The Dream Cafe Uptown

I really wanted to like this place because the menu seemed so great. But the COCKROACH scurrying across my table when the server took my plate was just not appetizing. The server was quick thinking and killed the roach with a napkin. She apologized and told us our meal would be comped but the manager never came to our table and apologized. Unfortunately I won’t be back — where there’s one roach there’s more.

Server Emily and the crusted pecan french toast gets this place 5 stars. The kitchen was very slow and the rest of the food was just okay in my opinion. We opted to get the french toast at the end of our Sunday brunch and share it around the table as dessert. It was ridiculously amazing. Emily was lighthearted, funny and a delight to be around. We could barely drink our coffee (two sips literally) before we got refills. No one ever wanted for anything. The kitchen is slow though so come when you are not in a hurry.

First of all, when I called to make a reservation for 17 for my BIRTHDAY DINNER a couple weekend ago, the person taking the reservation did not mention it would be a SET menu, and a SET price. (A Valentine Menu) No mention of it on the website either. Good information to have, not to mention an important detail to tell all your guests. Second, how do you RUN OUT of your limited menu items??? Not only that, but you don’t even have the decency to compensate anyone for the fact that didn’t get the scrumptious dessert YOU recommended at the beginning of the meal? You knew you were going to have AT LEAST 17 guests… who is running the kitchen? And the waiter, Gregory, bless his heart… his breath got there 5 minutes before he did! He insisted on being in your face to take your order, but who has an appetite after smelling something that foul!!! Probably the first time I’ve ever been happy to NOT have a very attentive waiter.[Very forgetful, seemed pre-​occupied, etc.]
If I didn’t have such amazing friends, who kept it together when they saw the limited menu and price point, it would probably go down as one of the worst dinner parties… ever.
They had the tables set up and were friendly for the most part… food was decent, but for that kind of money, you don’t expect a restaurant to run out of menu items, and certainly expect more than «I’m sorry, we are out of that» from someone with the worst breath on the planet.
I was just so, so disappointed.

Stopped at the Dream Café for a late Sunday breakfast. The place was packed, yet our table of four only waited 15 mins to be seated. When our waiter came I understood why the wait was short. He was very polite and courteous but also direct and to the point. No time for pleasantries. That being said my water was always full, I never saw the bottom of my coffee cup, and everyone’s order was correct and delivered to the table in a timely manner. The second your plate was empty it was whisked away by the efficient staff. During peak times these are the things that tend to drop off. The food was absolutely fantastic. I ordered a Greek omelette and it wss the best version of the dish I had ever had. Everyone else’s order at the table only served to make me jealous of their meals. I came here off the recommendation of a friend and now I can personally recommend it to everyone.

awesome brunch!

Visiting I was looking for something to touch my soul and satisfy my hunger… I found it at the Dream Café!!! I was introduced to my seat very quickly and I was greeted by our waiter Gregory (THE BEST)
I was looking for dinner but when he brought the breakfast menu I was salivating!!! I quickly asked for the chicken and waffles! I added chicken apple sausage and hash browns. When my plate arrived I was floored with excitement!!! I knew that I was in for treat!!! I’ve never tasted a gravy that I could eat by itself!!! My tastebuds went crazy with every bite!!! This café will be place of choice each time I come to Dallas!!! I will tell everyone I know about this café!!!

I will order breakfast food even at night … very disappointing one Wednesday night!!!
PLEASE GET IT RIGHT!!!

What happened? This place was the bomb before, seriously! Now the new manager (thin little black guy) walks around pinching his balls, bad breath, and completely clueless! Owners please give this place a true makeover so you can continue to live up to the hype!!! Otherwise you’ll jus plain ol’suck!

Came here for the first time this morning! It was absolutely delicious. We found our new brunch spot! If you are looking for something cozy and so cute go here! The food is all so fresh, and organic and DELICIOUS. This place is a MUST. 5 stars! Keep it up dream café! Get the dream eggs Benedict, the two by three, ricotta pancakes!!! Everything we had was outstanding.

I went here today with friends from work to catch up and chat. The place was not busy, which I correlated with the not so nice weather. I had the Sunny Side and that was delicious. For about $ 12.50 you get a very good portion of food that was very well presented and tasted good. I would agree with a previous poster and say that Dream Café is more eclectic. Finding this place is much harder than I thought. Using google maps and apple maps it kept saying I have arrived at my location but all I could see was a big building that was some big firm. It is actually located on Laclede and not Routh. Not even on the corner of Laclede and Routh but about half a block down Laclede. If it wasn’t for the difficulty finding this place, I may have rated it 5 stars.

Not really a dream… Closer to a nightmare
Summary: Under cooked cold food having waited over an hour for meals (hour and 45 minutes with the table wait time).
My fiancé and I went here for brunch today, and the experience was nothing short of awful. We waited 20 minutes to get a table, which was fine because we were told so when we walked in. Promptly after sitting down, we were greeted by Gregory. He quickly got us our water and coffee. We ordered soon after since we had plenty of time to look at the menu while waiting. We ordered popovers to start with, then the sunnyside, and the glorified omlet for meals. After waiting 30 minutes for our food, Gregory comes over to tell us that since he was super busy he gave our order to a coworker to ring it in (he was definitely hustling around the place, so I believe him), however, the coworker never rang it in and actually threw it away.
We appreciated his honesty, and having both worked as servers in the past, we realize that things like this sometimes happen. We gave him our orders again and 15 min later our popovers came. They were ok, not really anything to write home about. Our food came about 15 min after that. My omlet was stone cold. The cheese wasn’t even melted and the spinach was raw leaves. My fiancé’s eggs were really runny, the sausage was cold, and the hash browns were WAYYY too salty to eat. I took two bites of my meal and I couldn’t possibly eat another disgusting bite. We told Gregory and he quickly came to personally deliver the check with the food comped off. UMM WHERE IS THE MANAGER IN THIS PLACE! !!! We seriously never even saw one the whole time we were there.
We got home, and now my fiancé is sick as hell with food poisoning, probably from undercooked food!!! So annoyed that we waited over an hour for food for this!!! Gregory did a great job, but we will never be back. Please beware before dining here.

Dream café is not the best food but if you are looking for a new eclectic experience you should at least try it out. I love going to places where my friend who is a vegan and myself can eat. He staff was friendly except the manager/​owner. He is not the friendliest person. The food was okay nothing’s spectacular. I like that they give you albums to check in.
Staff ³⁄₅
Atmosphere ⁴⁄₅
Food ³⁄₅
Drinks ³⁄₅
Price ²⁄₅

I’ve never been here for any meal other than breakfast, but the breakfast is amazing. The sunny side is the first and last thing I’ve ever ordered because once you have it you can’t ever order anything else! The French toast is life changing and while I am picky about sausage, I love their sausage links. Very good breakfast spot! (The waiters are all usually pretty on top of things as well.)

I finally understand the name-​if you close your eyes really hard and envision a great breakfast, that will be as close as you will get to achieving that «dream» after eating here.
We ordered delivery, which was a cluster f$&@ of disorganization: missing items from the order, called 30 mins after ordering to notify us that they were out of one of the entrees, and more. They packaged all components of each entrée TOGETHER! This means soggy toast, bagel soaked in salmon juice, eggs floating in steak juice, and so on. Needless to say, it was stomach-​turning. DON’T. RELY. ON. THE. UnilocalERS’. PHOTOS! Most of these pics are years old. Believe me-​nothing we ordered matched the pics.
Now, the food quality: Hmmm… small town diner, I would say. The chicken and waffles-​definitely not an «ode to Roscoe’s.» It was not even a whole chicken breast! We got 3 tiny, over cooked, burnt-​tasting, chicken strips over a waffle. Not. Good. The pancakes are just average. The steak was supposed to be a ribeye-​more like a fat-​free, chewy sirloin. The New Yorker (bagel, smoked salmon, onion and capers) was good but how do you screw that up? The icing on the cake for me was that, when I asked for bread other than wheat toast, they said they don’t offer any other type of toast! WTF?! A breakfast joint that doesn’t offer any other types carbs?!
In sum: basic fail! With so many brunch options in Dallas and with Dallas becoming the epicenter of superior culinary options, this place will likely not last.

Very average… Coffee was pretty good! Service was kind and prompt. Having a really great brunch in Dallas is hard to do. If this was in a suburb I’m sure it’d be amazing, but for Uptown it was just alright. My friend got a Strap breakfast and it was a simple eggs, toast, and hash browns. Hash browns were a bit burnt. I got the granola French toast and it was pretty good, not as unique as I had hoped.
Overall I would come back if everywhere else was packed. But not my first choice.

I just want my check. Good food — but common. I’m going to be a skeleton by the time I pay.
With that said — SKY WAFFLES! CLOUD CAKES! PORK SAUSAGE! CRISP BACON! I don’t have to say that if you want to find me at 8am, I’m here.
Today, I had a Sky waffle with a side of pork sausage and bacon. Crisp… perfect…bacon. The pork doesn’t taste like a package of Jimmy Deen. It taste like a real piggy was running around in the kitchen and ended up on my plate.
The sky waffle was the perfect amount of sweet — not too much, but a nice waffle flavor. Mmmm. (Take notes «Café Corn Dog»!)
My coffee was how I like my men, strong and black! Seriously — THIS COFFEE IS GREAT!!!
I can’t get over how high quality this food is… and yet, it’s rated so low. If you rated it low a while ago, try it again. You might be surprised!

Dream café is more like a «sleepy café»
Great location here in uptown. Honestly not too bad of food but not too good either. It was just ok.
The thing that was a bit concerning to me was the way the staff treated each other… there was a lot of commanding talk and disregard and respect towards one another which makes me question if there is a lot of disregard towards what happens back in the kitchen!
Overall I will not eat here but if breadwinners is full and you are in the area and want to grab some good breakfast I would recommend coming out to the dream café…

Very disappointed with my experience here after walking into a busy restaurant and reading good Unilocal reviews.
Very small lobby. One guy at the front asked how many and gave you an old record cover as your name to be called. Original idea which I think is cute. 20 minutes later, my friend and I are seated at a booth.
A server walks by with some waters, asks if we want anything and walked off after we said no. A few minutes later, we ordered. She had came to refill the water but only did my friend’s…
Food came out ~25 minutes later. Her Austin tacos looked good, my omelet looked bland. The inside of the omelet was filled with lots of cubed ham, onions, and bell peppers with cheese. As I was eating, I couldn’t help but feel I was eating raw eggs. So I stopped eating the egg bit and finished the stuffing. The hash browns were soggy. I like the strawberry butter they have, but I had asked for regular butter for my toast.
We pulled over another server to tell them about my omelet and request an item who then went to find our server. She asked if I wanted anything else, I said no. A chef walked over and asked again if I wanted anything else, or if I wanted something sweet. Once more, no thanks. The server and the chef were a bit abrupt while speaking.
Afterwards, the server brought our tab and told me the omelet was comped. It’s always awkward when a server stays by my table waiting for payment. All in all, cute café but I would not recommend nor will I be returning.

An average experience at best. Extremely hot inside and out, we selected indoor seating that was probably a mistake. No circulation – just dead, still, hot air. For the life of me, I don’t understand how Dream Café is (still) so popular for brunch with all the newer, and frankly better breakfast and brunch places in Arts Bishop, Uptown, Victory Park and West Village. It’s been at ten years since I was last here and today I was reminded why I don’t come more often.
I tried the chicken and waffle. Second huge mistake. The waffle was hard, room temperature, overdone, and as Jerry Jeff Walker would say, «drier than the Texas sand.» Served with fake maple (corn syrup with food coloring) syrup and gravy, the waffles were topped with four bland chicken fingers — the kind I used to get my kids at Black Eyed Pea (only not as good).
The contrived Bohemian vibe is confusing, although there are a smattering of offerings sure to delight neighborhood vegan who comes strolling by – which pretty much explains the otherwise inexplicable popularity: there are about a million people who live uptown within walking distance of Dream Café. If you actually have to drive to get there, you will likely be disappointed by the lackluster menu and food prep. Nothing stuck out as being original or expertly prepared. Garden variety breakfast fare in a poorly air conditioned, clearly tired place.

Started by hippies back in the 80s this café has been opened for a long time. Got to hear some tidbits about this place from our server. Gregory the famous Dream Café server, was ours and he did an awesome job! We came here around dinner time for desserts. They do serve dinner items as well not just brunch. We ordered crème brûlée and chocolate ganache, both were around $ 5. They don’t have dessert items on their menu but Gregory memorized most of it.
The crème brûlée was served on an oblong dish. The custard was superb! Not too sweet but still being fantastic. The burnt outer crust was perfect too! We had a blast cracking the crust and dipping into the custard. The crème brûlée comes with strawberries and mint leaves. I did get a sample of the chocolate ganache which my friend ordered. The great combination of ganache and cake like pie melts in your mouth. Everything was chocolate but not all tasted the same. The ganache had a liquor after taste. The cake like pie was soft in the inside and had a crust on the outer. The dessert was topped with cream fraise which is like whipping cream but lighter. We actually had to do a draw between the popular banana foster and chocolate ganache. Both sounded so good but we leaned toward chocolate more. In the end we got to try both because it was our lucky day! The banana foster was very interesting. Never had anything like it but can understand why it’s so popular.
I had fun talking with Gregory and the owner. Got to hear some interesting facts about the café. The food of course was fab and will come down another day to try their brunch. Gotta also mention I thought the deco outside was a bit romantic. It wasn’t high class but low class romantic setting.

This place certainly is like a dream – not in that «hopes and dreams come true» way but like those nonsensical dreams where places and faces keep shifting and look nothing like they do in reality (you have those too, right?).
What I can’t make sense of is how the same kitchen that turned out a satisfying smoked salmon was unable to make better strawberry Belgian waffle, Ham Benedict, and Artichoke Benedict. There was an underlying staleness to everything from the popover to the waffles. I picked this place for my daughter’s birthday brunch because I heard there was a play structure, not realizing it was outdoors and more suitable for kids over the age of 4. Its redeeming quality is the service. Our waiter was informative and friendly, and he truly went above and beyond by running after us, out the door, to give my daughter a slice of chocolate cake for her birthday. One of those stars is for you, Mister! There’s the one star Unilocal requires you to give, but I’m giving them another star for making pretty good use of such a narrow space.

We went there for brunch. It was crazy busy and packed today.
We ordered the Ham and Cheese Scrambler, Mile High Omelet, Ode to Roscoe’s Chicken and waffles, Sunny Side, and Cloud Cakes.
Our server was Greg, and he was quite a character. He loved to dance while taking our orders. Greg was also extremely busy & informed us that he had 9 tables, so he apologized for being a little behind. Needless to say, our service was slow.
The ambience was welcoming, but a little confusing with all the nooks and crannies.

The Dream Café is difficult to categorize. The first time we ate here, we came for dinner and sat on their patio, under the arbor strung with twinkling lights. There was live music and the food was unique (our dishes had hints of mediterranean spices, sides of pita). It felt the like the perfect place for a date night.
The next time we ate here, we came for dinner again, but brought my mom and my sister and we sat inside at one of their tables. The restaurant was lit with low lights so the intimate feel remained, but the live music was now inside and everything was a little louder, a little more jarring. We ordered sandwiches and salads and the Dream Café felt less like a bistro and more like a unique diner.
I came once with my coworkers for a farewell lunch on a weekday afternoon. We sat outside in the sunshine and ordered salads and wraps, omelets and pasta dishes. The waitstaff was hurried but friendly, food was delivered in a timely manner. There was no music playing and there were kids running around, enjoying the little play structure near the outdoor dining area.
The last time we were here, we came for Saturday brunch. We sat inside, at a booth in the corner. Top 40s hits were playing on the loudspeaker, very loudly; Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Pussycat Dolls, one right after the other. The food was great – I devoured a Sky Waffle with a side of hash browns and veggie sausage, my boyfriend savored his Southwestern chicken salad and fresh baked popover with strawberry jam. But the bright, unforgiving lighting and the loud, frenzied feel of the restaurant made it feel like a diner of the IHOP variety. With much better food, of course.
Ultimately, throughout our years of visiting the Dream Café, no matter what time of day or what meal we’re eating, we’ve never been disappointed with the food or the service. Their many vegetarian options and healthy ingredients are much appreciated. It’s just a difficult restaurant to categorize, and maybe that’s why it’s so good. Want a romantic evening with your date? You might find it here, if you come on the right night and sit in the right area. Want a loud, brightly lit diner? You also might find it here, if you come on the right morning and sit in the right spot. One thing you should not do, though, is pass up a chance to try this place.

A couple of girlfriends and I came here for Sunday brunch upon recommendation by Alex Q. I had some great first impressions of the place because 1) lots of parking in the adjacent garage, 2) really cute patio, and 3) not too crowded. I’ve learned that to get into Dallas brunch spots, you either have to make reservations ahead of time or expect at least a 30 minute wait, so I was pleasantly surprised when we got seated immediately upon walking in.
There were a bunch of items on the menu that sounded delicious, but I eventually settled on a popover with strawberry butter and the sunny side combo (2 eggs, sausage, bacon, granola-​crusted french toast with strawberries) plus a side of hash browns.
The popover was awesome. It was like a warm, crispy-​on-​the-​outside but gooey-​on-​the-​inside version of a croissant, and went really well with their delicious strawberry butter. After I finished my popover, I shamelessly finished off the rest of the strawberry butter from the little plastic container. That’s how good it was.
The sunny side was pretty much a typical hearty breakfast. The sausage was a little too hard, and the hash browns were bland. The granola-​crusted french toast was good, but I was expecting the crust to be more crispy.
Next time I come, I might just order 4 popovers with that strawberry butter.

Yes! The perfect brunch. I nice spot in Uptown that has a nice surrounding with its outdoors views & patios. A friend of mine took me here, says she comes here often & recommended it to me. I’m glad she recommended it!
I got the Cloud Cakes, which is one of their signature dishes, & I can see why. First of all, they were ricotta pancakes, not your average. Light & creamy with a nice distinctive taste. Topped with strawberries, powered sugar & the stuff that made it over the top, the crème fraiche; which is light & sweet & adds goodness to the point you don’t have to add much of their Vermont maple syrup. Also, I got a side of bacon (3 slices) & a cup of fruit (melon, cantaloupe, grape, strawberry & blueberries).
All around goodness. Nice vibe & good energy all over this place. Just like my friend, I recommend this place on weekends for brunch! I