewed and then you can discuss (politely and in a positive fashion) your experiences and opinion of our review in the Los Banos Forum section.

Merced County Health Food Facility Inspections Site

Finally, we strongly encourage our readers to make use of a truly wonderful online resource we discovered last year. Merced County has put together a very cool Food Facility Inspection website which discloses the results of the County Health Department's last few inspections of each restaurant. The results are sometimes quite fascinating and are always interesting. Beware however you may not want to eat at certain places once you read some of the more dramatic entries. We at Our Los Banos .com very much appreciate and support the county of Merced putting these Department of Health food facility inspections online for the public to see.

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