Overview of Clarke Café reviews highlights a welcoming spot with high quality coffee and fresh, filling sandwiches, especially the chicken cutlet and porchetta options, alongside tasty desserts and good value; the atmosphere is pleasant for work or catching up with friends, and takeout is convenient in the busy West Island location, though a few drinks may miss the mark (the moka can be cold and milk not steamed) and lunch can be crowded with limited seating, with occasional service hiccups like delays or wrong orders, but staff are generally polite and responsive and the overall emphasis remains on quality ingredients.
Owner keeps moving customers around during lunch, after we waited for a table, ordered & sat. Laptops not welcome at any time since plugs have been closed & owner insists to move you & put other customers in your place even if you need the only one left open to charge & will seat you with strangers on a shared table with no plug. I explained my battery needs to be plugged at all time to work & was told it wasn't really their problem, but somehow it was mine to move & prioritize other customers, regardless how much we order because my table had the minimum of 2 chairs & the second one wasn't being utilized (anymore, a friend was there & left). It was honestly not good for business as an approach. Everyone spoken to was turned off. The two customers you would get by moving those already seated often don't order more than a single person seated, who keeps ordering as they work. However if you feel the business really would benefit from that tradeoff, I suggest stickers on the tables you want no laptops on during lunch hours saying no laptops (11:30-1:30) on the tables of your choice & to reopen plugs if you want customers with laptops to actually believe they're welcome at other hours of the day. Otherwise, you're losing an entire group of customers who always go to cafes to work. It's not a library, strangers often don't want to share a table.
If it is acceptable, then people without laptops should be open to share their tables too. It is a very unpleasant experience to be asked to prioritize other customers when you were there first, & told it isn't their business if you need to charge. That's not how you speak to customers. The cafe is cute, it's a shame how many people this happened to.
For Sasha, Aprille, & anyone else who feels that cafes are their personal living rooms...
Clarke Cafe is a restaurant & a cafe. Anyone taking up space for hours with a single $6 latte, where that table might normally be used at lunchtime for $50+ of business for food & drinks for two people, is an entitled brat.
Yes, they've had to make adjustments based on the sheer number of students taking up hours of space for a single drink. It's not ideal for some people, because it doesn't feel comfortable paying a drink & then being asked to move. But the owner is very polite, a good guy who takes great care of his customers.
But he has a business to run.
Between say 11:30am & 2:00pm, his lunch customers also deserve a place to sit & eat. If you owned a business like this, you wouldn't want to see people walking in for lunch, see an army of laptops & no open tables, & walk out the door. This is what's happening, & he needs to be able to balance your right as a customer with his right to make money on his business.
Anyway, long rant over. Clarke Cafe is a great spot for coffee, food, vibes. Staff is great, customers are great, all of it. You just can't park yourself there for 3-5 hours, especially over lunch, while customers wanting to eat & spend 4-5X what you're spending.
I have sampled a few of their sandwiches & this location of Clarke Café offers exceptional products.
The sandwiches are large enough to share & excellent value (around $15). They are full of toppings, which you can customize to suit your tastes. We recently shared the porchetta sandwich made'Frank's Way' with marinated eggplant, hot peppers, sun dried tomatoes & a delicious spread, along with the usual lettuce & tomatoes. The bread is the star of the show as it is both crisp & fluffy & stands up to a car ride if you are not opting to eat in.
They also carry some amazing products from chef Danny Smiles, Angry Paesano & Pastamalfi - among others.
There are also great desserts & excellent coffee served here. Worth a stop for a quick or extended lunch when you are by Hwy 40/St Charles Blvd area.
Although I'm thrilled to finally have a nice cafe in the west island with good food, I have a few things that bother me about the place. The owner asked me & my friend to move tables at least 4 times. On every occasion, it's been because of the "lunch rush", however it was a weekday every single time & the tables that he freed up stayed empty. I would understand if it had been hours on end, but I personally think that spending 1h-1h30 at a coffee shop as a paying customer is not asking for much, especially when I can tell no customer is waiting for a table. Also the matcha more often tastes like milk rather than an actual matcha latte.
