That Creative Cafe

It IS a shame it closed. It IS missed…

Sorry folks, they had to close their doors. Well, you can still go to Riley Farms and have one of their chicken pot pies. As they say in Hawaii, it ‘broke da mouth’!

My family and i went here for my mothers birthday and yes the wait was about 30 minutes, but well worth it (third time). The corn chowder was great and the meat is fresh off the BBQ. Will go back again soon, loved it

I’m fascinated by the 4 and 5 star reviews! It’s not the ambiance or even the wait (although that was pretty ridiculous) that I wasn’t happy with — it was the quality of the food and the lack of cleanliness.
First, I was nervous when I saw a burger come out that had a layer of burnt black char on the outside. I thought maybe the guy had ordered it that way, but I’m not so sure. Their smoked tri-​tip is NOT the same as Santa Maria style, which to me is the way to do tri-​tip. What we were served was more like what they call «burnt ends» in the south… small bits of dried out and burned meat. The peppers and onions served on the tri-​tip were HUGE slices and basically raw — very crunchy and by no means sauteed or even grilled. They had a strange taste that I can best described as being cooked on a grill that needed to be cleaned. The apple cole slaw was different and might have been ok, but I was hesitant to eat it as it didn’t taste too fresh nor had it been refrigerated in an hour or two at least judging by its temperature.
The cookies were awesome and eaten as an appetizer as we settled in for the half hour wait. The staff was basically mute and strangely robotic and unfriendly. The topper was when I saw one of the women working there wipe up a disgusting dirty table that had just been occupied by a bunch of kids that had smeared their food and god knows what else all over the table… and then she used the same rag to wipe off the tips of the ketchup and BBQ sauce squeeze bottles. My friend summed it up best when she said «I’m glad we went there so we won’t ever go back.»

First I have to say, I don’t understand people complaining about the long wait to be served. «That creative café» even have a cleaver sign that they are not «M» so they are not warming up already pre-​made food, they are making it for you, just be patient and you will appreciate later. Don’t you leave the city to be relaxed? We go to Oak Glen quite often and we always eat at ‘That Creative café”, and it’s ALWAYS a treat! The customer service is friendly, sweet very helpful and ready to assist you at any time. They even got an item on their menu for your dog (our dogy Jo Jo was in heaven)!!! The owner is down to earth friendly guy (we met him last time we were visiting, September 15^th), we had a good time with him:) For those who are vegans (like us), they have a very tasty grilled veggy sandwich (they actually grill vegetables on the wood fire-​ed grill for that). Our kids are vegans too, for most of the time, but when we go to «That creative café» they want hot-​sausage dogs;)
The gift shop is very unique! I love the atmosphere and the whole set up. I always find something that I want to bring home:) Can’t wait to go back!

Tri tip sandwich ⁴⁄₅
BBQ chicken sandwich ⁴⁄₅
Mesquite beans side ⁵⁄₅ — really delicious smoked flavor
Corn chowder ⁴⁄₅
Corn bread ⁵⁄₅
Mushroom appetizer ⁵⁄₅ — great garlic butter flavor, moist and juicy.
Red potatoes– not worth it — ²⁄₅

That Creative Café is a gem in Oak Glen! Everything is made fresh and tastes delicious. Large portions and great presentation with each meal. Friendly and efficient costumer service. Our favorite menu items include the veggie omelette with homemade mango salsa, the grilled veggie sandwich and the toasted tomato soup! They also serve chocolate macadamia nut coffee, which is reason enough to love this place.

We ended up here because the lines for bbq were way to long elsewhere but we’re sure glad we did! The lemonade is out of this world— great! And, ordinarily, I’m not a huge cornbread fan, but this cornbread was so moist it melts in your mouth. It was amazing! The service was extremely friendly too. The bbq chicken sandwich was also impressively good. I will go back for sure even though it’s a long drive from Corona. Very busy little shop. Mountain cozy.

Decent, nothing to «write home about», they claim their Tri-​Tip is amazing, it was dry and avwerage. They need to clean up their outdoor area. The restaurant does have unrealized potential and they say they are working to make things better… let’s hope so

Lousy service and dirty tables.
Nothing like ordering 3 hot dogs, 1 grilled cheese and a chicken sand which and took over an hour to serve.
Do yourself a favor and bring a lunch or go down the hill and eat in the city area of Yucaipa

The only reason I am giving this 2 stars is that my husband said his tri tip sandwich was decent. First off, the wait was ridiculous. We waited an hour just to order our food and then say outside on a table with folding chairs in the dirt for another hour writing for our food. When it arrived it wasn’t good and it wasn’t hot. The kids had mushy and gamey tasting hot dogs. My friend and I had barely cooked tasteless mushrooms and hot link sausage sandwiches that were more like kielbasa than hotlinks and were covered in barely cooked peppers and onions. Our friends had the BBQ chicken sandwich that should have been called the lighter fluid special. We were served tiny bags of chips and drinks out of a bottle. It was like eating from a vending machine. I would keep driving rather tan stop here if I were you!

We came here on a busy day at the beginning of October and there were a lot of people in line at around 130 pm. The women taking orders were incredibly slow for no apparent reason. After almost an hour of waiting in line (there were a lot of people so we just went with it) the girl didn’t seem to know how to operate the computer and took a long time to enter the order and then turned and just chatted with the other woman behind the counter while I was waiting on her to finish up with me so she could go onto the next person. By this point we were starting to grumble because it took so long to even place our order and we were pretty hungry. We had already stood in line so long we decided just to stick it out. We went and sat outside and waited. And waited. People that we had noticed when we first got there were just getting their food as we sat down. A bad sign. Fifteen minutes later they bring out another table’s food. Ten minutes after that another table’s food. We sat for an hour and the people who were ahead of us in line still hadn’t gotten their food either. We decided to just ask for a refund because we were starving at this point-​two hours after we first pulled up. We went in and asked for a refund and they suddenly jumped into gear and got us our food to go-​we suspect they put it together from somebody else’s order. The food was okay-​nothing mind blowing and certainly not two hours wait good. I will certainly not be going back there ever again. Oh another thing that made it all worse-​everybody seemed completely apathetic to the fact that people were waiting over an hour. We didn’t get any apology after we complained, none of the wait staff were trying to reassure people and help out the people with kids waiting so long for food. It was literally one of the worst examples of service at a restaurant I have ever seen.

This establishment should come with a sign at the door: «Two hour wait from here.» We arrived at 1:30 on a Sunday afternoon and did not receive our food until 3:30 when we went in to demand our money back. There was not an exceptionally long line nor an unusually large amount of customers — rather, this place simply oozed slowness and inefficiency from the kitchen to the cash register. To make matters worse, none of the employees seemed particularly concerned by the terrible service: no apologies were offered nor hurriedness observed. A steady chorus of grumbles from other customers waiting at the tables around us was our only entertainment during our long wait. If you want a review of the food, look elsewhere. Even the best food in the world would be ruined by service this terrible. I post this review as a warning to other people wanting to have a nice day in Oak Glen — eat elsewhere.

Decent breakfast for less than 10 bucks.
Right next to a big park and the Oak Glen school Museum.
I would say that you should eat here before you go to any of the farms.
Parking was easy too.
It’s not special but it’s good for the price and the location.

Granted, there are few places to dine in the area. Creative café is a curious moniker considering they sell sandwiches basically. We sampled the burger and the tri tip sandwich.
Do not expect upscale cause this is as down home as it gets. Outdoor picnic tables, indoor tables with checkered tablecloths and many, many flies. In fact, a deceased one greeted us at the table as we sat.
You can watch the outdoor barbecue at work and the food is decent, but no one is in a hurry here.
Decent, acceptable, but nothing to come running to the region for.

Creative? It’s a BBQ place, California style. Check that, BBQ means hot dogs and hamburgers in California. Shit, now I’m confused, because they have that too. It’s more Santa Maria style, but the tri-​tip and chicken is chopped and put in a bun. I won’t get all deep on you about the food, it was okay and I was hungry. Don’t be in a hurry, because they are pretty slow in taking orders and seem to chat it up with every 200 question asking dumbass tourist that comes in. I had originally planned on throwing two stars their way, but after visiting Oak Glen, looking around this circa 1970 garage sale cheap garbage selling t-​shirt and worthless crap town, I decided everything is relative. They serve breakfast, but you have to be there before 11:30, or you are thrown into the sandwich world.
I checked out a couple of other places, this might be your best bet, but as I said, all things are relative.

OK here it is Labor day 2012, we just got finished hiking and playing at the old school house play area and were looking for a place to eat. We decided to stop for lunch 7 of us. We order the following: Cheese burger, ham and cheese sand with chile, Quesadilla with salsa, BBQ chicken sandwich with fries, Philly tri-​tip with potato salad, grilled cheese. Also we order the mushrooms in special sauce appetizer. 35 minutes later the food finally starting to come out. Not all at once like you would like rather bits and pieces with at least 5 minutes between first meals and last. Don’t get me wrong we all wanted the food to be good. The place is nice and the idea is great for a place with good food like the other reviews which must have gone not during lunch time when it was a little busy. The group in front of us waited the same amount of time as we did and another group had to get money back for an item they ordered and never received. All right here is the news on the food. The ham and cheese on the croissant was actually good. Hard to mess this up. The chile was also good a lot spicy for the person eating it but overall good. The cheese burger was way way overcooked which is a bummer since it sounded great from the menu with the add-​ons. A Five guys burger is better since it was so overcooked. I think they could make a good burger however overing cooking is the kiss of death. My wife and I ordered the Philly tri-​tip which was really dry had very little sauce and flavor. The potato salad if you want to call it that is just big pieces of potatoes cut up with a little sauce and some herbs. Nothing special about it once again hoping for more. The chicken special sandwich ordered by my son was just BBQ chicken which was smoked and then cooked with onions. This also could have been great if it had some sauce it was super dry and tough like it had been left on the BBQ to long and the smoke flavor wasn’t really pleasing kind of a rough smoke smell. The baked french fries were you guessed it over cooked they had been under the heat to long and were tough. Quesadilla ordered by my daughter who loves them was really disappointing since the salsa was inside instead of on the side. We should have asked but as you and I know the salsa is usually on the out side/​on the side. We got over this by scraping it off so she could eat it. Her comment was needs more cheese. We all agreed the cheese was lacking. In closing the appetizer came out with our food and let me tell you the mushrooms had no special sauce some were cold and some soggy. Flavor so so nothing special, we thought they started them and then left them on the grill instead of bring them to us. Not sure just know all of it could have been a lot better. We were really bummed since we were hoping for a great lunch. Will we stop again on another trip not sure hope they survive and get it right in the near future.

The location might make you suspect that food would not be the #1 priority at this place. You know — it’s just somewhere that’s open only because there’s nowhere else for miles around.
Like the dismal restaurants near national parks.
But you would be wrong.
It was a top quality meal. Worth going to even if you aren’t just grabbing a bite on the way back from picking apples.
Chili, corn chowder, tritip sandwich all met with admiration at our table.

I pulled a u-​turn to stop here and boy am I glad I did.
A handpainted sign advertising «breakfast tri tip apples» grabbed my attention as I cruised by.
Awesome tri tip sandwich with refreshing local apple cole slaw, appetizers like grilled mushrooms with parsley; grilled asparagus with parmesean; fresh local peaches wrapped in ham, bbqed and sprinkled with balsamic had me cooing for more. And we ordered a second round — literally.
Glen, the owner, is friendly, talkative and a bbq master who is proud to give you the history of the building and his recipes — if you’re friendly. His sweet wife manned the register as well as offered us a piece of fresh baked apple pie (harvested locally) which she made herself. We were too stuffed by that point but so far the food had been so good we took a chance and bought a whole apple pie to enjoy later. (And later, it was AMAZING!)
They are only in their first year of business so give em a break on the décor — it’s the food that matters here & the lovely people that craft it for you.

I absolutely LOVE this café! Food is delicious and cooked to perfection. This place is located in a beautiful area in Oak Glen and has an «at home cozy log cabin» feel to it. I ordered a burger that was juicy and delicious! My husband had the tri tip sandwich which he loved! I tried some of it and man… was it good! The staff is very friendly and really make you feel welcome. That Creative Café is definitely worth the drive for me and my husband. I will definitely be back again and again!